Re: corrections to General Abizaid analysis of the Iraq war

Archimedes Plutonium <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message 

> I have held the belief that if the Internet had existed by 1960 and if I
> had been old enough and wise enough to post from 1960 onwards as well as
> thousands of other people that the Vietnam War may have never become a
> war but fizzled out by 1963. The message there was crystal clear that
> you win wars when the reason for fighting is "moral" and you have a high
> degree of losing a war if the fighting is over "immoral grounds". The
> immorality of the Vietnam War was that the Vietnamese wanted freedom
> from colonialism and the USA was the newest Colonialist after the French
> had departed. So Vietnam from day number one was an immoral war for the
> USA. And I feel that if I had constantly blaired that issue on the
> Internet along with other war protestors that we may have made the
> politicians more sensible and logical and averted the Vietnam War.

The Vietnamese war was NOT about colonialism.
That's such a bizaare view, I am dumbfounded that anybody could
express it.

Look at the root of that word: colony.
We did not send any settlers there.
We never intended to send settlers there.
Not ever.


Oh, I'm sure you'll just turn around and say that ok, it was 
a war of imperialism.

No, it wasn't that either.
Imperialism suggests you are asserting political control for
the purpose of exploiting the people and the resources.

We were not so much interested in political control, except
in so far as we did not want a communist government there.

I've never heard anybody ever claim we were there to exploit
the people (for cheap labor) or to steal their resources.
Indeed, they didn't have much in the way of developed 
resources at the time (still not too much today, but 
certainly more than was there 40 years ago).


We did not go into Vietnam to colonize or exploit.

To claim otherwise you have to show the colonies of US citizens 
we established or the amount and value of resources "stolen" or
"exploited".  If you can't do either, you cannot make the claim 
that it was about colonialism or imperialism.

We went in to stop communism.

And when you look at what the communists did after they finally
did seize power (see "Following Ho Chi Minh: Memoirs of a North 
Vietnamese Colonel" by Bui Tin), you will see that it was very
much a moral war, or ought to have been viewed as such.

But the naive protestors (or not so naive?) thought that communism
really was such a wonderful and good thing and Ho Chi Minh was 
really a saint being unfairly set upon by evil America.  
In fact, Ho Chi Minh terrorized his own people and killed millions.
He was evil, just as Stalin was evil, just as Lenin and Trotsky
were evil, just as Saddam was evil, just as every leftist
claiming to be a communist was evil.

You are wrong on this one, Archimedes.


> Likewise the Iraq War is immoral on the grounds that the Palestinians
> are a suppressed and oppressed people whose land is being stolen by the
> Israel-USA axis power. 

Iraq war is immoral because Israel is "stealing" the Palestinian lands?

Here's a little exercise for you:
What are the demographics of these "palestinians".

You'll find that many of them are originally from Lebanon or Syria or 
Egypt or just about anywhere else except from "Palestine".

There is not, and has never been, a nation of Palestine.
There is no Palestinian culture, no Palestinian language, no
Palestinian traditions (suicide bombings don't count as a 
tradition!), Palestine is an administrative expression.
Nothing more.

Palestinians are a tool of the arab population at large in 
their war of genocide against the jews.  Palestinians are 
despised by the arab population at large, only slightly 
less so than jews are despised.

You are fundamentally missing out on the root cause of the
problem.  It isn't an issue of whether there is a country
of Palestine, it is whether jews exist at all in the 
middle east.

I was reading some early history of Islam and Mohammed 
himself slaughtered the jews of Mecca and Medina.  Hatred
of jews among the arab muslim population goes back literally
to day one.  Splitting Israel doesn't make the jews go away.
And the jews going away is the only solution that arabs will
find acceptable.

If Palestine is created, some other excuse will be dreamed up
to fight the jews.  Indeed, several arab states are still
technically at war with Israel, or rather, with the zionists,
since they don't officially even recognize the existance of
Israel!

You think that giving land to the non-existant nation of
Palestine (you do understand the difference between a nation
and a country, don't you?) will create peace in the middle east.
It won't.  That isn't the problem.  You cannot solve a problem
if you don't understand it, and you clearly don't understand
the problem here.

And Palestine has ZERO relationship to Iraq.
The "palestinians" have been fighting Israel for over 40 years,
we've been in Iraq for just over 10.  They are most definitely
unrelated.

The war in Iraq *IS* moral.  It *IS* just.  It *IS* right.

We are not fighting in Iraq to benefit Israel, as you suggest.
If anything, it is against Israel's interests to do so.
Iraq was at least a secular state and Saddam a known quantity.
What takes his place was uncertain and potentially very harmful
to Israel.

You are blinded by your own frothing hatred of zionism to see 
the issues how they really are.


> General Abizaid is wrong in saying that the Iraq resistance amounts to
> about 5,000 men. How many Muslim or Islam believers in the world today?
> Is it about
> 1.3 billion people? All of those 1.3 billion want to see a Palestinian
> Homeland. 

I bet the vast majority of them don't bloody much care.
How many starving africa muslims who can't even feed their
family from day to day and are conscripted to fight border
wars really give a damn one way or the other about Palestine?

How many brutually oppressed sweat shop workers in Indonesia
give a damn?

None.

Only the arab muslims care.  It's an arab thing, not a muslim one.


> So whereas General Abizaid and the Bush cabinet are trying to convince
> the American people that we are fighting against 5,000 bad persons. That
> is a gross mistake. There are millions of Muslims anxious to take up
> arms and go to Iraq and fight against the USA soldiers all because they
> have lived a life where everyday is news of more Palestinian oppression.

If they were so anxious, they'd already be there.
There are plenty of wealthy "charities" that would be more than
happy to ship them over to fight, but the vast majority of them
simply don't care.



You are so wrong in so many ways at so many levels I can't even bother
to respond to your entire post in detail.  You absolutely fundamentally 
misunderstand every single issue involved.
You *think* you have a vastly more clear understanding than others, 
but you don't.