Originally Posted by JTaber 1972

Originally Posted by Milo

Originally Posted by Kiff 1961

Right-winger PC run amok:

School Board bans band from performing "Louie Louie"

Dawning said that if a majority of parents supports their children playing the song, she will reconsider her decision.

"It was not that I knew at the beginning and said nothing," Dawning said. "I normally count on the staff to make reliable decisions. I found out because a parent called, concerned about the song being played."

"A parent called." One parent. And this nimrod won't even check out the allegation of raunchy lyrics. :evil:

What is this? 1962?

It's my understanding that sometime around then, the FBI spent two and a half years investigating whether or not the song had dirty lyrics. I wonder if it's still banned in Indiana.

Actually, the FBI investigation happened in 1964. The Kingsmen's release of the song happened the year prior.

Here's The Smoking Gun's page about the whole thing.

It ended by saying the lyrics were too unintelligible. I think that was strange since the song itself was older than the one most famously known and it was sung coherently by a few R&B groups.

As for the woman who wants it banned, she's a prude, but she did concede that if enough parents want the song to be played she'll withdraw her argument.

Originally Posted by Bat Mitzvah Girl

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

For what it's worth (which may not be very much), I happened to flip on the TV, and as I type this, PrimeTime Live is running a show about American Idol's current 'scandal' with Paula Abdul.

Somehow, with all the stuff going on in the world right now, the focus on this strongly suggests that we still be 3T to me.

I agree. Which means I am agreeing with HC. Which is the best argument I've ever seen on this board that I am wrong about us being 3T. :wink:

And the hooplah over the Dionne Quintuplets back in the 30s would suggest to Vera '95 that we be 3T in 1936, too?

Let me clarify that I think what HC is talking about is just one point of many pointing to the continuation of an overall 3T mindset.

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

Originally Posted by Bat Mitzvah Girl

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

For what it's worth (which may not be very much), I happened to flip on the TV, and as I type this, PrimeTime Live is running a show about American Idol's current 'scandal' with Paula Abdul.

Somehow, with all the stuff going on in the world right now, the focus on this strongly suggests that we still be 3T to me.

I agree. Which means I am agreeing with HC. Which is the best argument I've ever seen on this board that I am wrong about us being 3T. :wink:

And the hooplah over the Dionne Quintuplets back in the 30s would suggest to Vera '95 that we be 3T in 1936, too?

Let me clarify that I think what HC is talking about is just one point of many pointing to the continuation of an overall 3T mindset.

Yes, and what I was pointing out was that the celebrity circus continued on in the last 4T.

One passes by but cannot but help gazing at all that damage

Originally Posted by Mr. Gary North

We think of GM as an auto company. But its auto division is small potatoes. About 80% of GM?s profits come from GMAC, its in-house loan company: consumer credit and mortgages. It profited greatly during the mortgage boom. But this source of profits has begun to taper off.


...Nobody in charge ever seems to maneuver until the investment vehicle goes into a skid on an icy road in the mountains. Bad news is dismissed as irrelevant. Statistical reality is deferred by investors until they finally start unloading shares. Then there is not much that the people in charge can do to solve the problem.

Should one invest in a combination of a welfare agency and a savings-and-loan? Is the United States just GM writ large--an even larger welfare agency and savings-and-loan with a few manufactures that compete with Asia?

Originally Posted by Virgil K. Saari

One passes by but cannot but help gazing at all that damage

Originally Posted by Mr. Gary North

We think of GM as an auto company. But its auto division is small potatoes. About 80% of GM?s profits come from GMAC, its in-house loan company: consumer credit and mortgages. It profited greatly during the mortgage boom. But this source of profits has begun to taper off.

...Nobody in charge ever seems to maneuver until the investment vehicle goes into a skid on an icy road in the mountains. Bad news is dismissed as irrelevant. Statistical reality is deferred by investors until they finally start unloading shares. Then there is not much that the people in charge can do to solve the problem.

Should one invest in a combination of a welfare agency and a savings-and-loan? Is the United States just GM writ large--an even larger welfare agency and savings-and-loan with a few manufactures that compete with Asia?

I assume that, in answer to your rhetorical question, saying 'no' is merely a redundant comment best whispered in dark places.

Originally Posted by Kiff 1961

Right-winger PC run amok:

School Board bans band from performing "Louie Louie"

Dawning said that if a majority of parents supports their children playing the song, she will reconsider her decision.

"It was not that I knew at the beginning and said nothing," Dawning said. "I normally count on the staff to make reliable decisions. I found out because a parent called, concerned about the song being played."

"A parent called." One parent. And this nimrod won't even check out the allegation of raunchy lyrics. :evil:

Yeah, and Benton Harbor never struck me as that kind of town. Very black. Very deindustrialized. Almost the opposite of Kevin Bacon's town in Footloose.

Originally Posted by Semo '75

Originally Posted by Kiff 1961

Right-winger PC run amok:

School Board bans band from performing "Louie Louie"

Dawning said that if a majority of parents supports their children playing the song, she will reconsider her decision.

"It was not that I knew at the beginning and said nothing," Dawning said. "I normally count on the staff to make reliable decisions. I found out because a parent called, concerned about the song being played."

"A parent called." One parent. And this nimrod won't even check out the allegation of raunchy lyrics. :evil:

OK. I just did some research on this woman and her career and I'm curious as to what makes you say that she's a Right-winger?

I've been unable to find anything to suggest that she is. Do you have more data on her that might back up this assertion? Or are you just saying that because you disagree with a call that she made?

And what makes you say that she's a nimrod?

She has a master's in marketing and labor relations/personnel, and college and adult counseling. Starting out as a sales manager at AT&T, she worked her way to vice president of sales and ultimately to general manager of global markets. After 23 years, she left her job because, in her own words, ?I had this internal feeling of needing to give something back.?

So she hooked up with an organization that trains people with experience outside the public school system to become superintendents in districts with massive problems. Benton Harbor is one such district: 96% of its residents are black, 90% are classified as low-income by the government, and 25% of the working-age population is unemployed. She grew up near Benton Harbor and, when approached by the school district, she accepted the challenge.

At the time the district approached her, students at its schools were performing poorly: less than 40% of its fourth-graders were testing at minimum proficiency in English, and less than 50% in math. In her years as a superintendent, she has brought those numbers up to 77% and 70%, respectively. She has also worked tirelessly to rehabilitate area schools, securing over half a million dollars to build new public facilities for the youth of the area, and managed to pass the district's first tax issue in 17 years -- which will raise $6 million dollars for school maintenance -- a massive victory in a chronically underfunded district.

If that's your definition of a nimrod, then we need more more of them around -- a lot more.

I just got a load of PC from the other side last week. I posted that out of frustration with both sides -- and they do exist.

Bully for Ms. Dawning and her accomplishments. But she was out of line here.

To begin with, I was in boarding school when the song came out and saw guys listening to it over and over and speculating about the raunchy lyrics. This was a popular sport.

Dave Marsh has written a good book about the song, which I have somehwere. Unfortunately he couldn't get permission to print the actual lyrics! Times change, however.. and here they are.

CHORUS:

Louie Louie, oh no
Me gotta go
Aye-yi-yi-yi, I said
Louie Louie, oh baby
Me gotta go

Fine little girl waits for me
Catch a ship across the sea
Sail that ship about, all alone
Never know if I make it home

CHORUS

Three nights and days I sail the sea
Think of girl, constantly
On that ship, I dream she's there
I smell the rose in her hair.

CHORUS

Okay, let's give it to 'em, right now!

GUITAR SOLO

See Jamaica, the moon above
It won't be long, me see me love
Take her in my arms again
Tell her I'll never leave again

CHORUS

Let's take it on outa here now
Let's go!!

Now there was one other thing that led to all the controersy--one of the band members, disgusted with himself for making a mistake, did yell "fuck" just about two-thirds of the way through, as I recall. But actually, the singing did indeed make the lyrics unintelligible.

Apparently the principal never got the word. .

David K '47

p.s. to our 15-year old imaginations, "Tell her I'll never leave again" was "tell her I'll never lay her again." Another interpretation was so far off I can't even figureout where it went. ..

I never understood the English lyrics either (at least as the Kingsmen sang them). I only understood the song after hearing it in Spanish, and then I translated it back.

It's just about a guy who misses his girl "across the sea" and wants to get back to her.

Louie, Louie, ohhhh,
Me voy, me voy
Ai-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi
Louie, Louie, ohhhh
Me voy, me voy

Una nina amarosa esta esperando
Sobre el mar, me voy a verla
Desde que la vi, yo soy muy solo
(some line about "have to have her, she's calling")

what happened to the "I felt my boner in her hair" line?

Originally Posted by Blue Stater

what happened to the "I felt my boner in her hair" line?

That's probably what the FBI said. :P

'Bow's A Wow!'
Update...

You all might recall this pleasant conversation, wherein I compared our very communitarian 4T past with the very "fascist 3T" present. Here is the present updated version of this ongoing, um, sexy turning saga, side by side:

• 

Does anybody remember those great "schwim vear" commercials that Wendy's ran back in the '80s? I get the feeling, sometimes, that's the sort of pop culture you lefty 4Ters are waiting for! :wink:

I seems that Steven Benson votes '3T':

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Originally Posted by Blue Stater

what happened to the "I felt my boner in her hair" line?

That's probably what the FBI said. :P

I read that they actually experimented with banana peels after Donovan released "Mellow Yellow."
Donovan had some great songs - he was a big influence on me, but I feel like he doesn't get his due.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

I seems that Steven Benson votes '3T':

Beautiful.

Former members of the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party will hold a reunion in Seattle this weekend.

The article below is for purposes of discussion only.

Reunion of Black Panthers stirs memories of aggression, activism

Over here, says Aaron Dixon, is where he used to hide to shoot his rifle at the fire station.

"I wanted to scare the firemen, to keep them inside so they couldn't fight the fires we were setting around the city," he says matter-of-factly. We are standing in Madrona, formerly a working-class black neighborhood in central Seattle. It's many shades whiter today, and the average home sells for north of half a million.

Dixon looks at me. He sees I'm incredulous at his story, so he just stands there silently, letting it sink in.

He gestures at a storefront on 34th Avenue, an Ethiopian restaurant with a French name.

Thirty-seven years ago, it was a real-estate office, and he firebombed it with a Molotov cocktail.
Then he points down the same block, at what is now a chic, appointment-only furniture store.

"That's where we started a free health clinic for the poor."

Shootings. Firebombings. Free health clinics. It's all part of the complex legacy of the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party.

"We had a split personality," says Dixon, 56, recalling the black-power revolutionary chapter he helped found in 1968. "You could see us patrolling here with rifles and shotguns. And then later you'd see us over there serving free breakfasts to schoolkids."

This weekend, local Black Panthers will gather for their first reunion. The Seattle chapter, which disbanded in 1978, is believed to have had roughly 300 members at its peak around 1970.

The reunion starts with a festival of Panther-related films on Friday at Seattle University. On Saturday, a "Forum and Reunion" event, at Garfield Community Center, features speeches by ex-Panthers and other political leaders from the era, as well as workshops and a hip-hop tribute.

Most everyone has heard the guerrilla-warfare side of the Black Panther story. How young blacks, fed up with police brutality, used Marxist principles to form armed patrols to watchdog the "pigs." How they bombed or burned businesses and institutions they felt were racist.

How, dressed in berets and black leather jackets, they vowed to use any means necessary to protect the people.

Not so many are aware of how the Panthers ministered to the poor.

In Seattle alone, the Panthers served meals to thousands of poor kids. Started a legal-aid clinic. Tested blacks for sickle-cell anemia. Launched a free pest-control service.

The health clinic that Dixon and the Panthers started in Madrona later moved to 21st Avenue South and Yesler Way. It is still there today, run by a nonprofit and giving free health care to the indigent as the Carolyn Downs Family Medical Center.

For Dixon, the Panthers' defining legacy is that "a bunch of angry kids" simply rose up and did something. They took action. There were no government grants, no blue-ribbon advisory panels. For better or worse, they just did it.

"Our saying was: 'Practice is the criteria for truth,' " Dixon says. "It means anybody can talk, but the truth comes out through action, not rhetoric."

This message is resonating with more than just '60s radicals.

Such as Sylva Jones, 23. The Panthers were long gone when she was born, yet she volunteered to help organize their reunion.

"They have a powerful story of coming together to solve their own problems," Jones said. "That's what we need. Young people of color need to see that this is something that's plausible now."

For Dixon ? a father of five who started Seattle's Harder House, a transitional shelter for the homeless ? recalling the Panther days is bittersweet.

Inevitably someone asks: Are things better for blacks today?

"No way is it better," he says bluntly. "We may have been oppressed back then, but we had community. We had family. We had protective cultural values that kept us from totally falling apart.

"Yes, we achieved access for blacks to mainstream America, but for the past 20 years it's been all 'me, me, me.' It's all been about chasing material wealth. I don't call that progress."

In Madrona, we walk past new townhouses selling for $700,000. Dixon grew up here, but he says it's hard to visit because the old working-class feel is gone forever.

We stand in front of a travel agency on 34th Avenue, the Panthers' office in 1968. Police raided it, arresting Dixon in the theft of a typewriter. He was acquitted by an all-white jury.

A young black man who runs a nearby barbershop walks by and recognizes Dixon. He shakes Dixon's hand vigorously, beaming, and asks for a Black Panthers reunion poster to put up in his shop.

Dixon brightens.

"There is something stirring among young people today," he says.

Globalization, the false pretenses of the Iraq war ? it all has faint echoes of the Vietnam era, when people of all races came together to fight the controlling interests of business and government, Dixon says.

"The Black Panthers were never about fighting the white man, we were about fighting 'The Man.' "

On Saturday, Dixon will teach a workshop on how modern groups can try to mimic the Panthers' legendary organizational energy. Without the guns or Molotov cocktails, of course.

"That's why we're having this reunion ? because we never properly passed the baton to the next generation.

"It's a new time now, but us old guys still have a few things to say about how to fight the power."


The boomer former panther in this article seems to have had their saying vindicated by events of the 2T and 3T. In his opinion, things are no better today mainly because people today lack a solid cultural foundation. He believes that excessive individualism and materialism in the past two decades has caused immense destruction to the black community, even as more individual blacks become more wealthy.

What is interesting is how the panthers are establishing connections among the millies. The millie interviewed for this article looks up to the Panthers for how they banded together to solve their own problems, something she believes is plausible for today. I doubt that Xers during the 1990s would've thought that this was plausible.

As the former panther he meets a young black man (not certain if he is xer or millie), he seems brighter, noting that "There is something stirring among young people today." The reason for the reunion is that aging former panthers realize that their mistake is that they failed to pass the baton to the xers, so they want to discuss how to pass it to millies, while being moral stewards to the young.

Any comments on the United Airlines pension debacle? Could this be a catalyst toward the Great Devaluation offen discussed on this forum?

Originally Posted by Brian Beecher

Any comments on the United Airlines pension debacle? Could this be a catalyst toward the Great Devaluation offen discussed on this forum?

I think it will certainly intensify the conversation about Social Security Reform. The NY times had an editorial today that discussed the underfunding of pensions and also the underfunding of the federal pension insurance:

Congress must also raise the premiums that corporations pay the government for federal pension insurance, something that has not been done since 1994

But even more to the point about Social Security:

The level of risk that exists in pensions and other retirement savings plans has no place in the core tier or retirement savings, Social Security. If lawkmakers and policy makers are not yet convinced of that, they should talk to the people at United.

For the whole editorial see: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/12/opinion

I don't know if this will bring the coming devaluation closer than it already is, but it might raise people's awareness of the US's future obligations (Social Security, and even more to the point, Medicare) and the coming problems we will have demographically in meeting them.

Originally Posted by Brian Beecher

Any comments on the United Airlines pension debacle? Could this be a catalyst toward the Great Devaluation offen discussed on this forum?

If there is any Great Devaluation, it is in the value of work. We now have two classes -- the ownership elite and the executive elite -- rewarding themselves very well with the aid of a compliant government. Jobs are created, but they are less skilled and compensated far less than those that have been disappearing. So if America ends up the sort of society in which many college graduates become domestic servants, that could itself spur radical causes, Left or Right.

I can see other warning signs of an economic meltdown as severe as that of 1929-1933. Personal debt has never been as large a proportion of personal income. Mortgage debt as a percentage of residential real estate has never been so high, much of it the result of second mortgages that people have taken out either to refinance old excesses or to keep up appearances. Economic inequality is intensifying and has reched roughly the levels of the late 1920s, and the government seems to exacerbate the situation.

Most importantly, the last people who remember the 1929-1933 meltdown are now very old. One would have to be about eighty at a minimum to remember the start of the Great Depression. It's safe to say that all people who have any memory of the Great Depression from its start have made political and business choices partly designed to prevent a recurrence of the Great Meltdown, and now the last such people are disappearing from public life. The follies that allowed the Great Meltdown were attractive before late 1929 -- and they were quickly repudiated... but not fast enough.

Final Star Wars bears message for America
Lucas wins festival trophy - and hopes his epic will awaken US to democracy in peril

Asked whether Star Wars Episode III openly alluded to the Iraq war, he said: "When I wrote it Iraq didn't exist. We were funding Saddam Hussein and giving him weapons of mass destruction. We were going after Iran. But the parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we are doing in Iraq are unbelievable."

Fin

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Most importantly, the last people who remember the 1929-1933 meltdown are now very old. One would have to be about eighty at a minimum to remember the start of the Great Depression.

Most importantly, the last people who remember the 1968-1973 meltdown are now calling the shots. One need only read the George Lucas quote above to understand that it ain't about the glorious Great Depression, this time around.

The next 5-10 years will see an incredible amount of political pressure brought to bear for America to simply close up shop, and bring the troops home so we can really get to killing each other more efficently.

Originally Posted by Devil's Advocate

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Most importantly, the last people who remember the 1929-1933 meltdown are now very old. One would have to be about eighty at a minimum to remember the start of the Great Depression.

Most importantly, the last people who remember the 1968-1973 meltdown are now calling the shots. One need only read the George Lucas quote above to understand that it ain't about the glorious Great Depression, this time around.

The next 5-10 years will see an incredible amount of political pressure brought to bear for America to simply close up shop, and bring the troops home so we can really get to killing each other more efficently.

Unfortunately, that is one real possibility. However, it's far from inevitable.

The insistence on many Silents and some Boomers in equating Iraq and Vietnam, despite the fact that there are almost no real parallels to be found, does indicate that the arguments of the Boom Awakening are alive and well as we head into the 4T.

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

The insistence on many Silents and some Boomers in equating Iraq and Vietnam, despite the fact that there are almost no real parallels to be found, does indicate that the arguments of the Boom Awakening are alive and well as we head into the 4T.

Stop hiding your head in the sand!
Can't you pull back the partisan curtains from your eyes and just look at it?
We started a war in Iraq. 400 people got killed there last week. And on Mainstreet America, nobody is talking about it. It's as if it isn't us fighting.

Like it isn't really happening. No one I know talks about the war. Maybe to say 'oh things are bad' but that's about it. It seems like a war without end. Nobody has any real idea of what the long-term exit strategy is here. And that's when people reach for the 'Nam metaphor - because that war went on for ten years, in the end we lost, sort of, and the daily attacks on the daily news, I am told by older relatives, gave the war a kind of 'every day' feel.

My aunt, born in 1962, tells me that that throughout her childhood 'the war' was on like a TV show every night. By the time she was 13, it had been going on since she was but 3 years old.

That's the way things seem there now. That's why people are connecting it with Viet Nam. Because it is messy and has a poorly defined goal. We aren't fighting to defeat anyone. We are fighting to build a secular, Western-style government in Iraq from scratch.

Now about the old arguments from the 2T, what old arguments are you talking about? The ones that occured between Meathead and Archie Bunker? That shit is so old, I can't even really figure out what you are talking about.

If the future of our country is really between what ever you say your side embodies and whatever you say the other side embodies, then we are really fucked.

Fortunately, you'd be glad to know, that I think you live in a partisan fantasyland.

Originally Posted by Blue Stater

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

The insistence on many Silents and some Boomers in equating Iraq and Vietnam, despite the fact that there are almost no real parallels to be found, does indicate that the arguments of the Boom Awakening are alive and well as we head into the 4T.

Stop hiding your head in the sand!
Can't you pull back the partisan curtains from your eyes and just look at it?
We started a war in Iraq. 400 people got killed there last week. And on Mainstreet America, nobody is talking about it. It's as if it isn't us fighting.

Justin, there are no meaningful parallels, and I don't wear partisan blinders. It was always inevitable that lots of people would be killed, the only alternative was to do nothing, which was not an option after 911. Sooner or later, we were going to have to remove Saddam, even without 911, that just accelerated it.

In Vietnam, we faced an enemy backed by the Soviet Union and China, waging what amounted to a proxy battle there. That simply is not the case in Iraq or Afghanistan, at least not on anything like that scale. The end of the USSR changed the entire balance of political and military power around the world, especially in the Middle East. For example, it's the absence of the USSR that makes it even conceivable for the Israelis to talk about withdrawals from some of the occupied territories, since the USSR's absence leaves the Arab states opposed to the Israelies without an armorer and patron.

So far, we've avoided many of the most damaging errors of Vietnam, and despite the spin the traditional media keep trying to put on it, we're succeeding more than we're failing there. Whenever something goes right, they stop talking about it. There's been a long laundry list of things that were 'sure' to go wrong in Iraq, most of which didn't. But the liberal media simply ignores the good news, for the most part, striving instead to put the worst possible spin on everything. They've done this to the point of repeatedly embarrassing themselves, such as Newsweek (big surprise on that one) just did.

Newsweek Admits Story Was Wrong

Newsweek Spin

This is hardly the first such incident. They've tried to spin every setback and mistake (and there are always setbacks and mistakes in every war and every effort) as an unconquerable disaster, or proof of malice and conspiracy in the Bush Administration. Yet somehow things keep moving forward in spite of it.

The elections that were never supposed to happen, happened. The new government that wasn't supposed to be able to form, formed. The insurgency is killing people, but they aren't accomplishing their goals. The 3-way civil war that was inevitable by now, has yet to happen.

This goes all the way back to the immediate aftermath of 911, when Afghanistan couldn't be conquered and the military was botching the war, when we were going to be forced from Afghanistan with our tail between our legs, etc. The mountains were too harsh, our soldiers too soft, the military leadership gunshy, the public would stand for no casualties, the Arab Street was going to rise, etc.

It just hasn't happened, and the quagmire the media has kept trying to conjure up hasn't happened, either. The conditions that made Vietnam into what it was just don't exist here.

Like it isn't really happening. No one I know talks about the war. Maybe to say 'oh things are bad' but that's about it. It seems like a war without end. Nobody has any real idea of what the long-term exit strategy is here.

Nobody ever does in real war, in any detail. In essence, the exit strategy is the same as it is for any war: when we're clearly defeated, or clearly won. So far, neither is a sure thing, but the trend is going our way, and has been for over a year now. The traditional media hate to cover it that way, but it's the truth. Even many of the Europeans have quietly begun to question whether Bush might not have had at least a partial point, since the surprisingly successful elections earlier this year.

The insurgents have created bigger and bigger individual attacks, but the steady dribble of attacks is decreasing. Even the Sunni scholars' board is now making nice with the new government, since they've lost faith that they can oust it by force, and they were the ones less than a year ago counting on the insurgency to drive us out.

Our media weren't the only ones to try to read a Vietnam parallel into this, Saddam did it, and then the Sunni insurgency did it, too. The whole point of their murderous attacks, originally, was to weaken American resolve so we'd pull out. The attacks were never aimed primarily at our soldiers in terms of intent, they were aimed at the American civilian electorate and the Iraqi civilians, on the assumption that both could be easily intimidated.

Most of our enemies around the world read our retreat from Vietnam as a sign of American weakness of will. The assumption around the world, ever since then, has been that if Americans are faced with casualties and slaughter on their TV screens, they'll lose their will and run away.

(I know that isn't how the peace movement saw their efforts, but it is how most of the thugs arond the world saw the outcome of Vietnam.)

And that's when people reach for the 'Nam metaphor - because that war went on for ten years, in the end we lost, sort of, and the daily attacks on the daily news, I am told by older relatives, gave the war a kind of 'every day' feel.

Yes, and the enemy now is hoping to repeat that. It won't work unless we play into their hands by pulling out.

As for the Vietnam metaphor, most Americans aren't reaching for it. The media has tried to spin both Afghanistan and Iraq as Vietnam II since they started, but they do that with every military action. In the general public, the Vietnam analogy isn't flying, in spite of the attempt to create that impression by the Democratic Party and their media allies.

Now, even most of the Democrats have stopped trying it.

My aunt, born in 1962, tells me that that throughout her childhood 'the war' was on like a TV show every night. By the time she was 13, it had been going on since she was but 3 years old.

That's the way things seem there now. That's why people are connecting it with Viet Nam. Because it is messy and has a poorly defined goal. We aren't fighting to defeat anyone. We are fighting to build a secular, Western-style government in Iraq from scratch.

No, we're not. We're trying to build a civilized state there, one that is friendly to America, or at least sane. It might or might not be purely secular, though 'not' is more likely. It'll probably have some Islamic overtones, given the population balance and the culture. There have been many civilized Islamic states in history.

As for 'Western-style', to some degree yes. It'll have many Western elements, just as India, Japan, etc. also do. But to work, it'll have to reflect its local culture as well.

It's a hard job, no question. It may not work out, though it's already gone further, and done far better, than the nay-sayers predicted even eight months ago. Big hurdles remain, such as the tension between the Kurds and the Sunnis over Kirkuk, the distribution of oil revenues, the distribution of political power between the regions, etc.

But there's no other alternatives that aren't worse.

If it proves to be impossible to contain the hostility of the hard-core anti-Western element of the Middle East by some such means, the alternative, further down into the 4T, is likely to be bloody disaster for the Middle East and a painful struggle for the West. Ruthlesness rises to the top in the 4T, so long-shots are worth trying to avoid catastrophes.

As for the memory of Vietnam as a day-to-day grind, if America really is incapable of enduring casualties, if we can't face a ruthless enemy anymore, we're finished, because we will be facing ruthless enemies in the future. It's part of the nature of the world.

In fact, I don't think America has lost her will, and I don't believe the 'CNN effect', as it was being called in the 90s, is a fundamental new political truth.

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

Justin, there are no meaningful parallels, and I don't wear partisan blinders. It was always inevitable that lots of people would be killed, the only alternative was to do nothing, which was not an option after 911. Sooner or later, we were going to have to remove Saddam, even without 911, that just accelerated it.

In Vietnam, we faced an enemy backed by the Soviet Union and China, waging what amounted to a proxy battle there. That simply is not the case in Iraq or Afghanistan, at least not on anything like that scale. The end of the USSR changed the entire balance of political and military power around the world, especially in the Middle East. For example, it's the absence of the USSR that makes it even conceivable for the Israelis to talk about withdrawals from some of the occupied territories, since the USSR's absence leaves the Arab states opposed to the Israelies without an armorer and patron.

So far, we've avoided many of the most damaging errors of Vietnam, and despite the spin the traditional media keep trying to put on it, we're succeeding more than we're failing there. Whenever something goes right, they stop talking about it. There's been a long laundry list of things that were 'sure' to go wrong in Iraq, most of which didn't. But the liberal media simply ignores the good news, for the most part, striving instead to put the worst possible spin on everything. They've done this to the point of repeatedly embarrassing themselves, such as Newsweek (big surprise on that one) just did.

Newsweek Admits Story Was Wrong

Newsweek Spin

This is hardly the first such incident. They've tried to spin every setback and mistake (and there are always setbacks and mistakes in every war and every effort) as an unconquerable disaster, or proof of malice and conspiracy in the Bush Administration. Yet somehow things keep moving forward in spite of it.

The elections that were never supposed to happen, happened. The new government that wasn't supposed to be able to form, formed. The insurgency is killing people, but they aren't accomplishing their goals. The 3-way civil war that was inevitable by now, has yet to happen.

This goes all the way back to the immediate aftermath of 911, when Afghanistan couldn't be conquered and the military was botching the war, when we were going to be forced from Afghanistan with our tail between our legs, etc. The mountains were too harsh, our soldiers too soft, the military leadership gunshy, the public would stand for no casualties, the Arab Street was going to rise, etc.

It just hasn't happened, and the quagmire the media has kept trying to conjure up hasn't happened, either. The conditions that made Vietnam into what it was just don't exist here.

Other than Vietnam, the only war that comes to mind from the American experience is the Mexican War, because that was as ludicrously hatched as this one was. All those points may be true, but given my limited firsthand experience with war, and my knowledge of history, 'Nam comes to mind. Sorry. Not the Civil War, or WWI, or WWII, or the War of 1812, or the Korean War. 'Nam. Other Americans see the parallels. It's not 'liberal bias,' its just the way people interpret things. I am so fed up with your red state/blue state liberal/conservative bullshit. Maybe it sells on the 24 hour news networks - fine. But it sounds old. And it is getting us nowhere.
[after some thought]
OK, maybe King Phillips War was ALSO similar to this one. I can imagine King Phillip hatcheting down some collaborators for working with the English.

Nobody ever does in real war, in any detail. In essence, the exit strategy is the same as it is for any war: when we're clearly defeated, or clearly won. So far, neither is a sure thing, but the trend is going our way, and has been for over a year now. The traditional media hate to cover it that way, but it's the truth. Even many of the Europeans have quietly begun to question whether Bush might not have had at least a partial point, since the surprisingly successful elections earlier this year.

When we were up against Imperial Japan, the strategy was to defeat imperial Japan. Now we are up against 'insurgents' and 'freedom fighters' that could stay and fight...forever. All they have to do is create instability. That's it.

The insurgents have created bigger and bigger individual attacks, but the steady dribble of attacks is decreasing. Even the Sunni scholars' board is now making nice with the new government, since they've lost faith that they can oust it by force, and they were the ones less than a year ago counting on the insurgency to drive us out.

Our media weren't the only ones to try to read a Vietnam parallel into this, Saddam did it, and then the Sunni insurgency did it, too. The whole point of their murderous attacks, originally, was to weaken American resolve so we'd pull out. The attacks were never aimed primarily at our soldiers in terms of intent, they were aimed at the American civilian electorate and the Iraqi civilians, on the assumption that both could be easily intimidated.

Most of our enemies around the world read our retreat from Vietnam as a sign of American weakness of will. The assumption around the world, ever since then, has been that if Americans are faced with casualties and slaughter on their TV screens, they'll lose their will and run away.

(I know that isn't how the peace movement saw their efforts, but it is how most of the thugs arond the world saw the outcome of Vietnam.)

Well Rummy was captain of the ship back then too, so maybe they put two and two together. Look, this is all fine and good, but I can see the emotional parallels between this and Viet Nam. This war isn't as bad as Viet Nam though. That war really hurt America. This war? It's as if it isn't happening. Nobody cares about it. Maybe because it is just too surreal.

Yes, and the enemy now is hoping to repeat that. It won't work unless we play into their hands by pulling out.

As for the Vietnam metaphor, most Americans aren't reaching for it. The media has tried to spin both Afghanistan and Iraq as Vietnam II since they started, but they do that with every military action. In the general public, the Vietnam analogy isn't flying, in spite of the attempt to create that impression by the Democratic Party and their media allies.

Now, even most of the Democrats have stopped trying it.

I have only heard senile Ted Kennedy use that metaphor, and perhaps the even more ancient Robert Byrd. They were both in Congress back then, so they'd probably know more about it than you, sonny boy.
Afghanistan and Iraq probably are like Viet Nam in a lot of ways.
GI Joe showed up with a gun in a tribalistic society, pointed it at Charlie/Raghead's head and said 'be free.'
Can stability be created with a gun to the head? I don't know - I doubt it.
Most foreign powers that have tried to shape these countries tend to fail, if not immediately, then in the long run. I tend to err on the side of history.
I'd like to add that the mission in Afghanistan isn't accomplished.
Those fools over there can get video tapes from bin Ladin but can't find him.
They can offer Mullah Omar amnesty, and get his reply, but can't smoke him out.
So either we just suck at war, or we aren't trying hard enough.

No, we're not. We're trying to build a civilized state there, one that is friendly to America, or at least sane. It might or might not be purely secular, though 'not' is more likely. It'll probably have some Islamic overtones, given the population balance and the culture. There have been many civilized Islamic states in history.

As for 'Western-style', to some degree yes. It'll have many Western elements, just as India, Japan, etc. also do. But to work, it'll have to reflect its local culture as well.

Are we trying to do it, or are they trying to do it. Is this Bush's project, or Talabani's now?

Oh, and who made you God to play with states like toys? Look at Ukraine. That's how it works. Iraq is no model.

As for the memory of Vietnam as a day-to-day grind, if America really is incapable of enduring casualties, if we can't face a ruthless enemy anymore, we're finished, because we will be facing ruthless enemies in the future. It's part of the nature of the world.

In fact, I don't think America has lost her will, and I don't believe the 'CNN effect', as it was being called in the 90s, is a fundamental new political truth.

Oh I don't think America cares about the casualties at all. We have our I- Pods plugged in, and our DVDs ready to go. The election was nice but...it was in Iraq, which seems far away and culturally very different.
So I don't think Americans really care so much at this point.
I hear bench sitters talking about Osama and the Saudis still, but it's as if they are talking about the JFK assasination. It all seems removed. Even here, a few miles from Ground Zero.