did anyone read jeff jacoby's piece today?

[sniffa]

:puke:

i couLdn't even finish reading it after the first few paragraphs.


IRAQ WAR skeptics and critics have been invoking Vietnam almost from the day the fighting began. So Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska was hardly breaking new ground when he joined the invokers on Sunday. ''We are locked into a bogged-down problem," he said on ABC's ''The Week," ''not . . . dissimilar to where we were in Vietnam."

Yet in so many ways, Iraq doesn't look like Vietnam at all. Vietnam was never the central battleground of the Cold War, while Iraq has become the focal point of the war on terrorism. Americans had no reason to feel that their own security was at risk in Vietnam, whereas 9/11 made it clear that the enemy we face today poses a lethal threat here at home as well. The jihadis in Iraq don't have the backing of superpowers; North Vietnam and the Viet Cong were armed to the teeth by China and the Soviet Union. In South Vietnam, the United States was allied to an unpopular and incompetent regime; in Iraq, the United States toppled a brutal tyranny and is trying to nurture a democracy in its place.

But of all the ways in which the Iraq war is not like Vietnam, perhaps the most telling is the attitude of the troops.

''When I was in Vietnam," retired Army Colonel Jack Jacobs, a 1969 Medal of Honor recipient who had just returned from a fact-finding trip to the Sunni Triangle, told NBC News in May, ''if you asked anybody what he wanted more than anything else in the world, he'd say: to go home. We asked . . . hundreds of soldiers, low-ranking soldiers, in both Afghanistan and Iraq . . . the same question. And the response, to a man and a woman, was, 'To kill bad guys.' . . . The morale is just over the top -- just really, really enthused about what they're doing. And I think the reason is they perceive that they're making progress. Success will do a lot to morale."

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/08/25/iraq_is_no_vietnam/

[Kagemusha]

1. Low-ranking volunteer enlisted vs. low-ranking draftees.

Need I say more?

[KG]

2. these guys will lie about anything.

i mean how can you take a statement like 'Vietnam was never the central battleground of the Cold War,...' seriously?

[bicentennial_baby]

4. bingo!

that sentence right there... :crazy:

:hi:

[plusfiftyfive]

3. Jacoby? What a joke!

Jacoby is a a sick fat ugly man!

"Iraq has become the focal point of terrorism" ?

Does Jacoby know anything about London and Madrid?

[sniffa]

11. weLcome to DU

:hi:

and my sentiments exactLy.

[kentuck]

5. We gotta let those kids boogie-woogie !

It's in 'em and it's gotta come out!

ZZ TOP

[Cassandra]

6. The Vietnamese hated the Chinese...

and it was a long time before they accepted any help from them. We would have known this except that McCarthyism purged the Chinese speakers from the State Department, claiming they were spies.

[RobertSeattle]

7. Some Units may have high morale, others low

But my BS detector goes off when I hear something like "The morale is just over the top "

I guess they didn't tall to this Illinois Guard Unit:

Survey shows low morale among Illinois Guard

August 6, 2005

A memo written by a top-ranking officer shows mounting concern over morale, leadership and declining retention within the Illinois Army National Guard, according to a published report.

With recruitment numbers down for the year, the document identifies some of the problems Illinois National Guard officials are facing as they try to prevent a personnel shortage from taking place.

A survey of 1,200 Guard troops who had been deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and U.S. bases last year showed that "the majority of soldiers feel they are poorly informed, inadequately cared for, and that training in their units is boring and unorganized," Brig Gen. Charles E. Fleming wrote in a non-classified memo obtained by the Chicago Tribune and detailed in a story published in its Sunday editions.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/guard06.html

[edbermac]

8. Jacoby is an embarrassment to the Globe.

He'd be a better fit writing for the Herald.

[sniffa]

10. i know

he's a fat caL thomas.

and i can't beLieve they Let him take up precious space. (or cathy young for that matter. fuck her too)

[BOSSHOG]

9. If morale is "over the top"

then all us anti-war liberals must not be having a negative effect on our troops in Iraq.

However, with all due respect to the Colonel, I doubt morale is over the top. Those are extremely arduous conditions our kids are in and from day to day they don't know what their mission is, what they are supposed to be doing, or who they are except targets; and when they are coming home and how (in a body bag or not.)