CPAC is off to its usual mellow start. TalkingPointsMemo reports:
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), speaking at conservative gathering CPAC, declared that “Vietnam was winnable, but people in Washington decided we would not win it!”
“If you go to war you better mean it,” Gohmert added, blaming America’s failure to go to war with Iran over the capture of its embassy in 1979 for more recent attacks on embassies and consulates.
Gohmert was part of a panel entitled “Too Many American Wars? Should We Fight Anywhere And Can We Afford It?”
Rep. Gohmert was not basing his conclusion on Vietnam on his own combat record, which I could not discover via Google searches. Gohmert was born in 1953 but somehow missed the chance to fight in the jungles of ‘Nam. He did spent a few years as an Army lawyer in the late 1970s/early 1980s. But writing memos isn’t quite the same as engaging in an artillery duel with a North Vietnamese regiment.
Didn’t enough Texans come back in coffins from that damn war?
Here’s Glen Campbell’s wonderful low-key anti-Vietnam war ballad, Galveston –
Well, this part is true: “If you go to war you better mean it.” I would also add, as preamble, that “If you go to war, you’d better NEED to.”
Was the Vietnam conflict winnable? For certain values of “win,” sure. North Vietnam gone from the face of the Earth? Pretty much – a couple dozen high yield nukes would have taken care of that. Of course, the subsequent WWIII might not have been winnable, but that’s a different issue from the narrow question being answered.
Now, in regard to winning the insurgency in South Vietnam, presuming the above mentioned nuking *didn’t* trigger WWIII …. potentially do-able, but Americans are simply unable, based on their culture and psychology, to do well in counterinsurgency warfare. Winning COIN takes a massive political/economic/military skill set that America never has – and never will. For further discussion, see any of William Lind’s articles on how America is a 2G military in what’s fast becoming a 4G world.
Maybe Gohmert was sending up a trial balloon to see how “conservatives” might respond to re-doing the Vietnam War as soon as America can deploy the jungle-ready robots.
The Single Domino Theory requires that America do something to stop the Asian menace of creeping capitalism which could destroy the American way of corporatist life if left unchecked.
Those Single Dominoes are the most dangerous kind.
I assume Gohmert is saber-rattling for more conflicts in the Middle East. He might volunteer to join the Army Reserve and write some memos if another war erupts.
You realize, of course, that it would mean The End Of War As We Know It if the warmongers had to be the ones who actually went and fought the damned things….
War will change completely when the warmongers do the fighting.
I think in the future the children of the War Party Elite will be the ones who fight the wars and they will be held up as brave heroes. They will conduct war from the basements of their daddys’ houses with military issue joysticks and 54″ LED TVs. They will control robot planes, robot tanks, robot ships and robot soldiers as they fight off foreign evil-doers in order to keep us all safe and free.
The children of the middle-class will report to work at cubicles set up in abandoned shopping malls where they have military issue joysticks and 19″ plasma TVs. They will control the police robots. They won’t be allowed to kill foreign evil-doers, but they will be authorized to pepper-spray, tase or shoot domestic evil-doers.
The bastard spawn of the ignorant lower classes will not be able to get anywhere near weaponized robots. They will operate fast food robots and convenience store robots using cell phones issued by the supervisors of the employment camps where they live.
Tom, thanks for updating Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World for these cheery times.