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The end is near!


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And Vietnamese civilian deaths (north and south) are about 2 million. VC/NVA deaths about 1.1 million.

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I stand corrected First troops went in under Truman at the end of WWII and then again when the French were fighting the Viet Mihn.

OK, an assist to Kennedy then.

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Certainly Eisenhower had a part in this too. After the French hung it up, we should have too, that was during the 50s. Everyone is responsible for Vietnam, from Truman through Eisenhower to Kennedy, to Johnson and finally to Nixon. Plenty of blame to go around.

 

LouieB

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why do you hate Kennedy?

Well, he did get a lot of tail.

 

Certainly Eisenhower had a part in this too. After the French hung it up, we should have too, that was during the 50s. Everyone is responsible for Vietnam, from Truman through Eisenhower to Kennedy, to Johnson and finally to Nixon. Plenty of blame to go around.

 

LouieB

Actually, Nixon got us out, so he should get credit.

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OK, an assist to Kennedy then.

 

Each president escalated a little bit. Truman set the tone with the truman doctrine then Eisenhower with increasing the number of advisors and increasing our meddeling in the SV government. Kennedy coondinued to increase and meddle (Diem...POW!) then of course LBJ and his crew concocted Tonkin and escalated the crap out of it. Nixon started the draw down, but escalated the fighting via bombing and incursions into Laos and Cambodia. Eventually thhe NVA calmed down, we bought that as peace and left, when they were just retooling their military for a final push, and finally Ford presided while the last of our people left. So each and every president had a little to do with Vietnam and the escalation except maybe Ford since it was essentially over by the time he hit office.

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The last time they "simplified" the code in 1986 we got the current mess we have today

 

The last time they let the code get more complex we got the current mess we have today.

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I live around these sort of people, I'm sure my non-christian kid won't be allowed to play with their children when she gets older. She might put a spell on them or something.

No, she'll pray for them and their soulless, heathen of a mother. :frusty

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This is the same reason the 'win' rhetoric in Iraq is as hollow as a balloon. Winning is a strange concept when your goals are so abstract. You don't 'win' when your goal is to stabilize a country and its people. That's not a football game. They won at killing some people, defeating Sadam and crushing an organized military. But we can't 'win' at an applied anthropology project. We just have to decide what is the most effective and ethical course of action.

 

It's just such a shame that the Bush administration only realized a year and a half ago you don't understand the motivations of a foreign people by looking at them through the scope of a gun. You don't provide infrastructure using a tank. You don't create cultural bridges to a village of skeptics by goose stepping in, in fatigues.

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This is the same reason the 'win' rhetoric in Iraq is as hollow as a balloon. Winning is a strange concept when your goals are so abstract. You don't 'win' when your goal is to stabilize a country and its people. That's not a football game. They won at killing some people, defeating Sadam and crushing an organized military. But we can't 'win' at an applied anthropology project. We just have to decide what is the most effective and ethical course of action.

 

It's just such a shame that the Bush administration only realized a year and a half ago you don't understand the motivations of a foreign people by looking at them through the scope of a gun. You don't provide infrastructure using a tank. You don't create cultural bridges to a village of skeptics by goose stepping in, in fatigues.

 

 

When the did they realize this?

 

 

"Iraqis Protest Proposed Deal to Allow US Troops to Stay in Iraq Until 2011" Amy Goodman interviews Patrick Cockburn and Raed Jarrar

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At a very high cost and a very long time; even then we didn't "win".

 

LouieB

Yes. Unfortunately we didn't learn our lesson.

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Oh, absolutely. In that sense it is not realized. What I was referring to is the meager efforts on the Bush administrations part to start using civilian experts and advisers to deal with the communities the army was encountering. Psychologists, cultural anthropologists. I read an interesting article about it in the Sept issue of Harper's.

 

This has been the biggest I told you so in foreign policy I've ever laid claim to. The minute the Iraqi government fell and civilian resistance became apparent I said "They're gonna need anthropologists to sort this out, not just M16's." Unfortunately I was not an advisor at that time.

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The last time they let the code get more complex we got the current mess we have today.

 

At the time it was advertised as being simplified though. My overall pont though is that if the code is to be re-worked it will open the doors to pandora's box. And for individuals it is not really an issue because for most the code is realtively simple, it is business that has the bulk of the code applied to them.

 

Did you know that essentially the code is a huge list of exceptions? Generlaly the code says all income is taxable and that it delves into the exceptions, exemptions and deductions etc...and that is where the complexity develops. At least that's how it was taught to me in my youth.

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