Winning’s Everything
Saturday, May 6, 2006; Page A17
“In war, we have to win,” said Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap.”
“This was on television about 20 years ago, a PBS series about the war in Vietnam. Giap was sitting behind a desk, as I recall, a picture of lethal ease. He seemed amused to think he knew something that the Americans still hadn’t figured out. He added: “Absolutely have to win.”
continued–
“For me, a former Marine corporal who’d heard some Viet Cong rounds go past at Chu Lai, Giap spoke and the heavens opened — a truth seizure, eureka. I finally had a useful, practical explanation for why we had lost after the best and brightest promised we were going to win. And nowadays, thanks to Giap, I have a theory, no more than that, about why winning is so elusive in Iraq.”
“I suspect that the people who run our wars, particularly the best and brightest, know when we fight a war that:
“We have to be fighting for freedom and national security.”
“We have to get the will of the country behind the war.”
“We have to maintain a strong economy to pay for the war.”
“We have to have allies.”
“We have to have God, freedom, the inevitability of history or some other philosophic entity on our side.”
“We have to have well-trained and motivated troops armed with the latest weapons.”
“Sure enough, we started out with all of that in Iraq, as we did in Vietnam.” …
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/05/AR2006050501475.html
We had all of that? Really? We had “fighting for freedom and national security” as a motivating factor? Whose freedom and whose national security is it?
What do you think?
