Quote:
Originally Posted by Splitter
I would just point out that North Vietnam attacked the South. North Korea attacked the South. Those wars were against Communist expansion and the US was not alone in Korea as it was a UN operation.
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The weaknesses our countries are experiencing are not military. The weakness is a degradation of moral fiber, of the willingness to step up and make sacrifices. Instead of defeating an enemy, we put off the fight. We make concessions and worry whether or not we are being too harsh.
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I quite agree that North Vietnam was the agressors, though anyone knowing a bit of Vietnam history will know why. Did you know that Ho Chi Min wrote a constitution that was almost a blueprint of the US constitution and tried to get the US to back a peaceful resolution of the French colonial rule in the 1950ies? The US asked him to sod off and solve his own problems.
No matter how clearly the South Vietnamese was the victim of aggression, the Vietnam war very quickly turned into a dark jungle hike, shooting at targets you didn't quite see and hope they were the enemy. Vietnam was not a "good war" in any way. The objectives were vague, friends and enemies likewise. And then came the pictures of My Lai. If you compare that to the fight in Europe in 1944/45 it is no wonder the US public was willing to accept high death rates in one war but not in the other.
And no, the coalition do not have the capability to win the Afghan war. The only way the can do that with firepower, is to bomb and bomb and bomb, and for every bomb, the coalition will get more enemies. To win then, they will have to bomb Afghanistan until there's
nothing left, not even goats or trees. I don't think you can really call leaving a country a barren wasteland of broken and charred rock a victory. Whatever chance the coalition had at winning the war is gone now. Remember, the Soviet tried for 10 years, and they did not have any qualms about accepting losses. They still had to withdraw in the end. It has
nothing to do with "moral fiber".
The "degradation of moral fiber" you talk about is an illusion. If mainland US was attacked today by an enemy capable of taking and holding large parts of the US, Americans would rise as one, and accept losses in their thousands, just like any other nation. That Americans are unwilling to unquestionable support faraway wars with unclear objectives fought for obscure reasons is not a sign of moral degradation. It is a sign of people taking moral standpoints.
There are historians who will tell you the Byzantine Empire fell because of "moral degradation", that the richness somehow made them unable to fight. If so, you would expect the richest of them all, the emperor, to bug off when the Muslim hordes invaded the city. He did not, he donned his armour and fell defending the walls with his soldiers. Do you think your countrymen would do any less?