Comparisons of Iraq with the Vietnam War seem rampant now that the death toll for the US has exceeded 1,000. The bulk of deaths in Vietnam came in the years 1966 to 1971, and at the height of the war we were losing more than 500 men per month. So far we've only had one month with more than 100 dead in Iraq. Actually the casualty rates for the US in Iraq look more like the casualty rates for the US Allies in Vietnam. And there is simply no possibility that the casualty rate will ever reach that of Vietnam, because the insurgency isn't popular except in some localized areas. And we'd have no problem clearing those out, if it were up to us, and we weren't bound to a "zero defects" standard. The problem is that it's not up to us, and in spite of what the anti-war folks say, we aren't exclusively in charge.
But the comparison with Vietnam fails for reasons far more important than the comparative casualty rate.
It fails because the intention of making the comparison is to claim that Iraqi Freedom is doomed to failure, just like Vietnam. Except that Vietnam was not a military failure. Tet was an overwhelming defeat for the N. Vietnamese. It was the peace movement and the media that handed the victory to them, and had we been able to maintain funding for only a year or so longer Vietnamization would have taken over. We grew impatient, and succumbed to propaganda, born of wishful thinking.
The really big difference now, and the reason this Rathergate thing will be fought out tooth and nail, is that the folks who disinformed us on Vietnam no longer have exclusive control of the media game. They can no longer simply snatch defeat from the arms of victory. Rather will lose, and we'll be on to the next confrontation as the new media matures. The defeatists won't win this time, because they can't control the message.
That's what the Rather thing is all about. They attempted to turn a non-story into a story by completely misrepresenting the truth. And now they're claiming that the real story is about what's said on a short stack of fraudulent documents, as though you and I would be obliged to answer Michael Jackson's accusations that we raped his child after he produced "eyewitness testimony" that everyone knew was fraudulent. Yeah, the "real issue" is what, again?
The real issue is that CBS News is a lying and unprincipled ombudsman of truth. That's the real issue.
By the way, it appears that we may now know who produced the forgeries.
Posted by Demosophist at September 16, 2004 12:42 AM | TrackBack