This tally doesn’t account for the advisors present in Vietnam even prior to the official start of the Vietnam Era in 1959. There were 16,000 U.S. servicemen in Vietnam when Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. It doesn’t account for our involvement in the subsequent evacuation of American and South Vietnamese Embassy staff sealing the fate of South Vietnam during “Frequent Wind’. The Vietnam War, in fact would best be described as the War in Southeast Asia since we were also involved in Cambodia and Laos during this period and operating missions from Thailand and Guam. The Mayaguez Incident, the official end of the Vietnam Era in May, 1975 occurred entirely in Cambodia.
We must also consider that the Vietnam War has yet to end for any of our POWs which were left behind. A House Bill, HR111 which would authorize funds for a renewed effort to account for those men has more than 250 sponsors and has languished in Congress since January, 2009 while other priorities such as national health care, cap and trade and hundreds of money-wasting earmarks show the true priorities of Congress. If there were any men alive when the Bill was introduced, how many have died since then?
Guerrilla wars are long wars and that’s what we are seeing in Afghanistan. That’s what we saw in Vietnam as well. Our own Revolution was a long guerrilla war. Both the American Revolution and Vietnam taught us that wealth and firepower could be trumped by leadership and stamina. Ho Chi Minh modeled his tactics after George Washington’s. Ho studied the American Revolution and imitated it. He molded himself as a nationalist with a communist ideology to his people while we simply saw him as a communist intent on conquering an independent nation. What would have been the outcome had the South produced such a leader with the intent on unifying Vietnam?
A Monday morning quarterback cannot change the outcome of Sunday’s game. He can only review it in preparation for next week’s contest. In hindsight, America’s policy at the time was to contain, not conquer communism. An aggressive South Vietnamese leader would have been seen as just that, aggressive, even though he was responding to a very real threat from the north. But Ho did not launch a massive invasion as the North Korean communists did in 1950. Such a move would have ‘justified’ a conventional response from the South and invited and justified allied participation. He was wise to avoid that.
In 1954 the Viet Minh Communists had defeated the French who were trying to reclaim their colony after WWII. Ho Chi Minh was the national hero. But the United Nations partitioned Vietnam into a communist north and a free south. Before the border closed, two million northerners went south; few southerners went north. In spite of this obvious rejection of communism by this voluntary ‘foot vote’, Ho remained a popular nationalist leader and went to work immediately to unify the country under communist rule. In doing so, he killed tens of thousands of his own people. When the U.S. entered the conflict it did so with a mission of containment. A successful containment would be defined as a victory.
However, containment is a defensive strategy. Your victory comes only when your enemy stops attacking you. If he is determined to take your space, he may never stop attacking. If you grow tired of repelling him before he tires of attacking you, he will take your space. You do not have to be a student of Sun Tzu to realize this.
America’s war with Islamic jihad began on November 4, 1979 when Iranian jihadists invaded our Embassy, a sovereign part of our country, and held American Embassy staff hostage. ‘Hostage’ may be misleading because there was no ransom demanded. The goal was humiliation. In the jihadist mind, this is a great victory.
The ‘hostages’ were released just before Ronald Reagan became President. No point in pushing their luck. But the four-hundred forty-four day ordeal also served to show jihadist recruits what a paper tiger the Great Satan really was. Reagan, the most unpredictable infidel, was willing to go to the mat with the powerful Soviets but quickly folded in 1983 after just one jihadist took out an entire peace keeping barracks in Beirut. AP and Reuters showed us and the jihadists the destruction and death. Reagan essentially ordered the Marines there to die—then walk away. For those who remember the Lebanese violence between the Christians and Muslims during the late 70s and early 80s, know that there is little violence in Beirut today—because there are so few Christians left.
Before “Black Hawk Down” there was an American effort to get food to starving Somali Muslims. Again, American servicemen attempting to feed hungry, warring Muslims paid the price of America’s good will. And again, after losing 19 men, they were ordered to walk away by President Clinton; but not before the humiliating footage of these courageous men made the global circuit. Two of them received the Medal of Honor. They may have survived had they not run out of ammo. They died together protecting a brother.
Subsequent attacks on American territory via the Tanzanian and Kenyan Embassies convinced Osama bin-Laden that the paper tiger was ripe for some back yard humiliation. Up until 9/11 it seemed like the U.S. would never tire of being attacked, humiliated and sent packing whenever a scorpion needed a frog to take him across the river.
In that popular fable the scorpion asks the frog to take him across. The frog is reluctant because he is afraid the scorpion will sting him. The scorpion is sincere in his assurance that he will not. The frog relents and halfway across, the scorpion stings him. The surprised frog asks, “Why did you sting me? Now we’re both going to die!” The scorpion replies, “I’m a scorpion. That’s what I do.”
A wise frog, on hearing about the fate of those frogs before him would not attempt to assist a scorpion. They sting. They can’t help it. A wiser frog would kill the scorpion, but we had few wise frogs prior to 9/11.
Unfortunately, we had allowed scorpions to sting us for almost twenty-two years and they had grown used to the free rides on the backs of stupid frogs. And America changes frogs every four to eight years. Our current frog cannot even call the scorpion a scorpion. He doesn’t seem to want to offend the scorpion which he thinks, or pretends won’t sting him this time.
Jihadists are like scorpions. They can’t help themselves. Their religious interpretations command them to sting everything that is not a fellow jihadist or does not submit to Sharia Law. They get reinforcement from radical mosques without any interference from us. The danger in ignoring this reality is to leave mature Muslims wondering about our commitment to rid ourselves and them of this insanity. If we can define our enemy, we can defeat him with allies in the Muslim community itself. In fact, if jihad is to be neutralized, it will only be from us assisting mature Muslims, not the other way around. One thing we seem to forget is that jihadists kill more Muslims than any other group.
In reality, the war against Islamic Jihad is our longest war. It has been raging for more than 30 years. It has consumed our servicemen, our diplomats and our civilians. Its cost is incalculable. It was a guerrilla war from the start and up until 9/11our leaders made excuses for our enemies. They were a ‘small minority’; it was about Palestine, oil, land or Israeli aggression.
For those who remember those few short weeks in November, 1979, you will recall the unity Americans managed to muster around the common goal of getting our people back. We became even more united when the Iranians released the black American hostages a few weeks into the ordeal in an attempt to divide us on racial lines. It failed miserably. It enraged Americans of all colors. Even Jesse Jackson said good things about his country; a memorable event for those of us who had been bombarded with fifteen years of anti-American rhetoric from the left. The right got behind President Carter, a man they considered an incompetent buffoon. This was an incredible unifying event coming only a few years after our divisive Vietnam experience. This would have been the time to act. There would have been unified support.
Unfortunately, Carter indeed proved to be incompetent. His naïve belief in moral diplomacy and mistrust of ‘corrupt’ CIA operations had resulted in no human intelligence available in Iran and a decimated military prepared only for a defense of NATO allies. It took over five months to organize a rescue mission which launched in late April, 1980. “Operation Eagle Claw” was a complete failure costing the lives of eight servicemen left behind in Iran. By then our unity had dissipated into frustration.
And here we sat for two decades proving, if not participating in the jihadists’ own propaganda against us.
On 9/11 we responded and the unity lasted quite a bit longer than it did in 1979. But where is it now? It took President Bush five years to correctly identify our enemy one time in a 2006 speech, calling them ‘Islamic fascists’. The back-lash was immediate. “Unfortunately, your statement this morning [speaking of President Bush] that America is at war with Islamic fascists, contributes to a rising level of hostility to Islam and the American-Muslim community,” said Parvez Ahmed. He was Board Chairman of The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), one of many Islamic charities raising money for Islamic fascists.
MSNBC said the President’s remark, “represented a nasty turn from previous speeches”. If the truth is ‘nasty’, then we must not speak it. Right, Mr. Orwell? Mr. Bush never used that term again.
Words and bullets are both lethal ammunition if aimed properly at an enemy. It is wise to conserve your rounds but you will never run out of word ammo. Uncle Ho was inspired by George Washington’s guerrilla tactics but he learned how to use his most powerful weapon, propaganda, from those who perfected it. Has anyone ever seen a George Washington T-shirt? Perhaps there are some. More likely though, you will see Che Guevara t-shirts in great numbers from schools to sporting events. Who are the masters of this art? Who is it that could elevate such a godless butcher into an international icon? Communists, that’s who.
It was Vladimir Lenin who perfected this ancient art and he called its consumers ‘useful idiots’. Uncle Ho used it to great effect. It was in fact, incorporated into the communist strategy to defeat us in Vietnam. We were rarely defeated on the battlefield. We were simply told to leave when our leaders grew tired of the relentless cries from our own useful idiots. Some Vietnam veterans were among them and their actions are difficult to condemn since they actually knew what they were talking about; at least tactically. But still, those serving during that time were deeply demoralized seeing their brothers standing among those who hated us.
America itself seems to be adverse in the use of this weapon. Propaganda is seen as a communist tactic beneath our moral standards. But propaganda only has to be lies if used by the side that doesn’t want the truth told. If used relentlessly to portray the truth, its protesters must eventually counter it when the consumers demand proof. We used it effectively during WWII. It may have been exaggerated but it wasn’t a lie.
Propaganda is absolutely essential in long guerrilla wars such as the one we are in now. The longer the war, the more essential it becomes. The communists took South Vietnam largely because of their expertise in disseminating their lies to the international press and by extension, to those who consumed those press reports. The mother-load came during the Tet Offensive in 1968 when Walter Cronkite, standing in the ruble of Hue City declared to America that the war could not be won. He did not say the war could not be won unless we changed our strategy. He did not comment on the consequences if we did not win. Walter Cronkite, the most trusted man in America simply told America we could not win. In doing so he also inadvertently told Uncle Ho to ‘hang in there’ and demoralized President Johnson enough to drop out of the Presidential race. It must have struck those in North Vietnam’s high command that Cronkite had elevated himself over all other useful idiots to become Uncle Ho’s most essential idiot.
Ironically, the Tet Offensive proved to be the most devastating communist defeat in the entire war. It would take them four years to recover enough manpower to launch the Easter Offensive in 1972. They ‘hung in there’.
Jihadists did not sleep through the Vietnam War. They learned from it. So it is no surprise they incorporated the same tactics. Up until 1979, their efforts were directed through ‘Little Satan’, Israel. In the late 60s and early 70s they blew up airliners and organized an international assassination of eleven Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich, Germany. There was a backlash though. Even sympathetic journalists couldn’t put a positive spin on such a publicly revolting act.
But the jihadists were relentless. One tactic is to gather up some journalists and start an incident with Israeli troops. Shots are fired, usually by jihadists and a few Arabs, preferably children fall to the ground. The ambulance arrives and takes the wounded to an Arab hospital. Occasionally, the script is corrupted by unforeseen events.
In an episode of It Hurts Till I Laugh, shown on TRU TV, a typical street fight finds a wounded Arab being rushed to an ambulance on a stretcher. The ambulance backs up to the stretcher bearers knocking them all to the ground. They all get up, including the ‘wounded’ man, brush themselves off and continue the charade. You won’t see that on the news.
It can get more serious though. In a famous film showing a 12 year-old boy crouching behind his father during a fire fight with the IDF, the boy is shot to death. The Israelis are blamed. But subsequent analysis of the film show the shots came from the camera angle, not from the 90 degree direction of the IDF. That was a serious script.
My enemy’s enemy is my friend, an old Arab axiom can be seen playing out today with our own enemies. We tried this ourselves in 1980 by allying ourselves with Saddam Hussein during the Iraq-Iran war and at the same time supporting jihadists against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Today our enemy’s enemy is our enemy; and using our hardware we supplied them against us.
For almost a century the U.S. has been able to survive our domestic enemies which are a sub-set of international Communism and radical leftists. The Constitution has been subverted by these domestic enemies through processes not found in the Constitution itself. There is nothing to stop them if the people allow it.
Thirty years ago they found an unlikely ally in the fascist jihadists. While communists and fascists fought it out during WWII, they are essentially totalitarian ideologies at odds with the principles in our Constitution. For those of us who remember a post WWII America, we remember knowing who our enemies were, we recall an effective and moral education in public schools, we knew who God was and were afraid to offend Him, we remember competition, responsibility, steel mills, monkey bars and, as bizarre as this may sound, neighbors who were allowed to discipline us.
Many of us didn’t know what a lawyer did until we were presented that option during vocational testing. Hollywood had yet to introduce us to foul language, graphic violence or an array of sexual scenarios that the ancient Romans may not have considered.
Most of us welcomed many of the changes we experienced over the decades but wish the baby hadn’t been thrown out with the bathwater. We would like to hire an employee who could read a ruler better than he could recite his workplace rights. We have new rights today although we’ve lost a lot of the old ones we took for granted. And that’s the point. When we take our rights for granted, we can lose them promptly.
God was the first to go even before the official hippie era began in 1964. Atheist Madelyn Murray O’Hare made history in 1963 when the Supreme Court ruled in her favor establishing that neither God nor His symbols could attend class in public schools; or for that matter, in any government endeavor. The radical left had its cornerstone victory. After that, traditional America began its descent.
It is important to separate the radical left from left wing America. Generally, the former is anti-American; the latter works toward a larger role of government in the lives of its citizens. This is a perfectly Constitutional goal so long as it is only sought for the states. The Constitution sets strict limits on the federal government.
However, the radical left has attracted a fair share of useful idiots to assist in their cause. Consider the American Civil Liberties Union. Nowhere in the world will you find an organization more in line with the primary American theme—the protection of the individual’s liberty. But like most left wing organizations, it has become infested with radicals. The ACLU has never been popular with most Americans because its mission requires it to promote the rights of unpopular people. It crosses the line when it assumes our enemies have a right to the identities of undercover operatives who may or may not have been involved in their capture. Allegations have been made concerning the John Adams Project (JAP) which the ACLU and the American Criminal Defense Lawyers Association have partnered in exposing CIA personnel to Gitmo prisoners. The JAP has admitted the allegations and this, at best is aiding the enemy in time of war. At worse, it could lead to accessory to murder. Such antics are anti-American and in better days, treasonous.
A less radical but just as idiotic in its usefulness to our enemies is the Southern Poverty Law Center. Founded by Alabama lawyer Morris Dees to combat the Ku-Klux-Klan, Dees risked his life for this noble and very important cause. The SPLC is largely responsible for the Klan’s demise. With Klansmen on the decline Dees set his sights on the Christian Identity Movement, a much smaller but extremely violent white supremacists’ group. This groups’ reign ended in 1984 and Dees continued to monitor other right wing extremists’ groups.
Eventually the SPLC settled on monitoring ‘hate groups’ in general and these efforts as well are quite impressive. Unfortunately, the talent these people exhibit in monitoring dangerous groups is tellingly selective and becoming alarmingly abusive.
The 2009 Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) controversial report on right wing extremists was largely the work of the SPLC prepared for the Threat Analysis Division. The report itself states the data was coordinated with the FBI but makes no mention of the SPLC, referring to them only as, “a prominent civil rights organization”.
The report includes a section titled, “Disgruntled Military Veterans” and Timothy McVeigh was a prominent feature throughout the report. The most disturbing thing about this report was its conclusion: “… [L]one wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent rightwing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States (emphasis added)”. This is simply not true. But it is to the left wing editor of SPLC’s Intelligence Report, Mark Potok.
The DHS report completely ignored the 35 known jihadists training camps in the U.S. Islamic fascists are right wing, are they not? Since one of the most active camps called Islamberg in New York state gets 90% of its recruits from prison and 100% of those are black, it must be hard for Potok to see them as right wingers. So he didn’t mention these fascists to DHS when he sent them his report. This is not hypocrisy. The SPLC never writes anything about right wing Islamic extremists in any report or publication.
The Intelligence Report is the SPLC’s primary publication which contains articles on the activities of various right wing groups. A more frequent newsletter, Hatewatch also feeds the reader an endless, sometimes petty stream of right wingers up to no good. Potok himself is no stranger to television where he is always available to contribute his opinions of right wing crimes. He seems to be the expert on Timothy McVeigh appearing on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow special, The McVeigh Tapes on April 19, 2010. This was an edited and eerie computer generated trip into the mind of a monster. The tapes were cut from hours of McVeigh confessions to his attorney and included his philosophy, motive and brought to mind a POW feeding his captors what they wanted to hear. Where is John Doe #2? Timothy is a murderer but he is a case study in PTSD as well. And it is doubtful he did what he said he did alone.
A military man with as much familiarity with the case as Mr. Potok claims would see that immediately. Potok’s Wikipedia bio is sourced by the left wing Huffington Post and shows no military experience.
We went through twelve years of back issues of Intelligence Report and found not one article on the actual most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States— homegrown Islamic fascists; and indeed some of them would satisfy Mr. Potok. They are in our military. Remember the Ft. Hood Shooter?
Yes, Mark Potok remembered the Ft. Hood shooter. Potok’s associate, Heidi Beirich mentioned him in an article generated last January while reporting on the Pentagon’s change in its ‘hate group policy’:
"An independent fact-finding report made public last week by the Pentagon in the wake of the November shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas, concluded that the Pentagon was not well prepared to defend itself from many internal threats. The report, “Protecting the Force: Lessons From Fort Hood,” focused on the serious breakdown within the military that allowed Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who has been charged with killing 13 people, to advance through the ranks despite concerns from his superiors about his behavior. "The report went much further than the Hasan case, however, examining the Pentagon’s efforts to weed out extremists of all kinds — including those involved in white supremacist hate groups.
Beirich’s report begins by mentioning Hasan but does not identify him as an Islamic fascist or extremist. All we know about Hasan in this report is that he murdered 13 people at Ft. Hood, after which he is mentioned no more. But Hasan was just a prop to introduce us to the real problem defined by the SPLC—white supremacists. And that is what the report is all about.
The SPLC loses its credibility with mature readers with its one way approach to the problem of radicals. They only see right ones. Moreover, they tend to invent extremists and racists where they don’t exist.
In the Spring, 2010 issue of Intelligence Report, Potok displays a complete ignorance of the Tea Party movement:
"The anger seething across the American political landscape — over racial changes in the population, soaring public debt and the terrible economy, the bailouts of bankers and other elites, and an array of initiatives by the relatively liberal Obama Administration that are seen as "socialist" or even "fascist" — goes beyond the radical right. The 'tea parties' and similar groups that have sprung up in recent months cannot fairly be considered extremist groups, but they are shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories and racism. "
What makes the Tea Party such a threat to the left is that it cannot be defined politically. Like military veterans who come from all walks of life expressing various beliefs and ideologies, they all tend to stand when the colors are presented. They understand what the flag means. This single issue may be the only thing every veteran agrees upon. So too; the Tea Party groups. It is not a radical idea for an American to want to live under his Constitution. There have also been plants among these groups so that people like Potok can report some bad behavior. It’s called disinformation. An open-minded observer would notice; an ideologue would not.
The John Adams Project which may be engaged in active treason is much less dangerous than the SPLC because its members are much more visible in their contempt for their country. Our enemies may use them for legal reasons but there will be little opportunity for covert activities because the ACLU is generally suspect.
The SPLC on the other hand, does good work, even if it is lopsided. Its members obviously avoid any negative reporting on Islamic extremists whom they see as victims; primarily from right wing American extremists. This is actually a patronizing attitude as it is with all diversity believers since its premise assumes an inferior status for its perceived victims. Even its contempt for the Military doesn’t extend to minority soldiers as Beirich’s report shows.
The SPLC does not appear to be infested with radicals. But they are useful idiots to the cause of both the jihadists and the radicals on the left. The irony here is that jihadists make the Klan look as dangerous as pig-tailed choir girls.
These are the useful idiots that will fight for the introduction of Sharia law to accommodate diversity. These are the idiots that see bigotry everywhere except in the extreme religious bigotry required of a compliant jihadist.
The communists didn’t go away with the collapse of the Soviet Union. They are now allied with the fascists in a unified effort to destroy the United States. They are in our government, our industries, our media and most importantly in our educational institutions. They infest us like mold and there are many useful idiots willing to help them due to a desire to be seen as tolerant or to participate in the promised utopia.
And how did these domestic enemies get here without protest? PROPAGANDA; a relentless parade of lies, justifications and demonizing their opponents. Propaganda works. The left’s most successful shield is the ever present “political correctness”, a concept that cloaks evil intentions with support for the downtrodden.
We left our mission in Vietnam because we could. If we quit our mission to retain our Constitution we can’t simply pack up and go home. We are home. Israel is our canary in the mine. Watch how she’s treated. If you think there could never be another holocaust, know that decent Germans didn’t either and they didn’t have our advantage of having one to look back on.
How did a civilized nation like Germany come to believe that a small minority of Jewish people were responsible for all their ills? Some, who were seen as leaders of Hitler’s opposition were simply shot. But you cannot shoot an entire nation. The weapon the Nazis used against the German people was propaganda. It is a premier case study in the power of words used relentlessly.
Instead of apologizing for America’s faults, our leaders should be singing its praises. It is a remarkable fact that even with this pro-American propaganda weapon lying dormant, hoards of desperate people breach our borders to experience our country’s promise. The irony is that once they are here, the experienced radical left uses its propaganda weapon to assist them in destroying it.
Beirut, Bosnia, Somalia, Kenya---these are not separate conflicts. They are battles in our thirty year war against jihadists and our own domestic enemies. Afghanistan is not our longest war; it’s our latest battle. If we do not use our cheapest and most potent weapon, propaganda, and commit to win it, our longest war may very well turn out to be our last.
Dick Lancaster, June/November, 2010
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