Ann Coulter
 

They beat us for one reason. They beat us because a whole lot of idiots - that would be me - bought the line that peace and passivity are always virtues. We was wrong. Passivity as you watch the big guy kill the little kid across the street is not a virtue. Several million rue my stupidity.

Or they would if they were still alive.

Ann Coulter
 

We might be a little less sensitive had it not been for the Swifties and the smear of Max Cleland.

Ann Coulter
 

So, you've reduced this all to the idea that "we should at some point be able to leave" is the dividing line, and we R's are firmly on the "disagree" side? Bullshit. You want to make speaking points without substance. The proposal, which generated so much faux support, was "immediate", and then, when called on it, you caved. (Sorry - like SAM says, I overgeneralize groups.) We ALL feel, since the beginning, that the earlier the extrication (with success) the better. No disagreement. Murtha might as well have said "humans need oxygen to live." Problem is, you all wanted to claim that we Rs disagree with that.

Ann Coulter
 

A. I don't remember the Swifies being disproved. "Christmas in Cambodia"? Those guys seem to hate Kerry with a visceral intensity that scares me, and I doubt such feelings come from after-the-fact politics.

B. Don't send a multiple amputee to do a job when his only qualification is that he's a multiple amputee. I have a friend who flew choppers in Nam. He lacks two legs and an arm. And some of his face. He gets near violent when speaking of Cleland. Someday, in a bar, I can tell you why. But, for now, know that it has to do with Cleland's honor in using his injuries to make nonexistant points.

Ann Coulter
 

I disagree. We didn't lose Vietnam because of that -- in fact, the US didn't "lose" Vietnam at all. Vietnam went communist because the government in the South had no popular support. Our blood and treasure went into supporting a government that was hated and feared and despised by their own people, and our military was so crippled by the war that we're lucky that Breshnev didn't send the Red Army across the Elbe, or we might all be radioactive cinders.

Were the people of South Vietnam worse off after 1975 than they were before it? For most, absolutely. But they didn't think that they would be, and, unless we were prepared to continue to prop the Theiu regime up indefinitely, we never were going to "win" -- no matter that we "won" every battle in the war. It was just a question of time.

Ann Coulter
 

This falls within the Sebby Theory of "We're just one big unhappy party with made-up differences." He invented that.

Ann Coulter
 

Practicality v. morality.

How many millions of people were murdered because we bugged out? I think that question counts. Cleansing is a basic beginning stage of the communistic takeover, and I think we allowed ourselves to be talked into forgetting that. It was more convenient in the end. When Jane said that we would all be communist if we knew what it was, she forgot that most of us would be compost instead.

Ann Coulter
 

What if we never were there? Should we have intervened in China in 1949?

Ultimately, I think that there is a difference between places where outside forces were seeking to impose a communist regime (and our intervention worked -- Korea in 1950, Greece/Turkey in 1946-48, Malaysia in the 1950s)(ok, the UK gets credit for Malaysia and partial credit for the Greeks) and places where the communists had true indigenous support (China in 1949 and Vietnam). No amount of intervention would have prevented Mao from winning over the KMT (short of nuking his army as he was getting ready to cross the Yangztee, I suppose), and I don't think that we could have kept the Theiu regime in power much longer, either.

Ann Coulter
 

I'm not saying that the Republicans in Congress or the White House are not in favor of an exit strategy. I just don't see evidence that they've planned one out. And the R House Resolution was up or down as part of a concious effort to stop debate on the wisdom of continuing for the indefinite future, which is what the public is being shown right now.

You can't deny that. At least not with a straight face.

Ann Coulter
 

You forget that the Thieu regime was doing its own cleansing. With our help, primarily after the Hamlet Program revealed that VC was far more entrenched in the villages than we could ever hope to be. And that's not even getting into the CIA's black ops from the 50's on.

You can argue morality v. practicality up to a point. But eventually, it all comes down to who's willing to fight to the last man standing. That's the story in the Middle East, it was the story in Vietnam, and it's the story anywhere the indigenous population decides that it doesn't really care what the foreign devils believe, it just wants them to go home.

Ann Coulter
 

Had we been there, and had the strength, yes. But then, I always choose the "yeah, I'd kill Hitler or Stalin" option in the polls.

True. Can you save lives in spite of themselves? I think you can, and should. (Why else have drug laws?) Mind you, this isn't the blind hate-commies thing - it's the "hate the cleansing phase" thing. Plus, I don't think the support for the Khmer Krahom was all that widespread in either VN or C at the time. It was mostly vague promises of food in every pot.

Ann Coulter
 

Our performance was poor at that point, granted. But we let that point overwhelm the idea that we needed to be there. Tactics over strategy. Tactics shouldn't win.

Picture yourself as am eighteen-year-old. Now, try to make those same words. Ouch.

We could have had the last man standing five hundred times over. You can't use that analogy when we make an arbitrary choice that we'll leave no more standing men in sight.

Traitor!
 

WASHINGTON - A top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday that wrongheaded ideas for the handling of foreign detainees arose from White House and Pentagon officials who argued that "the president of the United States is all-powerful" and the Geneva Conventions irrelevant.


In an Associated Press interview, former Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson also said President Bush was "too aloof, too distant from the details" of postwar planning. Underlings exploited Bush's detachment and made poor decisions, Wilkerson said.

Wilkerson blamed Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and likeminded aides. He said Cheney must have sincerely believed that Iraq could be a spawning ground for new terror assaults, because "otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051128/...rson_interview

Interesting
 

It's not just my party:

Medicaid Cutbacks Divide Democrats

The lede:
Controversial House legislation designed to gain control of Medicaid growth has split Democrats, with lawmakers in Washington united in their opposition while Democratic governors are quietly supporting the provisions and questioning the party's reflexive denunciations.

It would appear that you and Balt have the reflexive denunciation part down pat.

Ann Coulter
 

What do you think caused Daniel Ortega to finally call for open and free elections? Did he just realize the error of his ways?