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New Column: A War of Worldviews
Unprecedented Coalition strike nails the Haqqani Network in North Waziristan
Who cares about FISA?
Harvard economists’ study: Media’s anti-war rhetoric emboldens Iraqi insurgents
Radical “Leftists” Ambush Israel…

I agree with the notion that the U.S. public grew tired of the war, although I don’t believe that the proportion who supported a precipitous withdrawal and/or abandonment of South Vietnam was as high as many would have you believe today. I also agree with the assertion that many in the U.S. believe that they had been lied to by the government, although we were being at least equally lied to by the media and the war’s opponents.

The issue, as I understood it, was whether or not the South might have prevailed and survived to today. The evidence of the North’s defeated Easter offensive tells me that the South could have survived with U.S. materiel and air support. I further believe that, had those who advocated the defeat of a U.S. ally in South Vietnam been effectively confronted with the likely outcomes of that policy, the level of support for South Vietnam that would have ensured its survival could have been maintained. That is why so much antiwar effort went into denying the liklihood of a bloodbath (and the fact of the bloodbath once it began) and denigrating the domino theory. President Ford bears some of the responsibility for the failure to confront the anti-war mythology, but Watergate tied his hands and effectively surrendered the field to the defeatists.

The article seems to take as given that the NVA and their Soviet supporters could have kept up the pace of their offensive war for longer than the U.S. and the South could have maintained a defense. Can we really believe, however, that the Soviets would have never stopped funding failed invasions? The North invaded in 1975 because they believed that the U.S. would not support the South. They were as much as invited to take over. And that’s why the South fell.

So why does Iynegar, an economist, do this study anyway? Why is it published in an economics website? All her other work has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of this paper. The answer can be found with the co-author, Jonathen Monten:

belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/experts/1050/jonathan_monten.html

His background obviously relates to the subject of this paper, and he is the true author. So why didn’t he just publish it? He probably tried to, and it didn’t pass the peer review. So what does he do? He gives it to his economist friend at Harvard, who publishes it as a “working paper” which doesn’t need any peer review, and it winds up in US News and World Report, and everyone is impressed by the distinguished Harvard study. Very funny.

I’ve argued for years that the Islamists listen to our media and draw conclusions from it, and it will be harder for the Left to deny it now.
18-1 on March 12, 2008 at 11:28 PM

I don’t agree, the left-tards are way too invested in their infantile and warped ideology to accept this study.

They will do what they always do in these situations and just label the study as being another vast right-wing conspiracy to fool the people in order for Bushitler/Darth Cheney to continue their “filthy, illegal, immoral war for oil” meme and won’t give a damn that their divisive and subversive acts are helping the enemy, prolonging the war, and thereby causing more innocent Iraqi’s and American service men and women to die.

As I said before, I hope the left-tards are proud of themselves…

If an economist can prove that criticism of Islam increases attacks (which shouldn’t be hard), you want to roll that back too?

No.

Apples and Oranges. Both are fruits, but they’re different.

The ‘negative comment’ that factually emboldens terrorists not only reflects poorly on the behavior of both parties (the terrorist and the person doing the emboldening), it – at some level – constitutes a partnership (if not a treasonous one) of the parties with the same goal – the defeat of the US/Bush.

The ‘criticism of Islam’ reflect poorly only on the person(s) who react violently to such criticism, not the person criticizing. Violent behavior on the part of someone being criticized does not constitute a valid reason to stop the criticism. If a study showed that saying child molestation was bad was offensive to child molesters and may cause them to become more active, would we suggest that we stop calling child molestation bad? Or would we continue to say it, and grow more resolute in stamping it out?

Probably not ideal framing of the concepts, sorry, but it just seems to me that there’s not a valid ‘equivalence’ between the two.

Is it common sense that the anti-war coverage by the MSM emboldens our enemies? Sure.

But the Left has denied this up and down, and so as such we should welcome any honest study of the issue.

I’ve argued for years that the Islamists listen to our media and draw conclusions from it, and it will be harder for the Left to deny it now.

“… The short answer, according to a pair of Harvard economists, is yes …”

Yeah? I know a couple of baggage handlers who could’ve told ya that.

Yeah, but the baggage handlers don’t have PhDs and can’t do meta-analysis worth the gum stuck to their shoes, so what they know doesn’t count.

If you’d gone to Liberal Arts College, you’d know these things.

Don’t forget the Anti-war pundits like Blitzer, Cafferty and OLBY

They misled the public by insisting we were winning the war and thereby prepared the war for defeatism

Actually, they didn’t so much as deliberately mislead the nation as if they knew otherwise. They truly believed they were winning the war.

At that time, and still today but at a much lesser extent, “winning” was based upon body count. It was thought that as long as we kept killing vast numbers of them we would win by attrition. Kill more of them than they kill of us, we “win”. Every day the TV and papers would trumpet the body count. We “won” nearly every battle by multiple counts – sometimes 100 to 1. (In then end, I think it averaged out to about 3 to 1.)

It took nearly three years of fighting until they conceded that they were wrong to gauge the success of the war upon how many bodies were chalked up. By then, it was to late.

First, they were trained to fight in the style the U.S. found most effective, with absolute air supremacy and heavy use of tactical air.

Most American “air support” in RVN for American infantry troops was from field artillery, not planes. The ARVN had field artillery, although thanks to congress, they were not exactly swimming in artillery rounds.

once Congress voted to end all support for South Vietnam and Ford acquiesed, ARVN knew that it was only a matter of time before they ran out of ammunition and supplies.

I’m supposed to believe it had nothing to do with the complete, sudden loss of air support and the total abandonment by the U.S.? Give me a break.

jl on March 12, 2008 at 5:19 PM

I don’t think that congress should have cut the ARVN off either, but would some continuing U.S. support have made enough difference in the long run as opposed to just dragging it out? The article, which is out of the U.S. Army War College, says it would not have. There is no way on God’s green earth that we would still be there anything like until now.

“Congress was in part the prisoner of events. The leaders of the United States in the crucial years of the early and mid-1960s failed to come up with a strategy that would produce victory. Instead, they simply poured in more and more US troops and material into South Vietnam. . . . They misled the public by insisting we were winning the war and thereby prepared the war for defeatism and demagoguery later on. The American people could not be expected to continue indefinitely to support a war in which they were told victory was around the corner, but which required greater and greater effort without any obvious signs of improvement.”
- Richard M. Nixon

Krykee doodle. Didn’t this brilliant conclusion roll around the entire flippin blogosphere for the last two years??!

Harvard’s nothing but a lot of talk and a Brahmin. But I’m glad they are on record saying, Hey, this emboldens the enemy; it wasn’t our guys, it was the left’s!

emailnuevo on March 12, 2008 at 2:54 PM

Well, not entirely. My soon-to-be wife goes there.

Increasing attacks isn’t the only thing at issue here though. The Lefty MSM increases attacks, while also misleading the West and weakening our resolve. Wilders etc. may increase attacks, but do they increase our understanding of the situation — and our will to win — at the same time? We’d have to find out, before lumping it all in together.

(As a side note, my first research position was in a social science, and my empirical results contradicted my supervisor’s already-published theories. Needless to say, they never saw the light of day and he later attempted to sabotage — through neglect or malice — my graduate school applications to an area outside of social science. Ironically, his sabotage assured that I would study at the very school he taught in, as the other school I was most interested in rejected me. I hope for the sake of the authors of the study that they have no such opponent on their tenure committee.)

Although this seems like common sense, having an empirical study from a respected, non-Bush-aligned place (and authors) helps to establish this. Now anti-war press can’t claim that their actions have no just reactions. They either have to find fault in the study (doubtful) or appeal to the First Amendment right mandating an anti-war response to any war (even though the press hasn’t done this is many past wars, e.g., WWII).

…then arguably the same is true of Geert Wilders’s film.

I disagree. I think there’s a vast difference between some guy making a 15-minute anti-Islam film in his basement and someone like Harry Reid, who holds the purse strings to an ongoing massive military action.

Islamists will always be feuding with those who are not Muslims, and many who are. If it isn’t the film, it will be how homosexuals are allowed to walk around Amsterdam unmolested.

There are only two ways to win a war: Eliminate your enemy’s ability to fight or his will to fight. With all the munitions lying around on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, I doubt we’ll ever truly be able to affect the terrorists’ ability to fight. That leaves the will and as long as there are powerful defeatists like Reid and Pelosi running their yaps in the press, the will goes on (There is a third way: Eliminate your enemy, but we don’t have the will for that).

Would you be so kind as to provide the full list of topics on which you would trust the word of a North Vietnamese military commander?

freevillage on March 12, 2008 at 5:05 PM

Interesting. Is he a liar and not to be trusted because he’s North Vietnamese? Or is he a liar because you don’t think the North Vietnamese concerned themseves with American public opinion during the Vietnam war?

Just curious.

I read the article and found it interesting but unconvincing. For example, the author poses a question about why ARVN would have collapsed in the face of the final NVA push, even after many years of U.S. training. The answer is quite obvious. First, they were trained to fight in the style the U.S. found most effective, with absolute air supremacy and heavy use of tactical air. When Congress pulled the plug and reneged on the U.S. obligation to provide that air support, the strategic underpinnings of the South’s military force structure were removed. That they then lost should come as no surprise to anyone. Second, once Congress voted to end all support for South Vietnam and Ford acquiesed, ARVN knew that it was only a matter of time before they ran out of ammunition and supplies. Since the Soviets were clearly going to continue to supply the North, it was only a matter of time before the South was overrun. While small groups might fight on, and in Vietnam many did, the notion that an entire Army would hold together in those conditions is silly. “Let’s all fight together until we’re out of supplies and then let’s die.” That’s one hell of a rallying cry!

The counter-question that the author does not address is, if ARVN was doomed, how did they so convincingly defeat a major NVA invasion with only U.S. air support (which was promised in perpetuity) during the Easter offensive? What changed between then and the final 1975 invasion? I’m supposed to believe it had nothing to do with the complete, sudden loss of air support and the total abandonment by the U.S.? Give me a break.