"the exchange with Paul is one Huckabee should probably post in the middle of his homepage"

He might want to use a little creative editing to fix his "it doesn't matter if we win elections" bit. Or for that matter everything he said. Seriously. We should stay in Iraq because we messed it up? We've spent almost $450,000,000,000 already! Not to mention the men and women who have been killed in combat. Is Huckabee so naive to think that this sort of spending can continue without crippling our country?

We got out of Vietnam too late. Let's not hold out waiting for a miracle as Mike Huckabee would have us just to, as Ron Paul said last night, "save face."

"save face"?

which?

in whose eyes?

gangreneday:

We should stay in Iraq because we messed it up? We've spent almost $450,000,000,000 already! Not to mention the men and women who have been killed in combat. Is Huckabee so naive to think that this sort of spending can continue without crippling our country?

We got out of Vietnam too late.

If you don't know our own recent history, how do you expect to intelligently choose a President?

How North Vietnam Won The War 8/3/1995

<link>

Bui Tin, who served on the general staff of North Vietnam's army, received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. He later became editor of the People's Daily, the official newspaper of Vietnam. He now lives in Paris, where he immigrated after becoming disillusioned with the fruits of Vietnamese communism.

Question: How did Hanoi intend to defeat the Americans?

Answer: By fighting a long war which would break their will to help South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh said,
"We don't need to win military victories, we only need to hit them until they give up and get out."

Q: Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi's victory?...

Learn from our mistakes, don't repeat them.

How North Vietnam Won The War 8/3/1995

...

Just a quick question, was our national interest served by going into Vietnam? Were the 58,000 Americans killed a worthwhile sacrifice? With the benefit of hindsight, would you have advised Johnson to "surge" into South Vietnam, or bring the troops home?

Question: How did Hanoi intend to defeat the Americans?

Answer: By fighting a long war which would break their will to help South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh said,
"We don't need to win military victories, we only need to hit them until they give up and get out."

Yeah, they won, we know that. Sometimes we lose wars. We also know that it was probably a bad idea to be there in the first place and it served our national interest to get out eventually. Our national interest more important than holding on to the arrogant idea that we can "win."

Too late.

Viet Nam has been largely considered a mistake. We should never have gone in. Same can be said for Iraq.

We already have failed to heed the "learn from mistakes" credo.

Of course, had we been leveled with, rather than manipulated with cherry picked intel, we would not have gone into Iraq.

NorCal:

Too late.

Viet Nam has been largely considered a mistake. We should never have gone in. Same can be said for Iraq.

We already have failed to heed the "learn from mistakes" credo.

Of course, had we been leveled with, rather than manipulated with cherry picked intel, we would not have gone into Iraq.

The same can be said of Vietnam. <link>

The only fighting forces who can sustain a "long war" against an enemy which they only need to run out the clock on are irregular or guerrilla forces fighting on their own territory. Formal armies are behemoths that need to maintain a high degree of internal coordination and stability to fight.

When formal armies face irregular forces on foreign soil, they either lose, or are forced to result to repressive and inhuman practices to win. Thats how we won in the Philippenes. We couldn't win in vietnam even with oppression. I don't think more oppression would go over very well in Iraq either.

They live there. We don't. They can fight as long as we stay there and they can keep recruiting. We could still be fighting in Vietnam, if you think that would have been better. And we can stay in Iraq to keep sectarian deaths at around 100 per day rather than 200, while we get blown up on a daily basis.

I'd rather fight the war on terror.