WWI AND VIET NAM, TWO POISONS AND WHAT HAPPENED TO FRANCE

The Cowardice of our Liberal Elites is a curse

I just read an interesting account of why France blew WWII in spite of the fact that they had superior weaponry, a bigger army, and more time to prepare than Nazi Germany.

The thesis is that the general staff was still in such shock over the catastrophic losses of WWI that they were afraid to act. This WWI super shock also possessed the political elites from top to bottom; they compromised with Hitler for years before the invasion. The French General Staff planned a defense in which command was hundreds of miles from the front and relied on communications to lead their troops. The Germans destroyed the communications early on. The Germans did nothing that surprised the French and in fact the French were actually kicking ass in the air and on the ground, but the general staff wouldn't back them up. The Germans then struck at the only weak point in the French defense and blew the French out of the water.

We can learn from this. Our elites are in paralysis to this day about Viet Nam; everyone from the draft dodging press, the military that was on the ground, the Liberal Elites, and our "college educated" leaders. Generals rarely want to go to war anyway because they truly know what a horror war is. But we now see how badly they want to steer clear of Liberia, did not want to go into Iraq, nor did they want any part of Bosnia; all for very dam good reasons. It looks like they were browbeaten into going into Afghanistan.

The Democrats are always willing to send in our troops to "nation build" but never to (oh my God) fight. The Republicans do not want to nation build believing an army was meant to kill people and break things. Right now we are called upon to do both. And Viet Nam flash backs for people who never bothered to fight there won't do us any good at all.

My friends who watched the regular news casts on CNN etc. and read the Los Angeles or New York Times were quite surprised that we "won" the war, preferring to believe that we were losing. Now they prefer to learn from the same media that we are losing the peace in Iraq.

Bush is a tough guy and we will all have to be "tough guys" but this peace can be won. Viet Nam is past. There is no similarity between Iraq and Viet Nam except for the cowardice of our Liberal Elites.

As a post script to this, the WWI syndrome still dominates the political dialogue in "the old Europe" according to many who study Europe these days. The carnage was total. An entire generation wiped themselves out in a war everyone wanted at the time. After the war the winners behaved in such a way as to guarantee it would continue later. This trauma affects the birth rate, attitudes, and economies. The belief is that WWII was simply too big to comprehend. We cannot allow ourselves to indulge in similar introspective cowardice now.