Last week, DNC Chairman Howard Dean made what some are calling “defeatist” remarks when he said that “The idea that we’re going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong.”

The Democrats are calling a recent GOP ad quoting Dean, John Kerry and Barbara Boxer “shameful and disgusting.” So it’s CNN’s Brooks Jackson to the rescue saying that Dean’s remarks were taken out of context. Here’s what he said….

“Well, I think our military is working very hard to do that. But let’s not forget this is ultimately what America had to do in Vietnam. Ultimately they said we are gonna turn this over to the Vietnamese and of course the South Vietnamese couldn’t manage to take care of their own country. As I said, I supported President Bush’s, the first President Bush’s war in Iraq and I supported the President’s war in Afghanistan, but I do not believe in making the same mistake twice and America appears to have made the same mistake twice . I wish the President had paid more attention to the history of Iraq before we’d gotten in there. The idea that we’re going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong. And I’ve seen this before in my life and it cost us 25,000 brave American soldiers in Vietnam and I don’t want to go down that road again, [sic] get out of there and take the targets off our troop’s back we need to maintain a presence in the area so we can deal with terrorism but not in Iraq.”

Okay, so Chairman Dean is this student of history. As we now have his words in context, let’s analyze this well-repeated Vietnam comparison, shall we?

Santayana once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” and I would agree that we are going down that road. We continue to assume that should we have to engage in conflict, the American people will stand behind the President and the troops on the ground. However, our enemies are also students of history and as usual, are beating the academic pants off America.

Ho Chi Minh also said, “You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and I will win.” Part of his strategy was that some Americans would show such strong opposition to the war in Vietnam, that the resolve of our nation would wane and America would eventually retreat. Today, Osama and his radical band of Islamic extremists seem to know us like the backs of their hands.

Today we have liberal elitists like Dean who grew up in the Hamptons, went to a ritzy private school, before attending Yale and Columbia. Like most elitist liberals, he went to college to make sure he didn’t have to go to war, and then protested those who didn’t have the money to avoid it.

Our enemies today are counting on the Cindy Sheehans and Ted Kennedys and John Murthas to weaken the resolve of the United States, and they are making some headway. The tragedy is that men and women who volunteered to do something greater than themselves, a concept foreign to most liberals, are hearing the defeatist words of United States policy makers, while the successes on the ground are being intentionally ignored.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Chairman Dean, just who is repeating history?

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 16th, 2005 at 7:50 am and is filed under Bob Parks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.