The only difference – no scandals in singapore.
I was in Singapora (by the way not trying to educate – (singa!) means Lion and Pura (or ‘puram’ is a word in Tamil means, a surrounding or a village).

What or Which country in this world was not ruled by someone else.

Bob Woodward, who has been known for his incredible access to classified reports and close contacts to members of the Bush administration, has just published a new book State of Denial (Amazon.com, Amazon.de) and writes in the Washington Post article Secr

“During those thirteen years pro-Western governments consolidated their power in Indonesia. Malaysia, and Singapore while economic growth ignited in the region’s key pro-Western states, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, and Taiwan. By 1975, the year of the worst U.S. military humiliation since 1943, the threats to all these states and territories, from within and from a hostile China, had far receded from their level in the late 1950s. In everyone one of these now prosperous and fast-growing states, the essential issues of the Long War had been decided in their domestic polity and had been resolved against communism…”

-Page 59 of The Shield of Achilles,

As for the main post and discussion: the idea that opposition back home equals ‘lack of will’ is a standard right-wing trope used to paint domestic opponents of the war as traitors or weaklings. On point 2, I don’t get how lack of public support will weaken the US position in international negotiation – surely what matters at that level is the interplay of governments, not what the New York Times is putting on its op-ed page? And as for reduced influence and strength, the situation in Iraq is already reflecting badly on the US, as the war in Lebanon did on Israel. It has shown that the kind of war (lightweight forces, reliant on airpower) that politicians like to fight cannot win the kind of counter-insurgency stuggles we face today.

Ultimately, the problem of the US administration is that it believes its own propaganda (see my point on ‘lack of will’.) This is disastrous for any party fighting a war, as John Robb shows. His appeal for greater transparency and openness may be the only way out of the mess.

And once they were established, they were ironclad and invincible with no need for economic involvement? The Vietnam War played an important part in keeping America involved and present across East Asia. The economic argument is a small one, but it’s not unimportant.

That’s not what Lee Kwan Yew says. He says that the American defense of South Vietnam gave Singapore and the other countries of the region the time they needed to begin to develop economically. It was an awfully expensive way to do that, admittedly. But it is wrong to say we got no benefit from delaying the communist conquest of South Vietnam for ten years.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/01/asia/AS_POL_Tajikistan_Elections.php

Regarding this post, I fully agree with Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace.

I could not agree with Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace more. The public has a greater diversity in news and opinion available today than it did during the Vietnam War and large segments of it are quicker to question the veracity of politicians. I would like to believe there is also a legitmate feeling regarding the righteousness of our national adventures and this must be compared and contrasted to the Salafists who fight for the same Abrahamic God as the Christians and Jews. Ultimately, I believe it will be our respective spiritual strengths that will provide the critical winning edge. I am not only refering to the fundamentalist religious right, but also to the genuine spirituality with which the rest of the USA identifies.

I really have a hard time buying the ‘low morale in America = more recruits for terrorists’ argument too. Does any terrorist group advertise on its pamphlet that Bimbo American spends one minute regretting the Iraq War between episodes of Friends and Everybody Loves Raymond? Doubtful. And do you REALLY think public opinion hampers this administration? If you say yes, please explain Donald Rumsfeld still being Secretary of Defense and Colin Powell’s resignation. And, last quip, is what allies are you talking about? Who do we have left to impress in this war? Uzbekistan? Romania? Poland? The Coalition of the Willing is more like a cadre of underdeveloped nations with above average egos.

I guess what I’m trying to get at is, Afghanistan/Iraq is a messy affair that’s been painted in simplistic terms. It’s a mad swirl of tribal loyalties, ancient grievances, anti-Western terrorists, Baathists, opium drug lords and on and on. Citizens of Western nations are told it is a simple fight against “terrorists”. Anyone standing up to say that things are bad (the first pre-condition to fixing a situation) is told they are “dovetailing their views with the terrorists.”

The clash between the West and militant Islam will be a long one. Many “fronts” (another misleading term in this new era) will be opened and many fights played out. If the West hopes to win, it will need to hard-hearted and clear-sighted action, not a bunch of thin-skinned civilian pinheads who bristle at the least criticism and who want to re-fight a war that ended thirty years ago.

While we should be wary of giving government any power, how about we just be done with this thing: fight the war the way MacArthur would have, make people abhor war once and for all, but fight it as it must be fought, with resolve! Kaplan had it right in his latest about Iran, too, although I would add that we have to be willing as a people to fight this and that seems to be the most important thing missing.

Neither the Nixon administration nor the Bush administration understand how to fight that kind of a war, although it seems to me that the Bush administration has an idea of the threat. The neocon intellectuals at least understand the nature of the War: this is far too pervasive and broken right now to expect a solution any time soon. We have to fight it on every front.

Kissinger is a pedant, too trapped in short-term realism, or at least he was. No, I don’t think this is a heartening development.

So it truly behooves leaders to be honest in the first place, or not to go to war. I think the public is fairly accepting that things go wrong in war; what it cannot abide is being led up a garden path…. especially for partizan political reasons.

Don’t switch sides

It is enraging that Nixon built a Republic of Vietnam that was able to fight, and win, her own battles, yet American isolationsists (mostly but not exclusively liberal democrats) still forfeited. When North Vietnam invaded, after we left, South Vietnam won. South Vietnam had a better trained, better equipped, more able army that wooped the North. (The South Vietnamese and their American advisors had already disposed of an indigenous Communist insurgency during the Tet Offensive).

Yet the Congress, in 1974, imposed a de facto embargo on the Republic (preventing the government from loaning RVN the money to buy the supplies from American companies that the American-created army needed). Surprise surprise, a top-notch army collapses without supply or materiel.