The Buck Stops Here

Uncle Ken wants names, so here are some names:
1. Harry S. Truman
2. Dwight D. Eisenhower
3. John F. Kennedy
4. Lyndon B. Johnson
5. Richard M. Nixon

The president is the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, so the credit or blame for the winning or losing of wars ultimately devolves to him. Of course the president has his entourage, but it was chosen by the president with the advice and consent of the senate, so I guess you could assign some blame to the senate. Actually the whole congress is responsible for issuing declarations of war or war powers acts, which enable the president to conduct a war in the first place, but I have never heard of an act of congress that told a president to deliberately lose a war, so it's still the president's fault when one is lost.

You can't blame the soldiers, except maybe a few of the higher officers. U.S. soldiers are always trying to win their wars because, after the war is won, they can go home. In World War II, soldiers were enlisted for the duration of the war plus six months. In Korea and Vietnam, soldiers were enlisted for two or three years, but their tour of duty was only one year. When their time was up, they were rotated out of there. I remember seeing something on TV once where a Vietnam vet told how he was picked up by a helicopter right in the middle of a battle and sent home because his time was up. I'm pretty sure that, if the soldiers in Vietnam were stuck there until the war was won, it would have been won, with or without the cooperation of their leadership.

I don't think the U.S. goal in Vietnam was to take away the land of the Vietnamese people, it was to prevent some of the Vietnamese people from taking away the land of other Vietnamese people. Don't forget that the Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Red Chinese killed more of their own people within two years after the U.S. pulled out than the U.S. killed in the 20 years they were there.

I see that we have gotten another comment from Titanium Bracelets, although under the name of a different individual. While they don't seem to directly advertising their product, it's starting to look like a spam attack to me. What do you guys think?