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Murphy Martin Commentary
February 15, 2007
"Two Different Wars"
This week brought an indelible reminder how fighting in Iraq is
vastly different than fighting we did in Southeast Asia. For
openers, battle lines prevailed in Southeast Asia. Such is not the
case in Iraq. In Southeast Asia we attacked the enemy along and
behind their lines. We could attack and fall back and attack again.
We knew where the enemy was located. Not in Iraq, where cars driving
alongside on a Baghdad street or parked nearby while allowing a
military convoy to pass could be a suicide bomber
ready to strike. Hundreds of Iraqis die almost daily from this
unconventional war style. A small number of Americans pay the
supreme price also.
They are two different wars! The Vietnam War cost nearly
sixty-thousand American lives from the two
-million-five-hundred-ninety-four-thousand that saw action at one
time or another in South Vietnam. We are at three-thousand-plus in
American lives lost in the Middle East since 9/11 when nearly
three-thousand Americans lost their lives in New York, Washington
and Pennsylvania.
Another difference in the two wars, churches were not used to store
weapons, house ammunition, or, for training people to infiltrate
enemy lines and become suicide bombers. If a church was utilized for
those purposes in Vietnam it would have been leveled by an air
assault.
Today, in Iraq, Mosques
are staging areas for the insurgents, weapons and ammo needed by the
suicide bombers are stored there and the terrorists that use those
supplies are trained there. And we have been hesitant to take them
out of action with pinpoint bombing capability.
In a recent conversation with the former Israeli Chief of Staff, who
headed their Intelligence until 2004, we were told there is evidence
the Mosques in America, including Dallas, hide terrorist training
activities. Training of all ages of Muslims, according to his
Intelligence.
He further stated there
was an Al Qaeda cell reportedly functioning in the Dallas area.
The thing that reminded me of all the differences in these two wars
was the reminder this week about Prisoners of War. It was 34-years
ago this week the North Vietnamese released the first of 591-U.S...
POWs.
In Iraq we have had very
few POWs. Mostly they kidnap someone, or use someone as a hostage or
behead someone to get their points made. But I cannot recall many
POWs since 2003 when seven Americans were released.
Those men who were captured in Vietnam and were subjected to torture
and in many cases isolation,
those men, became the first heroes this country had seen in quite a
while. The nearly six-hundred visited the White House. They enjoyed
a star-studded night in the Cotton Bowl where tens-of-thousands
turned out to welcome them home. They enjoyed a ticker-tape parade
in San Francisco, hosted by Ross Perot, where they could exchange
stories with Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, Red Skelton, The Andrews
Sisters, Carol Burnet, Ronald Reagan and Ernest Borgnine, just to
mention a few.
Then, it was capped off
by another Perot-hosted event, this one in Las Vegas , when they all
gathered for the retirement of Brig. General Robbie Risner, a
ranking POW held in North Vietnam not many months earlier. General
Chappie James, who was head of NORAD by then, was there and ex-POWs
such as Jim Stockdale, Bud Day, Paul Galanti, Sam Johnson, Ed
Alvarez, Jeremiah Denton, Jim Mulligan, Harry Jenkins, Bob Shumaker,
and George Coker and nearly four-hundred others and their
significant others enjoyed entertainment by the top stars of Vegas,
Nipsey Russell, Robert Goulet and Phyllis McGuire among others.
Not all of those who
made it back from North Vietnam prisons are still with us, but their
names are not forgotten.
And those that are still
with us can be spotted very easily--when you enter a room where
there may be some ex- POWS--you can spot them easily. They will be
wearing the biggest smiles in the room. Always have--Always will.
They KNOW what it means to lose your freedom...AND REGAIN IT! They
know FREEDOM is not FREE!
Iraq and Vietnam are different wars! But there IS a distinct
similarity.
President Lyndon Johnson
decided not to seek another term because the voters had grown tired
of the Vietnam War and the way he was handling it. Johnson did not
think he could be re-elected. That same thinking would probably keep
George W. Bush from running again... IF this were not
his second term--- so he does not have that decision, in essence it
will be made for him!
We knew where our enemies were located in the Vietnam war. In Iraq,
we don't seem to have a specific
clue... they seem to be everywhere, yet 160-thousand of our finest
have not been able to pinpoint nor control them!
Murphy Martin
Your thoughts and comments forwarded to my website will be
appreciated.
e-mail
murphy@murphymartin.com
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