Obama's "Nixon" Moment; "Another Vietnam" for Real

President Barack Hussein Obama is poised to announce troop withdrawals from the ongoing War on Terror's Afghanistan battlefields later today, with a preordained result that can be easily determined simply by studying the failed Vietnam policies of the late President Richard Nixon and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger.

In the spring of 1969, about three months after his inauguration, Nixon announced that he was going to begin withdrawing troops from Vietnam. This apparently was his so-called "secret plan to win the war" on which he had campaigned the previous year. His timing could not have been worse, the results were disastrous, his decision failed to take into account the true situation on the battlefield, and his motivation was purely political - just like President Obama's.

When Nixon made his ill-fated announcement the US had approximately 540,000 troops in Vietnam, and for the first time in the war we had numerical parity with the communist forces, which by then were entirely composed of regular troops from the North Vietnamese Army.

A year earlier, beginning on Feb. 1, 1968, the communists had launched their Tet Offensive, using 75,000 Viet Cong guerrillas backed by North Vietnamese regulars - counting on huge numbers of South Vietnamese civilians to rise up alongside them. But the vicious terror tactics employed by the communists had alienated the South Vietnamese populace, who stayed home for the battles, and by the end of the month, with the exception of the siege at Khe Sanh and the Battle for Hue City, the fighting was over.

The Viet Cong suffered an estimated 37,500 troops killed in action, which forever broke the back of the guerrilla forces, with the North Vietnamese losing about 25,000 more.

When the siege at Khe Sanh was lifted in April the communists had lost approximately 15,000 troops of the 40,000 North Vietnamese who had surrounded the remote base, and another 8,000 died in and around Hue City. All in all it was a total military disaster for the communists.

But the American media, led by the late CBS evening news anchor and closet communist Walter Cronkite, lied to the American public and reported the US victory as a communist victory, much to the delight of their cohorts in Russia, China and North Vietnam. The American media by that point had progressed from mind-numbing ignorance of military issues, compounded by arrogance and groundless self-importance, to open collaboration with the communists.

Cronkite even flew to Saigon and reported to America that the war in Vietnam was at a "stalemate" and "unwinnable." Incredible liar.

As a result, the late president Lyndon B. Johnson replaced the victorious American commander Gen. William Westmoreland, but nonetheless began pouring even more US troops into the country - similar to President George W. Bush's 2007-2008 "Surge" in Iraq if you will.

Prior to this point in the Vietnam War the US had not lost a single battle, and never did. The communist losses were far in excess of America's although the American media again lied to the American public, ridiculing the military's body counts. (After the war it was revealed that in addition to annihilating the Viet Cong, killing virtually all of the 75,000 guerrillas in battle, the north lost about 1.5 million troops killed in action!)

With even more troops on the ground enabling a more aggressive search and destroy methodology the scope of the communist battlefield defeats escalated and they lost entire regiments and even divisions in a series of operations launched by US forces. By the spring of 1969, especially after the communists suffered massive losses in the 9th Marines' Operation Dewey Canyon, the communist field commanders began lobbying their political bosses to surrender.

Enter Nixon's troop withdrawal announcement, at the urging of Kissinger. The communist political bosses in Hanoi immediately squashed all talk of surrender, figuring correctly that while they couldn't defeat America militarily, they did have far more backbone than America's political leaders.

Later that year Nixon announced his "Vietnamization" program by which more of the fighting would be turned over to the South Vietnamese armed forces, a tactic that worked very well for the South Koreans in the early 1950s. The Vietnamization program was again ridiculed by the American media, but in fact, it worked!

South Vietnamese forces gained strength and ability, and while taking their hits along the way, still progressed to the point that in the spring of 1972, with most Americans long gone from the battlefield, they were able to stand up to a massive communist invasion of 250,000 troops, plus huge numbers of tanks and artillery. At the end of that invasion, fought on the ground by South Vietnamese forces backed by US air power, the communists had lost an estimated 150,000 troops killed in action, plus half their armor and artillery.

The US media again reported mostly on the difficulties encountered in fighting such a huge invading force, and basically neglected to mention that it failed miserably, even worse than the Tet Offensive of 1968, and that South Vietnamese forces were victorious.

America had long been at the bargaining table with the communists in Paris, another mistake based on the fraudulent concept that the war couldn't be won and only a negotiated settlement was acceptable. Later that year when the communist negotiators began dragging their feet Nixon ordered the Christmas bombings of the north to force them back to the bargaining table.

He suspended the bombing again at the urging of his by then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and as it later turned out again lost an opportunity to force the communists to surrender. In a memoir written well after the war, North Vietnam's top general said that the bombing was so effective and so demoralizing to the north that if it had continued for only two more days the communists were prepared to surrender unconditionally.

Instead, they went back to the bargaining table where they consistently outmaneuvered the American negotiators until an agreement was reached. The handful of remaining American fighting forces were withdrawn, and some of America's POWs were brought home, but half again as many were left in communist hands, to rot and die in Laotian prisons.

In June 1973 the US Congress passed the Case-Church Resolution, cutting off all aid to South Vietnam, our ally, including all medical, economic, military and humanitarian assistance.

Two years later after Nixon resigned in disgrace, and then-President Gerald Ford who openly told the northern communists via the American media that the US would not intervene if the communists again invaded South Vietnam, the rebuilt communist forces did just that. In April 1975, alone, abandoned and nearly out of bullets, the South Vietnamese government fell, setting off a communist rampage in Southeast Asia that left nearly 3 million civilians dead and millions more displaced.

And now we have Barack Hussein Obama, once again setting the stage for a premature troop withdrawal, a resurgence of extremist Muslim forces, and offering our enemies a secure haven from which to rebuild their forces and to once again attack America and our allies, if we actually have any.

We have many similarities between Vietnam and Afghanistan. Our enemies employ vicious tactics including using civilians as shields, they have sanctuaries in neighboring countries - Paah Kiss Taaan this time - Laos and Cambodia in the Vietnam war, that our troops are prevented from attacking, and the war is fought more often based on political and media considerations rather than military strategy.

As in Vietnam our government announces troop buildups and coming offensive operations in advance, giving the enemy time to adjust. We have "pundits" who obviously have no clue about real military tactics saying the war is unwinnable - exposing their abject ignorance of military subjects, yet providing "advice" that is heeded by President Obama.

In that vein I heard some Democratic "pollster" on Fox and Friends this morning saying the same thing as Cronkite - the war is "unwinnable." I didn't catch the guy's name and I really don't care who he is because he obviously is a Walter Cronkite wannabe who wants to go down in history as the man who convinced Obama to lose Afghanistan.

Yet we still are winning.

So-called experts are now arguing over what is the correct number of troops to bring home. That is irrelevant!

The issue is that by announcing an intention to disengage, Obama - who is doing this for political reasons just as Nixon did - is signaling a weakness in our political willpower. He is giving hope where there should be unrelenting, ceaseless attacks that kill and demoralize the enemy force, nothing less.

The war in Afghanistan is being won just as the war in Vietnam was being won. But once again the media is reporting it as being lost or at least unwinnable.

But consider this my media acquaintances - eventually, historians are going to realize that the American media was complicit in the deaths of some 3,000,000 southeast Asians slaughtered by the communists after the fall of Saigon, Phnom Penh and Vientiane, and those who took part will be forever branded as traitors to humanity.

And eventually, a withdrawal from Afghanistan when we are on the cusp of victory - military commanders on the ground there say they need about two years to wrap it up - will result in a resurgence of the same kind of extremism that was exhibited by the communists in the mid- to late-1970s. So my question to the American media is: do you really want this for your legacy? Is this how you want to be remembered?

As the next generation of propagandists who encouraged the slaughter of untold numbers of innocents - again? Think it over.