Desert Storm - The Ground War

On this day, 24 February, in 1991, I was working at the machine shop.  The radio news broke in over the "Classic Rock" music we listened to.  (Believe me, those songs were nowhere near as "classic" then as they are now -- ahem, oldies station!, ahem -- about as "classic" as a fuzzy half-pint of cottage cheese forgotten in the back of the refrigerator.) The news report gave sketchy information about major ground action launched from Kuwait into Iraq. 

I remember my stomach being in knots.  Was this going to be "another Vietnam" -- i.e., "quagmire" -- as the media hoped insisted?  Or would it be another Grenada? 

The armed pacification of Iraq was stopped short by Sec. Def. Colin Powell with the okay of President George H. W. Bush.  But then of course we had to go back (March 2003 under President George W. Bush) and dig Saddam Hussein  out of his hole (December 2003).  One thing led to another, until the petulant man-child light-bringer psychopathic malignant narcissist  President Barack Obama pulled out the remaining U.S. troops, even in the absence of a status of forces agreement with the free government of Iraq (December 2011).

And then came "insurgency" and ISIS. 

So the 1991 invasion turned out not to be a quagmire nor a Grenada.  But it is looking like it is turning into another Vietnam after all.  Having won the military conflict, having established and seen the beginnings of a free republic, the Democrats have once again sold out a victory purchased with priceless blood.  In Vietnam: Communism, the killing fields, slavery and misery.  In Iraq: Islamo-Socialism, the killing fields, slavery and misery. 

I HOPE that is not the final conclusion. 

Tet 1968

On 26 February 1968, the city of Hue in Vietnam was declared secure by allied pro-democracy forces after nearly a month of the communist  “Tet Offensive.”  The communist defeat also came the day before Walter Cronkite blandly declared, “We are mired in stalemate.”

The United States military won the war in Vietnam by prevailing against communist aggression in every campaign. President Nixon in 1973 negotiated an honorable treaty from a position of strength, and handed the peace to the citizens of that Vietnam, with the understanding that the United States would stand with them against communism, including ongoing supply of material aid.  The funding for that material aid was yanked like a rug from under the feet of the people of Vietnam by the Democrats in Congress.  A downward spiral ended with the communist 1975 spring offensive and the fall of Saigon 30 April 1975.
 
It wasn’t my fault — I wasn’t even voting age yet. 

I blame the Walter Cronkites.