Name that quote

January 9, 2007

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) gave a tremendous speech today in Washington, highlighting his new legislation that would require the president to get congressional authority before escalating the war in Iraq. He also offered a few White House quotes that bear repeating.

Here’s a good one:

“It became clear that if we were prepared to stay the course, we could help to lay the cornerstone for a diverse and independent [region]…. If we faltered, the forces of chaos would scent victory and decades of strife and aggression would stretch endlessly before us. The choice was clear. We would stay the course. And we shall stay the course.”

Here’s another:

“The big problem is to get territory and to keep it. You could get it today, and it’ll be gone next week. That is the problem. You have to have enough people to clear it, enough people to preserve what you have done.”

Care to guess who made these remarks and when?

They’re both from President Lyndon Johnson during the war in Vietnam.

As Kennedy explained, the first quote was LBJ in 1967, announcing the deployment of a hundred thousand more American soldiers to Vietnam. The second was LBJ in 1966, as he doubled our military presence in Vietnam.

The more things change, the more they stay the same….

This time we are not going to let the Democrats lose the war for America.

  • GWB as the next Lyndon Baines Johnson.

    Perhaps the lesson that the republic needs to take from those two men —

    NEVER ELECT A TEXAN.

  • This time we are not going to let the Democrats lose the war for America

    Obviously not. Republicans have clearly been Hell-bent on losing it themselves from the start.

    Thanks for the set-up. You made it too easy.

  • NEVER ELECT A TEXAN

    Hey now, let’s not get crazy here. I’ve just recently hit the eligible age and feel that ’08 might just be my year to shine. Let’s not spoil it with over-generalizations about people from my fine state.

    And frankly, I wish that Bush was another LBJ. Could you see Georgie deciding to not run in 2004? Unimaginable. Besides, the Bushes didn’t really belong here anyway. They were just yankees exploiting our natural resources and cool guy image. If only they’d go back…

  • I hope the conservatives don’t try to “win” Vietraq twenty years from now.

    Jeez, if they want eternal wars, why don’t they stick with the Reagan plan and pull another Grenada? Actually, no, protect the United States instead.

  • Thomas Sez:

    “This time we are not going to let the Democrats lose the war for America.”

    Using a Subtext Translator

    We’re sufficiently incompetent and stupid enough to lose it without your help!

    If you’re using the Royal WE then shouldn’t you be doing your patriotic duty and sign up? Why don’t you show us “wimps” how to fight then? Why is there not a line up of you big strong Repubs full of piss and vinegar demanding to be 11Bravos, 11Charlies and 11 Deltas in Iraq?

    Can you explain this me?

  • The Democrats cannot lose a war that has been lost long before they gained power. Bush will never “win” this. Not with paltry surges, not by our lonesome, not with stop-gap funding requests. If the Republicans had the balls to do things right from the beginning, we would have had this won years ago.

    Bush never had the guts to draft the appropriate number of forces to successfully win this conflict and he doesn’t have the cojones to mobilize business and industry to get on a war footing and tax the nation appropriately to fund it. Bush is afraid of angering his rich base by cutting into their personal bottom lines. The safety of this nation sold out for campaign contributions and higher poll numbers. What a pussy this Bush is.

  • Should be quotes around : We’re sufficiently incompetent and stupid enough to lose it without your help!

    Damn incompetence.

  • “This time we are not going to let the Democrats lose the war for America

    Obviously not. Republicans have clearly been Hell-bent on losing it themselves from the start.

    Thanks for the set-up. You made it too easy. ”

    well said!

  • Thomas, the minute the Titanic struck the iceberg, its fate was sealed. The minute Bush decided to stick his fist in the Iraqi tarbaby using 1/3 the number of troops his generals told him he would need, this war was lost.

    No amount of wishful thinking will help you avoid reality, unless you are clinically insane.

    Care to tell us whether you’re enlisting to go fight “the war for America”?

    If you’re too young, I won’t be surprised.

  • I like Sen. Kennedy’s new legislation, especially Section 1 (2) and (3) showing that the grounds for the Iraq War Resolution of 2002 no longer apply, even if they ever did. Where I get lost is in the “win” / “lose” debate. When fellow commenters put these words in inverted commas it suggests that they also don’t buy the underlying assumptions about their use.

    In any kind of game or competition the concept of winning or losing is fairly easy to grasp. Even in a war between people, where combating sides can be identified and the issue of contention can be described, “winning” and “losing” can have some meaning.

    In the case of Iraq, I’m lost — always have been, even before it started. I know this is because there is, and was, no enemy outside of the fetid fervid fabricated figments of zealous imaginations polluted by vested interests and hidden agendas maquerading as heroic defence of a threatened nation. Codswallop.

    Why do we keep pandering to their delusional myths? Why do we go on feeding, nourrishing and bolstering their lies, when they have been proved to be groundless, scurrilous deceptions? Why be seduced into using the language of combat when there is no enemy? Neither you, nor I, nor anyone can identify the ‘enemy’ in Iraq. I defy any commenter here, CB, or anyone, to identify and define the enemy in Iraq.

    By using concepts like “win” or “lose” glibly, we give them their goal, which is to sustain the illusion of a justified “war”. A life saved, a death avoided, an injury healed can be called a “win”. All else is loss and defeat.

    The only thing to “win” in Iraq is forgiveness, a decent withdrawal, reconstruction and cooperation. And that will be the hardest battle yet.

  • Here’s one important way that GWB differs from LBJ. When LBJ was trapped by the Vietnam War in 1968, he sacrificed his ambitions for what he thought was the good of the nation. In his speech of March 31, 1968, LBJ said (my emphasis):

    Through all time to come, I think America will be a stronger nation, a more just society, and a land of greater opportunity and fulfillment because of what we have all done together in these years of unparalleled achievement.

    Our reward will come in the life of freedom, peace, and hope that our children will enjoy through ages ahead.

    What we won when all of our people united just must not now be lost in suspicion, distrust, selfishness, and politics among any of our people.

    Believing this as I do, I have concluded that I should not permit the Presidency to become involved in the partisan divisions that are developing in this political year.

    With America’s sons in the fields far away, with America’s future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world’s hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office–the Presidency of your country.

    Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.

    But let men everywhere know, however, that a strong, a confident, and a vigilant America stands ready tonight to seek an honorable peace–and stands ready tonight to defend an honored cause–whatever the price, whatever the burden, whatever the sacrifice that duty may require.

    Thank you for listening.

    Good night and God bless all of you.

    What did GWB do in 2004? He spent most of each day wrapped up in campaign strategy, giving the same speeches over and over again, traveling the nation in seek of votes.

    I have been watching the PBS Vietnam series (based on Karnow’s book) this week, and the parallels to the Iraq war are eerie — and I haven’t even watched the episode on “Vietnamization” yet (here is Nixon in 1969).

  • I was never a fan of LBJ, not then, not now. However, pursuing my point about winning or losing, at least, in Vietnam, there was an approximation to an enemy: China.

    For sure, the US engineered an invitation from Ngo Din Diem, who was himself a Catholic puppet stooge (in a Buddhist country!), to send in “military advisors” — hence rendering some quasi-legitimacy to their presence. Military advisers (under LBJ, please note) eventually transmuted into military personnel, and finally into a full-scale military engagement. Despite its dubious origins, the American presence at that time in S.E. Asia had some legitimacy in the face of Chinese Communist expansion, repression and decimation. There was an enemy, and so there was meaning (albeit shaky) to the words “win” and “lose” in that context.

    None of this applies in Iraq. There was no invitation. There was no expansionist threat in the region. There were no vulnerable national frontiers. There was no legitimacy, either in intelligence or in law. It has been, from beginning till now, a shameful criminal escapade, on the design and deception of some deranged zealots who managed to trick and wheedle their way into supreme administrative power in the U.S.

    Though I was not, at the time, a supporter of American intervention in Vietnam, I am absolutely clear that there is next to no similarity to the present shambolic occupation of Iraq. Hence I maintain my challenge to anyone and everyone: either identify and define an “enemy” in Iraq, or cease using meaningless terms like “win” and “lose”.

    [P.S. Interesting how a dose of heady jargon deters a troll.]

  • I’ve lived in Texas since getting my first real job in the ’80’s, so I speak based on 20 or so years of close observation. I might make an exception for Bill Moyers; otherwise, I endorse #2’s dictum with mighty gusto.

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