Mattis Takes Swipe At Trump: 'I Earned My Spurs On The Battlefield'

I don't think any of todays generals have ever been in a real firefight

If an officer in the Army or Marine corps were have actually been in a firefight it would usually happen as a company grade officer, platoon or company commander.

Field grade officers (majors, Lt. Col and full bird colonels ) rarely find themselves in a firefight.

Mattis has the Marine Corps Combat Action Ribbon. The criteria of earning the Combat Action Ribbon has been dumbed down since the Vietnam War but back in the day you had to actually been in a real firefight, shooting at the guy who was shooting at you and trying to kill you before you killed him. Using a 105 mm howitzer didn't count.

During the Vietnam War when an officer was awarded the Bronze Star we called it the Officers Good Conduct Medal. Just about every officer was given one for just showing up in-country.
Enlisted men had to actually earn the Bronze Star.

 

You are correct that it was Nixon who started the pullout. I received my orders for Vietnam within a few days of Nixon announcing the beginning of the pullout. In fact there were units being pulled out by the summer of 1969 and they were home in time for Woodstock. But some of us got the Bob Hope show.

 

Nixon's plan was much like we have in Afghanistan. Our people out of combat roles but the US still giving logistical support and I believe, air cover. Congress simply cut off the money and the South fell. Now that might have happened anyway long term but that was what ended it when and in the way it did. It was not a benign takeover, a lot of people we had fought with side by side died so Democrats talking about honor and alliances have a history there.

 

I realize that you are trying to make the Vietnam withdrawal into a partisan crap attack but the Vietnam situation bright from the beginning was completely complicated. The most important factor right now is that Afghanistan, Syria, or Iraq is not the same as Vietnam.

Since I have a dog in the Vietnam fight being that I served and lost part of a leg there my views may be influenced by that.

You have to remember that even before Nixon was elected the American population was beginning to turn on the war. As the population turned on the war the Congress began to turn. Remember that it was Johnson a Democratic Party politician who got us big time into the war. Eisenhower did support the French with some aircraft we trans freed to the French. Yes of course Eisenhower was a Republican. Kennedy a Democratic president sent advisors. So the Vietnam war was bi partisan in the beginning and in the bitter end.

Nixon campaigned on a Secret Plan to end the war. Really dumb but many fell for that lie. I do give him credit in retrospect at least he did not lie and promise Mexico would pay to transport our troops and equipment home.

https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/nixons-secret-plan-to-end-vietnam-war-video

As early as 1971 -2 at least 7 Senators opposedthe Vietnam war.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Congressional_opponents_of_the_Vietnam_War

HERE IS THE UNTRUTH in you claim that Congress "cutoff aid" to Vietnam.

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/126150

Aid was not cut of but what did happen is that Nixon asked for 1.45 billion Congress gave him 700 million. A diet but totally bogus to say that aid was cut off. Remember that Nixon had already signed the peace treaty
on Jan 27, 1973 and the US military withdrawal started immediately.

My believe is that ARVN ( Army of Republic of VietNam) which had very few good fighting divisions and who perpetually had more moral needed us American there for them to resist North Vietnam. I strongly believe that their poor performance and with inbred corruption they would have collapsed even if we gave them $3 billion or twice what Nixon asked for.

I realize that you are not up for debate and that apparently you have a partisan agenda with b,arming the other side about the Vietnam war but WTH I stand firm on the fact that Souh Vietnam was going to fall sooner or later after we left.

 

Nope.

 

Life taught me this decades ago. Neither Trump nor Obama have much to do with any of this. Neither do words like liberal or conservative. Either a poster is someone who wants to understand the liberal or conservative view, or someone who wants to understand my or your view or the poster wants to understand nothing, but spout gross exaggerations and caricatures instead of doing either.

"It's quite funny and yet sad at the same time when liberals become super war hawks and want to invade every *******n country in the world fighting over worthless savages just because your fat girl lost the election" is a ridiculous statement of utter and total ignorance. Liberals have never been and never will be 'super war hawks'. They have never wanted to invade every country and don't today. On the other hand, frankly very few that I have met, would ever have advocated for the kind of bizarre foreign policy move that Trump just engaged in either. Hillary Clinton has not changed our views on much when she was secretary of state or candidate, and she did not change our views when she lost.

 

In America it is until Trumpov destroys our Constitution!

 

Democrats and Republicans then were able to work together from time to time but Democrats owned Vietnam. I stand by my claim that Democrats cut off the funding and your figures equate to just that. Now I already said that the fall may have been inevitable even with the promised funding but we will never know will we?

Sorry about your leg. I was in the Navy and was never under fire. When the Maddox and Turner Joy had their dustup we got there as fast as we could row. Not sure we fired our guns that deployment but the next one we did. Mostly we refueled rescue helicopters that picked up pilots who made it to the Gulf to ditch.

 

Well Congress should declare war on Turkey for their transgressions and get some armor on scene and drive those invaders back where they came from. That's unlikely because this Congress won't even vote up or down for an impeachment procedure. Nobody wants their name on the dotted line where it will likely come back to haunt them.

I have participated in discussions on liberal forums for years and pulling out like this is exactly what they wanted Bush to do and what Obama finally got around to doing. I know, I know, "Bush Deal...." and that was how Obama justified it when it failed and ISIS nearly took over the whole region. His hands were tied don' cha know.

What I believe is the Kurds are going to pull back some, Syria and Turkey will work out the border issue and ISIS will never again reach the power they held in their heyday. They may have some voice in whatever regional solution comes about. Trump will be proven right. If, that is, he doesn't cave and give in to left wing demands. Sometimes he does.

Now about Afghanistan.....

 

Thank you for serving also. Good to know that you are a Vet. I do not want to argue but just discuss. We may be talking semantics but to me cutting off aid means just that. So if we are to get at which party was really the one who voted for the reduction in aid we would need to go back and find the number of the bill and track down the record and see who voted how. For all practical purposes when we look back at history we see that as I said the country as a whole lost the will to fight that war.
We could blame one party or the other but the reality is that we signed the "peace treaty " and abandoned the South Vietnamese.

We also abandoned thousands of our brothers - the MIA s. That is what still pisses me off to this day. Who do we blame. Nixon? Frank Church? Javiiz? McGovern? Gene McCarthy? That female Turd Jane Fonda? The male Turd Abbie Hoffman? The National Guard guys who panicked and killed demonstrators who called the Guardsmen names? John MCCain for getting shot down and captured? Me for getting medivaced out and failing to complete my entire year of duty? Trump for faking bone spurs?

You see in retrospect the Vietnam War had many fathers but the withdrawal and abandonmen is an orphan.

At least you, me, and a few million other guys did our duty to our country and if we were not so old now if our country needed us we would be there again and Turds like Fonda and Hoffman would not stop us.

 

The CIA and Lyndon B. Johnson, who coordinated the lies about the Gulf of Tonkin incident so LBJ could go to war with Vietnam to punish the Russkis. Didn't work. The Vietnam War was nothing but a pissing contest.

 

I love that he refuses to call him "President Trump." It's just Donald Trump.

 

I wish there was a way to poll active military in a credible fashion. Or if someone knows of a way to find it, please let me know.

I have to think this latest act of cowardice by Trump has hurt his approval with that sector of population.

 

Proving that she is wrong is not proving a negative.

 

I never heard of insidesources.com, but it does appear fairly well researched. I did some more digging and I double backed on your article which, again, is a fine source. I would note a couple of things - for starters, your article notes that his 1-Y designation was one of five deferments, but does not specify that the previous four were for college deferments. It also does not reference any instance where Biden made reference to his asthma as a teenager, which is something that he did in 1987. Both of those claims come from this source: https://www.newsday.com/news/nation/biden-got-5-draft-deferments-during-nam-as-did-cheney-1.884250

I still believe that Trump faked his bone spurs designation to avoid the draft. I do not believe that Biden did the same in regards to his asthma.

 

We had this discussion during the smolett case. How did that work out for you?

 

Not correct in your application of the term pissing contest. A pissing context is when two or more gebonees run their traps, brag, exaggerate and nothing significant results. In Vietnam we fought a war with a Soviet vassal state. Americans died , sadly Russians did not die.

The Gulf of Tonkin went down when I was in high school. Except for politics, history, and geography geeks most everyone else in my graduating class did not know what a Vietnam was. At my fifth year reunion which I barely got back for we had four guys from our class who were killed that we comerated.
Back on topic, we will
Probably not know for sure what exactly went down with the Bay of Tonkin until after we are dead the document will be unclassified by Presidentress Amy Juanita Lalakeisha 'Johnnie' Kapustastnska-Goldstein.

 

You apparently did not learn the lesson, so let's try again.

If it is possible to present pieces of evidence that she is wrong (i.e. an x-ray of Trump's bonespurs), then you are proving that she is wrong and thus, you are not proving a negative.

 

Actually, it's for her to prove that Trump didn't have bonespurs, not for me to prove he did.
All she has to do is post her father medical records concerning Trump. But she won't...

As for learning my lesson... You must have failed every class my pretending-to-be lawyer friend.
You played the same game in the Jussie thread and you were pretty much bitchslapped senseless there. Are you asking for a second serving?