Iraq & Viet Nam

As the Vietnam War escalated, the American stomach for it diminished. There was good cause for some of this. The war was being managed by politicians who feared pushing the USSR & China too far rather than by military men with the intent of winning a military victory. The cause of our original involvement was being questioned. Tens of thousands of Americans were killing and being killed for reasons that were debatable and with no real intent to win, but rather with the intent to fight the enemy to a position of stalemate.

What we did as a result was shameful. We are suffering today as a result of those decisions, both internally and internationally. We saved many American lives by pulling out of Vietnam when & how we did. But we did so after the North had been equipped by its allies to fight not South Vietnam, but the United States. Our pull out resulted in saving thousands of American lives and costing well over 3 million Vietnamese theirs.

Now Congress has voted to set a date for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.

The case for going to war was flawed. But as distasteful as it is, that no longer matters, because we went to war. In the process we destroyed a functioning, if brutal government. The war has been prosecuted badly. We have caused more chaos than was perhaps necessary, but we caused it. Perhaps Iraq was not the haven for anti-American terrorism we were led to believe. It is now. We have taken down the rule of law and created a training ground for terrorists. If we pull out now the results will be

1)We will convince the world that America can be defeated by tenacity. This will only serve to encourage more bloodshed in the future, because we will have taught our enemies that if they are brutal enough & hang on long enough, we will quit.

2)We will demonstrate that America can't be trusted to protect those who rely upon us. So don't expect any country to take our word that we will protect or defend them.

3) Whatever Iraq may have been before the war, we will leave it as a huge training camp for those who want to harm us. And we will have given those who emerge as victors in the civil war that will follow no reason to quell terrorist activities against the USA.

4)As in Vietnam, there will be greater bloodshed among the Iraqis because we will not be there to curtail it.

It is no longer a matter of whether we should have gone in. We went in. We broke it. We need to fix it.