Deja Vu All Over Again
Yesterday, in a speech to the VFW, the President stated that leaving Iraq now would lead to the same type of disaster that leaving Vietnam did. He said that Vietnam was a "war worth fighting" (although not by him or VP Cheney) and by implication so is Iraq. Wow.
During Vietnam, supporters of the war told us that if we left Vietnam the dominoes of Malaysia and Indochina would fall. They did not. In fact, those countries thrived. Vietnam is now a stable country that our own President visited. So the doomsday scenario was wrong then and there is reason to be skeptical of the doomsday scenario we are presented with now.
Bush also made mention of the "killing fields" of Cambodia. After Vietnam, the brutal Khumer Rouge took control of Cambodia and killed millions. That massacre was not a consequence of our leaving Vietnam. Rather, it was a consequence of our massive carpet bombing of Cambodia, which destabilized that country and allowed Pol Pot to gain popularity. The same could be said for Iraq. Our invasion produced a power vacuum we did not replace, as a result we have strengthened the hands of Iran perhaps Syria, and Al Queda in Mesopotamia.
There is also a critical difference in why and when we entered both conflicts. We entered Vietnam in an attempt to shore up the French colonial government. By the time we escalated the war, Vietnam was already divided between North and South. The North was determined to annex the South and the South was fighting a Viet Cong insurgency. The country was already in chaos. By contrast, Iraq had a government that we toppled. Bottom line -- in Vietnam there was already a civil war raging and we effectively picked the losing side. The North would have likely succeeded regardless of our participation. In Iraq, we created the conditions for the civil war. No invasion, no civil war.
What are the possibilities if we leave Iraq? Continued bloodshed among sunnis and shia under the watchful eye of Iran and Syria. (Exactly waht is happening now.) Or, maybe with no more Americans left to shoot at, Iraqis will stop shooting at each other and try to create an independent state. Perhaps they will realize that unless they stabilize their country, they will become a wholly owned subsidiary of their neighbors. In other words, maybe if we stop adding gasoline, the fire may calm down.
What are the consequences of staying in Iraq? We would be an occupying Army in an Arab land for the next generation. Occupying armies are targets and expensive targets at that. More over, occupying armies tend to undercut your stature as the leader of the free world. Remember that we had over 500,000 soldiers in Vietnam. We dropped napalm on Vietnam and unloaded a greater tonnage of bombs than we did in WWII. If we follow a similar course in Iraq -- increased air strikes, biger prison camps, more Willy Pete -- every jihadist, islamist, and nogoodnik in the Middle East would have an excuse to sound the battle cry and our image as a rapacious foreign power would be reinforced. Even so called moderate Arab states would have to act againsts us. Further shockwaves would run through Lebanon and the ocuupied territories. (Would you like an amped up replay of last summers Isreal/Hezbollah conflict?) And, of course, the body count on both sides would continue to climb.
But that does not seem to bother anyone.
(By the way, although I usually disagree with him, kudos to the National Review's Jonah Goldberg for just admitting that this whole thing is about national pride.)
During Vietnam, supporters of the war told us that if we left Vietnam the dominoes of Malaysia and Indochina would fall. They did not. In fact, those countries thrived. Vietnam is now a stable country that our own President visited. So the doomsday scenario was wrong then and there is reason to be skeptical of the doomsday scenario we are presented with now.
Bush also made mention of the "killing fields" of Cambodia. After Vietnam, the brutal Khumer Rouge took control of Cambodia and killed millions. That massacre was not a consequence of our leaving Vietnam. Rather, it was a consequence of our massive carpet bombing of Cambodia, which destabilized that country and allowed Pol Pot to gain popularity. The same could be said for Iraq. Our invasion produced a power vacuum we did not replace, as a result we have strengthened the hands of Iran perhaps Syria, and Al Queda in Mesopotamia.
There is also a critical difference in why and when we entered both conflicts. We entered Vietnam in an attempt to shore up the French colonial government. By the time we escalated the war, Vietnam was already divided between North and South. The North was determined to annex the South and the South was fighting a Viet Cong insurgency. The country was already in chaos. By contrast, Iraq had a government that we toppled. Bottom line -- in Vietnam there was already a civil war raging and we effectively picked the losing side. The North would have likely succeeded regardless of our participation. In Iraq, we created the conditions for the civil war. No invasion, no civil war.
What are the possibilities if we leave Iraq? Continued bloodshed among sunnis and shia under the watchful eye of Iran and Syria. (Exactly waht is happening now.) Or, maybe with no more Americans left to shoot at, Iraqis will stop shooting at each other and try to create an independent state. Perhaps they will realize that unless they stabilize their country, they will become a wholly owned subsidiary of their neighbors. In other words, maybe if we stop adding gasoline, the fire may calm down.
What are the consequences of staying in Iraq? We would be an occupying Army in an Arab land for the next generation. Occupying armies are targets and expensive targets at that. More over, occupying armies tend to undercut your stature as the leader of the free world. Remember that we had over 500,000 soldiers in Vietnam. We dropped napalm on Vietnam and unloaded a greater tonnage of bombs than we did in WWII. If we follow a similar course in Iraq -- increased air strikes, biger prison camps, more Willy Pete -- every jihadist, islamist, and nogoodnik in the Middle East would have an excuse to sound the battle cry and our image as a rapacious foreign power would be reinforced. Even so called moderate Arab states would have to act againsts us. Further shockwaves would run through Lebanon and the ocuupied territories. (Would you like an amped up replay of last summers Isreal/Hezbollah conflict?) And, of course, the body count on both sides would continue to climb.
But that does not seem to bother anyone.
(By the way, although I usually disagree with him, kudos to the National Review's Jonah Goldberg for just admitting that this whole thing is about national pride.)
posted by Jack Reed at 9:59 AM
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