The Quiet Conservative May 29, 2007
Iraq and Vietnam
From the start of the Iraq invasion the left and the Democratic Party has portrayed our continued
fight there as another Vietnam. I disagreed and at first I was immensely irritated at the lack of
honesty in the comparison. Week after week of listening to pundits speak of the US lost in a
quagmire left me discouraged that any of them had the sense God gave a goose. In the first Gulf war
at the initiation of ground conflict the vaunted Iraqi battle hardened military went from being the
fourth largest army in the world to the second largest army in Iraq. All this took place in 100 hours
and one of the main reasons we stopped attacking them was that killing them wasn't even
challenging. This Iraqi army that battled the Iranians for ten years, evaporated before us.
But the press ignored this. The dire predictions from the mainstream press continued with the next
conflict. In 2002 with a much smaller invasion force the pundits again spoke of disaster right up until
the tanks were running through the streets of Baghdad, and the statue of Sadam was being pulled
down. Without shame the press woke up each new day erasing the past errors to push the new
message of doom. Every car bomb explosion, every suicide attack reinforced our perception that we
were now mired in a war we could not win. Just like Vietnam after Tet. Under their constant
drumbeat of civil war and quagmire and failure and retreat I began to understand that Iraq is exactly
like Vietnam. I admit I was 100% wrong. In fact Iraq isn't just like Vietnam. Iraq is Vietnam.
If you stopped any person on the street, preferably one that went to a public school, and asked them
if America ever lost a war, they would reply: ”Vietnam”. If you pick any one of a number of movies
put out by Hollywood, they would all have their characters describe Vietnam as the war we lost. But
did you know we didn't lose that war? We redeployed. Our ground troops left Vietnam in 1972.
Vietnam fell to the Communists in 1975.
Vietnam was always a battle in the larger cold war. The North Vietnamese received direct aid from
Russia and China and attempted to take the South the same way they tried to take South Korea in
the 1950’s. In both wars the Migs flying against our aircraft had Russian pilots killing our airmen.
On the ground our troops fought and won every major battle against the Northern forces. The now
famous Tet Offensive (portrayed in the movie Full Metal Jacket) wasn't the big victory for the
communists it was portrayed to be. In fact at the time it was reported as a disaster and a huge loss
for the Viet Cong. After Tet the US adopted new counter insurgency tactics that all but finished off
the insurgency. Now, however, this is portrayed as the point of when we lost the war. The mantra
of pulling our troops out was the drum beat that is now eerily echoed again by the left. A recent
Atlantic Monthly published the opinion of ’why don’t we just declare victory and come home.’
Vietnam redux. After we left in 1972 the North immediately violated the peace accords and
invaded. They were mauled and sent packing by the South Vietnamese with the aid of US
airpower. South Vietnam held its own for three more years. Rather than the myth of a US war, the
Vietnamese held their own against the Communists.
The North failed in their invasion. With our troops now effectively ‘redeployed’, it took the
Democratic Congress to defeat South Vietnam by cutting off any aid and military support. Deprived
of weapons and ammunition, when the Communists invaded again in 1975 the South had little to
fight back with. The North Vietnamese were, of course, still receiving their aid from Russia. What
the Communists couldn't do, the Post Watergate Democrat Congress did. After this came the boat
people fleeing for their lives, the reeducation camps, and torture. Loss of control in all of Southeast
Asia brought Cambodia down to the killing fields and border wars between Vietnam and Cambodia,
then Vietnam and China. Millions died in the name of Socialism and I have yet to hear of a single
Democrat of that era ever apologize.
There is more. How we fought Vietnam was often decided by Democratic politicians in
Washington, not military officers in the field. The Rolling Thunder air campaign was a Democratic
White House invention. Russian missile sites and Russian supply vessels went unmolested because
of the political implications. It wasn't until the final months of our involvement when the North
Vietnamese reneged on the POW return, that the US under a Republican President finally engaged in
strategic air power. Two separate B-52 bombing campaigns (called Linebacker One and Linebacker
Two) hit the North the way they should have been hit from the beginning. These two campaigns
brought the entire North to its knees. They quickly they lived up to the repatriation of our POWs.
So now you know we didn't lose Vietnam, we redeployed.
The modern incarnation of Democrats are following the same book. Some, like Senator Kennedy,
are the same Democrats. Here is what they propose. They want to bring our troops home without
finishing the mission. They want to leave Iraq to the influence of Iran and Syria. They want to
defund the mission. They want to declare victory and leave. They want to declare it a civil war and
ignore Iran’s funding of the insurgency. They want to ignore the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in
Iraq operating as special forces in command of insurgents. They want to ignore IED’s made in Iran
being used in Iraq to kill our service men. They want to impose restrictions on how our men fight by
instituting rules of engagement they developed in Washington. They want to ignore Al Qaeda
terrorists all together.
Just like the fight in Vietnam was just a battle of the cold war, Iraq is just a battle in the War on
Terror. The Left didn't want us to win the cold war, now they don’t even want to admit there is a
new war. Presidential candidate John Edwards claims there is no war on Terror. It is just something
to scare us. Of course Mr. Edwards is a Democrat candidate for President.
Life rarely gives you a second chance to fix a mistake. Vietnam was lost to Communism but slowly
free market forces are turning that country back to freedom. But the millions lost and the
generations enslaved cannot be retrieved. Socialism and Communism offered nothing but despotism
and death for those people. That is why socialism and communism never can last.
We cannot go back. But we can learn from that mistake and not repeat it. Iraq isn't lost and it isn't
a quagmire. Twenty eight million people voted for their freedom and their form of government.
They need help keeping that government and freedom from the outside harmful forces of Al Queda,
Iran and Syria. We need to stand with those people and look beyond the present. What if we did
what the left wanted and declared victory and left? Turkey would invade the peaceful and
prosperous Kurdish North as they see it as a threat with their own Kurdish minority. Syria is ruled
by the Baath Socialist Party, the same party as Saddam Hussein. They would fund the Sunni
minority in an effort to reestablish political control over the Shia majority. Iran, which has been the
major backer of terrorism in Iraq and the primary killer of US forces would come in to set up a
puppet government in their efforts to expand control of the Middle East. Now they would control
most of the oil coming from the region and they would be in a position to threaten the rest of the
region. Such a strategic threat could bring our economy down in a way that dwarfs 9/11.
Iran also will continue to develop nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them to the continental
United States and Europe. We are countering this threat with the building of a missile shield. The
much ridiculed “Star Wars” efforts of the Reagan era are bearing fruit no thanks to the left. Missile
interceptors from the Patriot on up to airborne lasers to shoot down missiles in flight are the result of
decades of development. All ferociously opposed by Democratic lawmakers. Even today with a
clear and present threat the Democratic led Armed Services Committee is defunding the missile shield
program. They recently cut funds allocated to bases in Poland that could shield Europe from Middle
Eastern nukes.
After Vietnam the United States fell into a period of self doubt. We were constantly found
incompetent and incapable on everything. It seemed no one was more surprised than us when we
handled the First Gulf War so quickly and professionally. Like slowly waking up from a bad dream
we found our strength again. Our period of malaise was over. Now, with the war in Iraq won, we
are struggling with the peace while a new nation, beset by outside terrorist forces, attempts to gain its
feet. With this next election we face a decision no less important than we faced at the end of
Vietnam. We can find ourselves with another country lost and refugees streaming to safety, or we
can find ourselves ensuring that freedom does not die, but blazes on high for all in the Middle East to
see. Iraq is Vietnam. But we have the chance to make a different and better decision as to its fate.