Bush asked [Archbishop Pietro] Sambi, [papal nuncio to Washington,] whether he had any ideas for winning the war. According to Catholic sources, the papal nuncio responded that the Vatican did not fight but only prayed.
--Robert Novak, Columnist
Those who believe the West faces a growing struggle against Islamic extremism see Iraq as the battle’s crucial front. To the rest, other issues are more important, more immediate.
There seem three views on U.S. involvement in Iraq:
1. We never should have gone in; we should be out yesterday. Vietnam already taught us this! What’s left to learn? The soul of the Democratic Party is wrapped around such a view. To progressives, the U.S. has far better priorities. Elective wars overseas steal food out of the mouths of children and the elderly, and play to a military-industrial complex that in order to thrive, despoils the environment and kills people. Elective wars are so wrong that it is right to root for U.S. military defeat.
2. There are no permanent enemies, only permanent interests. Considering what truly mattered to the U.S., the cost of Vietnam was out of proportion to any possible gain. Kissinger covered our retreat by re-ordering priorities away from Southeast Asia. If we could get along with China, why worry if Saigon went Communist? Kissinger’s realpolitik finds its current face in the Iraq Study Commission’s James Baker, who would have courting Iran and Syria be the 2007 version of Kissinger’s wooing of Mao and Brezhnev.
3. If we cave to extremism now, it will get worse later. This is how FDR and Churchill saw World War II, and how Reagan viewed the Cold War. It’s Bush’s view of Iraq today. Now fighting to win is much in disfavor. Yet some military historians argue that the U.S. Army under Gen. Abrams turned the Vietnam war around after Tet 1968, only to be undermined by politicians and media-shaped public opinion. And today, it’s not the U.S. military’s fault that Baghdad remains insecure. Two recent arguments for having the U.S. military take over Iraq come from the Hoover Institution’s Shelby Steele, and the American Enterprise Institute’s Reuel Marc Gerecht.
We once had generals who fought to win (George S. Patton, pictured). Now diplomats help us retreat with honor.
2 comments:
Hi Dad,
It takes particular sort of think-tanky disconnect from the costs of war to argue, as you and President Bush now have, that the problem with the Vietnam War was that not enough people died in it.
When I look at Vietnam today, at its thriving market economy and growing freedoms, the obvious conclusion to me is that we, Americans, have finally and truly won the Vietnam war - 30 years after we stopped killing the people of Vietnam.
Similarly, I would argue, we will never win the war in Iraq by killing the people of Iraq. If we withdraw, then Iraq has a chance. Otherwise, they (and we) are lost.
Aloha,
Derek
I am always wary of pieces which begin, "There seem to be three (or four, or five) . . ." It predetermines the parameters of dialogue. Be that as it may,. . .
I would agree we probably won the VN war, but there are several thousand south Vietnamese who would reject that view. At any rate, it is possible, though wholly unprovable, that had we been smarter the outcome would have been different, ie a victory which would have looked like one, as opposed to . . .
I think we went into VN for good, understandable reasons. (Iraq is different.) We made horrible mistakes at the outset, the most critical in overthrowing Diem. Nixon managed to stabilize things, but then past mistakes, public support which evaporated as a consequence of these mistakes and wholly unrealistic and untrue statements and Watergate doomed the effort. Who knows?
My final point is that I am not at all convinced that radical Islam is an existential threat to the US, as was Nazism or Communism before. This mistaken assumption on the part of many does not argue for precipitous withdrawal, but does serve to further erode popular support for a long term effort. This erosion of support may prove to be the most damning analogy to VN, for just as we hold out the promise of getting it right after getting it wrong for so long, we crown our effort with precipitous withdrawal.
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