Victor Davis Hanson had an excellent piece in yesterday’s Washington Post about why Vietnam is not the proper analogy for the war in Iraq.
America’s most contentious war is being freely evoked to explain the “quagmire” we are supposedly now in. Vietnam is an obvious comparison given the frustration of asymmetrical warfare and savage enemies who escape our conventional power. But make no mistake, Iraq is not like Vietnam, and it must not end like Vietnam. Despite our tragic lapses, leaving now would be a monumental mistake — and one that we would all too soon come to regret.
If we fled precipitously, moderates in the Middle East could never again believe American assurances of support for reform and would have to retreat into the shadows — or find themselves at the mercy of fascist killers. Jihadists would swell their ranks as they hyped their defeat of the American infidels. Our forward strategy of hitting terrorists hard abroad would be discredited and replaced by a return to the pre-9/11 tactics of a few cruise missiles and writs. And loyal allies in Eastern Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia and Japan, along with new friends in India and the former Soviet republics, would find themselves leaderless in the global struggle against Islamic radicalism.
Exactly. As Hanson points out, the biggest contrast between Iraq and Vietnam is that Vietnam was essentially a surrogate for the Cold War conflict between the United States and Soviet Union. Iraq, on the other hand, is on the front line of the war on terror which is, in reality and even if the Bush Administration does not want to admit it, a war on radical Islamic fascism.
The cost of leaving Vietnam was tragic in that it subjugated the people of South (and North) Vietnam to Communist tyranny, but it was a only a tactical defeat in the conflict with Communism. As Hanson points out, leaving Iraq would have far greater consequences and would make America more vulnerable to terrorism, not safer.
As Hanson points, a cut-and-run strategy does not bring peace:
After World War II, Germany, Italy and Japan (American troops are still posted in all three) proved to be success stories. In contrast, an unstable post-WWI Weimar Germany soon led to something worse than Kaiser Wilhelm.
After the Korean War, South Korea survived and evolved. South Vietnam, by contrast, ended up with a Stalinist government, and the world watched the unfolding tragedy of the boat people, reeducation camps and a Southeast Asian holocaust.
Present-day Kabul has the most enlightened constitution in the Middle East. Post-Soviet Afghanistan — after we ceased our involvement with the mujaheddin resistance — was an Islamic nightmare.
So we fool ourselves if we think that peace is the natural order of things, and that it follows organically from the cessation of hostilities. It does not. Leave Iraq and expect far worse tribal chaos and Islamic terrorism than in Mogadishu or Lebanon; finish the task and there is the real chance for something like present-day Turkey or the current calm of federated Kurdistan
(….)
There is no other solution to either Islamic terrorism of the sort that hit us on Sept. 11, 2001, nor the sort of state fascism that caused the first Gulf War, than the Bush administration’s easily caricatured effort to work for a third democratic choice beyond either dictatorship or theocracy. We know that not because of pre-9/11 neocon pipedreams of “remaking the Middle East,” but because for decades we tried almost everything else in vain — from backing monarchs in the Gulf who pumped oil and dictators in Pakistan and Egypt who promised order, to “containing” murderous autocrats like Saddam and ignoring tyrannous theocrats like the Taliban.
Precisely. We cannot leave the Middle East completely. It is simply too important to the world. We also cannot let things continue the way they have for the past 50 years. One of the reasons that the “Arab street” has been so susceptible to the message of men like Osama bin Laden is because they have been ruled by men like Saddam Hussein. Democracy may not be the solution to all of the problems in the Middle East, but it certainly can’t make things worse.
Read the whole thing.
