Brenden Miniter on President Bush's upcoming prime-time speech aimed at bolstering public opinion on the War in Iraq:
We can hope that [President Bush] will mention Vietnam because that metaphor is getting hard to escape. Not because the U.S. is embroiled in a far off, unwinnable war that is somehow compromising the nation's moral character -- although convincing us of that is clearly the goal of the critics who never tire of using Abu Ghraib, Gitmo and the Patriot Act to claim the administration is tossing civil rights to the wind. Those were the conclusions drawn by the antiwar left in the late 1960s and early '70s and ended up being apt as the pressure caused the U.S. to retreat and betray our allies in Vietnam. This was the case even as on the ground, particularly after the Tet offensive in 1968, the communist forces were decimated by the American military. Rather the Vietnam metaphor is apt today because the U.S. is in a war it can win and is winning, if only those inside the Beltway would stop preferring defeat to victory and disgrace to honor.
@$%#!!! The Vietnam War ended more than 30 years ago, people. I am tired of fighting that old fight -- a fight that I wasn't even alive to witness!
As I've noted elsewhere, the only true understanding of how shameful that episode was for America was furnished by Cambodian Prince Sirik Matak to the American Ambassador, on the eve of the entrance of the Khmer Rouge into Phnom Pehn:
Dear Excellency and friend,
I thank you very sincerely for your letter and for your offer to transport me towards freedom. I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion.
As for you and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. You have refused us your protection and we can do nothing about it. You leave us and it is my wish that you and your country will find happiness under the sky.
But mark it well that, if I shall die here on the spot and in my country that I love, it is too bad because we are all born and must die one day. I have only committed the mistake of believing in you, the Americans.
Please accept, Excellency, my dear friend, my faithful and friendly sentiments.
Sirik Matak.
If we allow history to repeat itself, American liberals will again learn the wrong lesson: the shame that we will feel at the mess we will leave behind is not because we fought the wrong war at the wrong time, or because war is always wrong, but because we sold out millions of people to tryanny and bloodshed in a futile attempt to ameliorate the guilt of liberals and to bolster the political aspirations of a few Senators and Congressmen.
Think whatever you will about the wisdom and morality of this war, but be certain that the suffering of the Iraqi people as a result of "collateral damage" & the despicable treatment of terrorists, insurgents, and detainees at the hands of a few disturbed American soldiers, will pale before the wholesale slaugther that will ensue should we Americans abandon yet another people who have chosen liberty.
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