Saturday - January 27, 2007

The Sequel

With the Leftist Moonbats marching on Washington today, I’ve been surfing around cyberspace getting glimpses of their freakish festivities. While doing so I had a hallucinatory experience. I suddenly felt myself transported back in time to 1970. There was Jane Fonda in the middle of a crowd of anti-war protesters, and scrawled signs filling the air with all too familiar slogans and the media trumpeting the deaths of 6 or 10 or 20 US soldiers on the battlefield.

The vision refused to fade away and allow me to return to 2007. Then I realized I had not been time-traveling. This was 2007, not 1970. I suddenly wanted to puke. Literally. The sequel to the Vietnam War was following the same formula. Hollywood knows that for a sequel to be successful it has to follow the same basic formula as the original. What we are seeing now on the big screen is “Vietnam: Part II, The Sandbox”.

There are several significant differences however. First, the Viet Cong never attacked the US directly and never even came close to blowing up any major buildings inside our country. Second, the VC didn’t have billions of petrodollars and a worldwide network of religious fanatics backing them - all they had was their puppet-masters in Moscow. Third, the North Vietnamese had only a local goal - to unite their country, albeit under a communist regime that went against the Truman doctrine of “containment” of communism. On the other hand, radical Muslims and the Wahabbi movement have already spread their poison to several countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia and sleeper cells in nearly every major country - including here in the US.

These differences are significant purely for one simple reason: this time the enemy we face is intensely stronger, more dangerous, more ambitious, better financed and more determined to destroy our way of life. In other words, this time we face an escalation by several orders of magnitude of the Vietnam conflict. Yet there are still American citizens who are following the same game plan: “peace at all costs”, “the wrong war”, “bring the troops home NOW”.

These people refuse to believe their own eyes and ears and understand the situation we find ourselves in today is much, much worse that it was in 1970. What is going to happen if/when the next sequel (“Vietnam: Part III, Nuclear Armageddon”) comes to a theater near you. If the escalation continues what will we see? Major cities being wiped off the face of the Earth with nuclear weapons smuggled across our porous Southern border? Millions of Americans wiped out in a terrible instant of blinding hatred?

What will the peaceniks say then? My guess is they will say, “See! We told you this would happen if you went into Vietnam and Iraq?” The murderers will be pardoned in their eyes and all blame will reside with “neo-cons” and whoever is in charge in Washington at the time. Then they will start scheduling another march on Washington even before all the bodies of millions of dead Americans are buried.

This sequel sucks but the peaceniks are still buying tickets. The next one will be a boxoffice bonanza unless we the movie-going (voting) audience decide to force a rewrite of the script. Iraq may already be lost if this screenplay follows the formula. Fred Barnes, editor of The Weekly Standard goes into a little more detail below. Grab your buttered popcorn, Raisonets and jumbo Coke and settle in for the rest of the show. I already know how it is going to end but I won’t spoil it for you ...

Not This Time
-- by Fred Barnes

A new general, David Petraeus, is taking over in Iraq with a credible new strategy, counterinsurgency. Four decades ago, General Creighton Abrams became the American commander in Vietnam, also with a new strategy. It called for taking and holding the villages and hamlets of South Vietnam.

In a word, it was counterinsurgency, and it worked. Now in Iraq, Petraeus has as good a chance of success, starting with the pacification of Baghdad, as Abrams had. And the painful lesson of Vietnam applies in Iraq: Don’t give up when victory is at hand.

Those in Congress who advocate retreat in Iraq refuse to acknowledge this lesson. And they may have their way, whatever Petraeus accomplishes. With their calls for troop withdrawals and fund cutoffs and their antiwar resolutions, they have put America on a slippery slope in Iraq. And we know where it leads: to defeat while victory remains quite possible. This happened in six descending steps in Vietnam, and today’s coalition in Congress of antiwar Democrats and vacillating Republicans has started pushing us down that dangerous slope.

The first step is, when the war goes poorly, public support falls and politicians dramatically increase their criticism. In Vietnam, this occurred after the Tet offensive in 1968. In Iraq, it occurred gradually at first, then rapidly once violence and chaos in Baghdad flared over the last year.

Step two consists of growing criticism of the foreign government that America is supporting. In Vietnam, the target was the government of President Thieu. In Iraq, it’s the elected government of Prime Minister Maliki. Senator Hillary Clinton, for instance, insists Maliki has failed to seek reconciliation between Shia and Sunnis--that is, a political solution. “I do not support cutting funding for American troops, but I do support cutting funding for Iraqi forces if the Iraqi government does not meet set conditions,” she said two weeks ago.

The third step involves resolutions and threats. This week, the Senate will take up resolutions opposing the addition of 21,500 troops to Iraq, a buildup Petraeus says is indispensable to his plan to secure Baghdad. If resolutions fail to force President Bush to begin winding down the war, Senator Joe Biden promises the Senate will take stronger measures. In the Vietnam era, congressional critics passed limits on funding.

The fourth step--the one we’re approaching now in Iraq--would put restrictions on troop deployments. In 1970, the Cooper-Church amendment sought to bar funding for any American troops in Cambodia, a sanctuary for invading forces from North Vietnam. Today, Hillary Clinton would put a cap on the number of American soldiers in Iraq. Webb, echoing many others in Congress, said withdrawals should begin “in short order.”

Step five is the last resort of war opponents: a fund cutoff over the protests of the president. In Vietnam, it came in 1974, after American combat troops had been withdrawn, but with the United States still supporting and funding the South Vietnamese government. What’s striking is how much the congressional majority then resembles today’s antiwar coalition, mostly Democrats but with more than a handful of Republicans. True, only a minority in Congress favors a cutoff today, but that bloc could grow.

Step six: the collapse. In Southeast Asia, it led to the deaths of more than two million people in Vietnam and Cambodia after the Communist triumph. The members of Congress whose actions prompted the collapse expressed no shame or embarrassment for having betrayed allies. And practically no one held them accountable. Their perfidy was greeted with silence.

- Read Fred’s entire editorial at the WEEKLY STANDARD ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 01/27/2007 at 02:19 PM   
Filed Under: • Editorials • Iraq •  
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