Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Iraq: Vietnam or Cambodia?

Here's Jeff Jacoby with "The consequences of quitting Iraq":

Three decades ago, similar arguments were made in support of abandoning Southeast Asia to the communists. To President Ford's warning in March 1975 that "the horror and the tragedy that we see on television" would only grow worse if the United States cut off aid to the beleaguered government in Cambodia, then-Representative Christopher Dodd of Connecticut retorted: "The greatest gift our country can give to the Cambodian people is peace, not guns. And the best way to accomplish that goal is by ending military aid now." So Washington ended military aid, and Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge, which proceeded to exterminate nearly 2 million Cambodians in one of the ghastliest genocides of modern times.

On April 13, 1975, four days before the communist reign of terror began, Sydney Schanberg's front-page story in The New York Times was headlined: "Indochina Without Americans: For Most, A Better Life." In retrospect, perhaps such drastic misjudgments can be partly excused on the grounds that Americans didn't really know what horrors Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were capable of.

But there will be no such excuse for those who insist on pulling out of Iraq.
Although, truthfully, it won't be so much abandoning Iraq to Al Qaeda but to Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia and the sectarian violence brought on in a proxy fight.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

B.S. revisionism by Jacoby. The real argument then had nothing to do with humanitarian concerns for the fate of the poor souls we were napalming. It had everything to do with the fabled "domino theory" that would give a huge win to the forces of communism if we weakened. And how did that work out?

Anonymous said...

Dear Anonymous,

There were at least two “domino” countries that have suffered decades of communist oppression since we fled the area.

Because our fickle members of Congress decided to toss away the blood and sacrifice of a successful decade-long effort of our military by not providing the promised air and logistical support to our South Vietnamese allies the following occurred:

A third of the population of Cambodia died when we left the area and crazy commies took over.

Laos was effectively taken over by North Vietnam in 1975 and a communist state was imposed on the people their. Vietnam controls Laos to this day.

Millions of Vietnamese fled the country in boats rather than face the wrath of the invading communists - many fell victim to pirates. There are rumors of the slaughter, torture, and oppression our former allies suffered when we abandoned them.

I would say it didn’t work out too well. Luckily Ronald Reagan was committed to winning to Cold War and eventually we did, so no more dominos. If we get a Congress and President not committed to winning the struggle against radical Islam, what will stop the dominos in the Middle East from continuing to fall?

Anonymous said...

The concern about radical Islam is about terrorism. Most of the terrorists who have attacked the US and our allies over the past decade came from countries not under the control of radical Islamic groups. Most of the 9/11 terrorists originated in a country that is one of our biggest allies in the region. The Saudi Bin Laden is hiding in either Afghanistan or Pakistan, both of which are allied with the US against radical Islamic groups.

When a country tries to engage terrorists using a conventional force they tend to fail because terrorism is an asymmetric strategy designed to take the advantage away from the conventional force and give it to the terrorist. The IRA got the British Empire out of Ireland and formed the Irish Republic with this approach. The original Zionists did the same to create Israel. Jihadists were successful in getting the Russians out of Afghanistan (and the Russians did not encumber themselves with concerns about winning hearts and minds – they were willing to employ any means necessary). The Russians kept pouring troops and money into that quagmire until they were forced to leave. Like the jihadists in Afghanistan, Iraqi jihadists have the added benefit of assistance from outsiders.

Our goal is to protect the USA from terrorists, not to build nations. The notion that we can deploy our military around the world to create ethnically inclusive democratic countries in the absence of committed nationalist movements with similar ideologies to ours is the stuff of neoconservatives like Bill Kristol. This neoconservative mindset has somehow taken root with the Republican faithful and has supplanted the GOP’s traditional conservative approach to international affairs.

It is critical to recognize when errors have been made on the battlefield so that one can make a tactical withdrawal and fight in a more effective way to achieve the strategic goal. One does not honor the sacrifice of warriors by sending more warriors into an ill-conceived mission that will not succeed. By engaging terrorists with a conventional force we have made the error of allowing the opponent to define the field of battle. We have given them a tactical advantage that they will continue to have until we correct that error.

If we want to get at Islamic terrorists we need continued improvements in intelligence and law enforcement cooperation and coordination, both domestically and internationally. Muslims must unite in their rejection of violence and murder in the name if Islam and work to root it out of their communities.