Compare Iraq to Vietnam? Bet to It!
Commentary by Greg Lewis / NewMediaJournal.US
August 20, 2006
It's fashionable for those on the left of the political
spectrum to compare our involvement in Iraq to Vietnam. The problem is
that when they do so, they put their own political spin on the comparison,
using the same words they used in the 1970s to describe what's going on
now in Iraq. When seen through the leftist filter of terms such as "quagmire"
and "unwinnable war," it might indeed seem as though we are
once again bogged down in a conflict half a world away whose outcome promises
only negative results.
The reality is, however, that it
was leftist communist sympathizers, including Democrats and newscasters
and political wanna-bes such as John Kerry (it's not coincidental that
the Democrats put forth in John Kerry a Presidential candidate whose actions
during a time of war were arguably treasonous), who managed to frame the
debate more than 30 years ago. And they're attempting to frame the debate
on Iraq in the same terms today.
In fact, nothing could be further
from the truth. We lost the War in Vietnam in no small part because we
allowed ourselves to be swayed by the defeatism of the Left; we will stay
the course in Iraq precisely because we learned our lesson from Vietnam
and we will not let ourselves be sold the leftist-Democrat program, implemented
to such disastrous effect in Vietnam, of withdrawal and retreat and defeat.
For this reason, we should welcome
the Democrats' and their hard-left constituents' inaccurate characterizations
of the current mideast war as a chance to both correct the record on Vietnam
and reframe the War in Iraq. We should salute the analogy of the Vietnam
War to the current conflict in Iraq as providing precisely the opportunity
we've been seeking to demonstrate how the Left in America convinced us
to "lose" the War in Vietnam, and how to listen to them today
would be tantamount to political suicide.
Indeed, to elect Democrats even to
a majority position in the House of Representatives would be to open ourselves
up to an attack from within that would make what Islamist terrorists are
capable of pale by comparison.
* * * * *
It can certainly be argued that Jimmy
Carter's election to the Presidency in 1976 was largely a response to
the perceived "immorality" of the Nixon administration; Carter
was, if nothing else, the illegitimate spawn of Watergate. But Carter's
election was also an ill-advised referendum on the Vietnam War. Never
mind that Richard Nixon capitulated to leftist Democrats in withdrawing
our troops and sealing the ignominious fate of South Vietnam, a fate which
included the brutal murder of tens of thousands of its citizens by the
North Vietnamese. The Left has never flinched where innocents are murdered
in the interest of advancing their agenda.
No, the Left took its revenge a giant
step further, electing in Jimmy Carter a President who sold American interests
down the river from Iran in the Middle East to the Panama Canal in Central
America. Wherever he managed to implement his disastrous vision, Carter
made sure that American interests, and those of freedom-loving people
around the world, were put at dangerous risk. Indeed, Carter can legitimately
be called "The Father of Modern Islamist Terrorism" for his
part in overthrowing the government of the Shah of Iran and ceding it
to the murderous Ayatollah Khomeini.
* * * * *
For some four decades after World
War II we (the United States) were engaged in a "Cold War" against
the forces of international communism. We were drawn into military conflicts
in Korea and Vietnam in response to communist imperialist expansionism.
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev slammed his shoe on the podium from which
he was speaking and shouted at America, "We will destroy you!"
Iranian Premier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has declared, albeit somewhat less
theatrically, "We will drive Israel into the sea!" And let it
be clear that Israel is in this case a proxy for western democracy, the
United States in particular.
The international situation we confront
today presents nothing less than a stunning and instructive parallel to
that we faced some 60 years ago. If the enemy then was imperialist communism,
the enemy today is imperialist Islam. If the proxies of the enemy tended
half a century ago to take the form of nation-states, the enemy's proxies
today have morphed into what can be called "militia-states."
Such entities as Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, and Hamas are proxies for the forces
of imperialistic Islamist regimes (particularly Iran and Syria) in much
the same way the North Korean and North Vietnamese regimes were proxies
for imperialist communism half a century ago.
The parallels hardly end there. During
the 1960s and early '70s, there was a decidedly leftist, pro-communist
tint to the information an overwhelming majority of Americans received
via network television nightly news broadcasts. Walter Cronkite became
something of a grandfatherly figure, distorting for the advancement of
leftist ends in soothing yet authoritative tones the version of the war
that reached America's living rooms.
Today, the Big Five networks (they've
grown to include not only broadcast giants NBC, CBS, and ABC, but also
cable players CNN and MSNBC) spew much the same left-tinged cant as their
forbears generated three decades ago. The kicker is that today they
and the leftist agenda they support face a challenge from conservative
radio talk show hosts and conservative internet pundits, as well as the
lone beacon of light among cable news outlets, Fox News.
No longer does the tainted version
of events Americans are "allowed" to receive go unchallenged.
And that's precisely why the analogy between the Vietnam War and the War
in Iraq, while instructive, is ultimately not applicable.
Americans are no longer in the dark
with regard to the account of events they receive. No longer does the
Left dominate the narrative of what is happening in the world that reaches
the American public. If Dan Rather (breathes there a more audaciously
left-leaning purveyor of information than Rather . . . unless you include
his CBS predecessor Walter Cronkite, that is?) had had his way, we'd all
have swallowed the blatantly and shamelessly forged documents on which
Rather based his false assertions that our President had avoided service
in Vietnam through high-level shenanigans. As it was, Rather and his producer,
Mary Mapes, both unapologetic to the end, were summarily dismissed from
the CBS news team.
If nothing else, this episode characterizes
the differences between the War in Vietnam and the War in Iraq. In Vietnam,
we (the American citizens) were not allowed access to what was really
occurring on the ground. We received only a left-skewed version of that
war via a media hegemony already, even at that time, beholden to leftist
political interests.
And while today a similarly distorted
version of events of the War in Iraq is still perpetrated by the so-called
mainstream media, those of us who seek a less-biased account have many
more venues through which we can choose to view world events. It's no
longer the case that we're held prisoner to the leftist rendering of the
world that prevailed during the Vietnam era.
After Jimmy Carter ceded the political
(and moral, if you want to know the truth of Carter's leftist-relativist
agenda in this regard) high ground to murderous tyrants in the Middle
East, it was left to President Ronald Reagan to right the ship of state
through his insistence on "peace through strength." It was precisely
through the reinvigoration of the American spirit and the re-validation
of the American military that Reagan was able to effect the change in
the international political dynamic that led to the collapse of the Soviet
empire, the very enemy the Democratic left told us we could not defeat
only a decade earlier in Vietnam.
Today, after roughly a decade in
which a Democrat President (Bill Clinton) weakened the American military
and appeased through negotiation and military withdrawal the terrorist
forces that were even then planning their strategy and massing their military
strength for nothing less than an all-out assault on the west, we're faced
with an emboldened enemy, a terrorist movement that has direct support
from Iran and Syria (and indirect support from North Korea and Venezuela).
Throw in the fact that Israel's accommodationist Likkud Party Prime Minister,
Ehud Olmert, lacked the vision and will to use the 35 days granted Israel
to inflict truly devastating military losses on Hezbollah, and you've
got the makings of another Cold War.
The current Cold War is characterized
by an uncanny number of similarities to that of the one we waged during
the second half of the last century. First, we face any number of certifiably
insane national leaders. Where their names were Khrushchev and Mao and
Ho Chi Minh and Kim half a century ago, today they are Ahmadinejad and
Khomenei and Chavez and, uh, Kim (some things don't change).
And the aims of these wack-jobs are
virtually identical to those of their dictatorial predecessors: Destroy
western capitalist democracy; eliminate political and religious freedom
of choice; and impose on all of the people of our planet a murderous and
restrictive ideology that denigrates the values of love and creativity
and forgiveness and stifles the human spirit.
It is precisely this that our Islamist
enemy as did our communist foe in the last century seeks
to bring about. And it is precisely this against which we are waging a
war that has the most profound implications for our collective future.
Such long-term wars and make no mistake about it, we're engaged
in a very long-term war against Islamist terrorism and its tyrannical
cohorts require nothing less than a profound commitment to defend
the values and principles on which our nation, and western democracies
throughout the world, are founded.
It is precisely for this reason that we must not let down our guard. In
this case, the phrase "let down our guard" means that we must
not fall prey to a version of events similar in its leftist bias to the
one Walter Cronkite and his confederates managed to present with regard
to the American military effort during the Vietnam era.
The parallels between the Vietnam war and the War in Iraq are eerily similar.
It is up to us to analyze what we did wrong more than 30 years ago and
to apply the lessons we learn toward prevailing in the current conflict.
Among the most important things I
hope we have learned is not to listen to those on the left who would spread
a message of retreat and defeat. It is only through maintaining a strong
and vigilant military presence against our declared enemy, and not giving
in to the insistence of those on the left that we capitulate to Islamist
terrorism, that we will again prevail in the current "Cold War,"
this time against Islamo-Fascism.
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