Nov 29 2007
Vietnam Revisited
Some time this past April Senator Reid declared that the war in Iraq is lost. Right around the same time House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was making her pilgrimage to the Mideast to encourage our enemies of our good intentions and to reassure them that they’ll be safe in their country from our meddling.
Despite General Petraeus’s good report on the Surge in September and the cascade of good news all across Iraq, the Democrats have stuck to their guns and maintain that the war is indeed lost. Shia militias and Sunnis are coming over to our troops in droves; actually working together and actively fighting Al Qaeda with us. Michael Yon had a very, very significant picture posted on his website of Muslim and Christian men erecting a Christian cross atop a church. Talk about a picture being worth a thousand words.
To these eyes, baby, that’s winning.
Obama said the following:
Mr. Obama on the surge (Blitzer: “I’ll put the same question to you: Is Gen. Petraeus’ strategy working?”): “There is no doubt that because we put American troops in Iraq - more American troops in Iraq, that they are doing a magnificent job, and they are making a difference in certain neighborhoods. But the overall strategy is failed, because we have not seen any change in behavior among Iraq’s political leaders. And that is the essence of what we should be trying to do in Iraq.”
And for the Democrats, the comments go downhill from there. So, what are we to make of this disconnect between our advances in Iraq and the Democrats’ ongoing assertion that the war is lost? It’s a flat contradiction of reality.
I don’t think this can be easily rationalized away. In fact, there is a very recent history precedent of this behavior from our Liberals. I am speaking, of course, of the Vietnam War.
On April 30, 1975 over forty years ago, the last chopper rose from the US Embassy in Saigon above a teeming mass of Vietnamese men, women, and children. It was a heartrending moment that need not have happened.
It isn’t often noted that the American military won every single battle and engagement against the North Vietnamese– and we did it on their home turf, in their jungle. Many people wanting to point to an American military defeat refer to the Tet Offensive. It was true that the attack caught us almost entirely by surprise and it rocked us on our heels. However, what passes by virtually unnoticed by the textbooks you read growing up was that the battle ended decisively in our favor.
We won overwhelmingly. Hands down.
And yet, the Democrats declared the war lost.
When Richard Nixon ascended to the Oval Office, he promised to hand off the war to South Vietnam’s ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam). Vietnamization it was called. And with proper funding and support, the plan worked. To everyone’s the astonishment, plan worked and South Vietnam held and stood independent and on their own two feet.
To avoid giving you a history lesson, Nixon expressed his “extreme annoyance and displeasure” at the North Vietnamese in the form of Operations Linebacker 1 and 2. We bombed every government building, every bridge, every bamboo stick that traverse a rice paddy. The result was a peace treaty, or more accurately the North Vietnamese signed their terms of surrender.
We won overwhelmingly. We won politically.
And yet, the Democrats declared the war lost.
Nixon, however, committed a egregious sin in winning the war in Vietnam. He proved the Liberals wrong, not simply with opulent words and pristine logic, but by stark naked reality.
So what did the Democrats do, they pulled the funding for South Vietnam to force it to collapse. And collapse it did. The Democrats and the media who supported them not only pulled the rug out from underneath the South Vietnamese government, they drove Nixon from the Oval Office right after he won his re-election in a landslide victory.
And with Iraq, they propose to do it again.
Victor Hanson wrote this last April.
Sometimes no comment is needed. So it was of Vietnam when victorious Col. Bui Tin later remarked that that the American Left was “essential to our strategy.” He elaborated to the Wall Street Journal: “Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9AM to follow the growth of the antiwar movement.”
And Tin added that anti-war activists, “Gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war.”
These anti-war activists were not just long-haired hippies with a whole lot of time to kill. The people who hold the balance of power in our government, the people who hold high offices are those anti-war activists back in the 1960’s and 1970’s. For instance, Hillary Clinton’s claim to fame among the Left is that she was the brains that brought down Richard Nixon.
Speaking as Vietnamese man, whose family had to flee South Vietnam in order to avoid being persecuted and/or thrown into death camps, what the Liberals propose is an outrage. Iraq is starting to stand on their own two feet. One paper report that “Iraqi civilian deaths per month have decreased accordingly, by more than two-thirds since last December.” Shiite and Sunnis are joining forces and are coming over to us in droves.
And yet the Democrats say this war is lost?
Something indeed is lost in this war. You can call it common sense. You can call it decency, civility or even sanity. But what we haven’t lost is this war.
We’re winning, and by God, we’ll win.