Iraq is not Vietnam (Why we need to stay)

A quick note to all of my fellow progressives: please stop comparing Iraq to Vietnam. They are not the same, although there are some similarities. The declining will of the American people with respect to fighting the war and its increasing unpopularity are two similarities. Like Vietnam, our military is fighting an insurgency. But I think that the similarities basically stop there.

Our withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975 had no significant international ramifications. Vietnam was largely an ideological battle in the Cold War, which unfortunately cost us 58,000 souls. When South Vietnam fell to the North Vietnamese communists, it really meant nothing. North Vietnam had no regional influence, no natural resources that significantly affected world markets and no wealth to speak of. Further, there was not the threat that Vietnam would become a breeding ground for international terrorism if we left.

Our withdrawal from Iraq would open the door for one of our gravest enemies, Iran, who is already meddling in Iraqi affairs and who has directly contributed to American deaths. Iran looks to Iraq with lascivious eyes, waiting for us to leave so that they can exert their influence and use Iraq's resources to better position themselves to destroy Israel and the west.

The mistake that American progressives make is that we think that dealing with Iran today is like dealing with the Soviet Union during the cold war. It isn't. We think that "diplomacy" alone will work. It won't. The Soviet Union was controlled by secular communists. Iran is controlled by radical Islamists. The former were guided, in the end, by conventional wisdom. They after all united with the west to destroy Nazi Germany. That is the one of the reasons that MADD worked well and that most of the battles fought between the two super powers were fought by proxy or in the shadows. The latter are guided by an extremist ideology that calls for total destruction of Israel and the West. They are not opposed to acts of terrorism including the use of nuclear weapons against the civilian populace. They are not guided by conventional wisdom, but by religious hatred.

We can’t forget this. That is the single most important reason that we must remain significant in Iraq. We can’t just pick up and withdraw. We shouldn’t have invaded in the first place, but like Colin Powell said, we broke it, so we have to fix it. The democratic politicians who call for our withdrawal from Iraq are preaching dangerous rhetoric. We must find a plan that will work and the U. S. military will be a significant part of any plan.