You know, there is a certain breed of American that simply can’t get over the fact the American people gave up on the great experiment in Vietnam and that Congress pulled the plug on the project. They happen to be in charge of our foreign policy at the moment, which is a bit of a disappointment for patriotic Americans that kind of care about the direction, financial well-being, and international reputation of our country.
The midterm elections were kind of unambiguous when it comes to what the American people think about and hope for our great experiment in Iraq. And, you know, you go to war with the electorate that you have, not the electorate that you might wish that you have. And anyone that refuses to acknowledge that the electorate doesn’t buy into the idea that we need to continue to roll wheelbarrows of cash and promising lives into the quicksand pits of Iraq in order to fight them over there instead of in the trailer parks off our interstate exits here…well…they are just fighting Vietnam all over again.
I don’t care how great the ratings are for Fox News, the American people will eventually smell a bill of goods when it is held under the nose until the putrefaction is unmistakable.
Word is that Bush is going to respond to the midterms by asking for a kind of Custer’s Last Stand in Iraq. As I have noted elsewhere, this time we actually have a decent argument. We will stay to avert a genocide. How progressive of us. How altruistic! Even General Zinni says it is worth the sacrifice, and I respect General Zinni in a way. He’s the softer face of our imperialistic policies…the face that…you know… made it, perhaps, viable. I gotta tell you, though, Tony, that Armada has sailed. You folks down there in DC in the Establishment are trying to dig your way out of a hole.
The Iraq War will have a reckoning, and one of those reckonings will be the loss of most of what you spent your career trying to support. You sensed this, which is why you got so upset at the mismanagement of BushCo. Bully on you for that. But it’s over.
We didn’t lose Vietnam because the populace lost interest. The populace lost interest because they realized they were being lied to and that the reasons we were there were different from the reasons we had been told. They lost interest because the strategy was fatally flawed and that there was no prospect that escalation would ultimately change the losing dynamics. It was a tragedy of epic proportions. So is Iraq.
Will the fallout from Iraq be worse than the fallout from Vietnam? Did Vietnam sit on the second biggest oil fields in the world?
Of course Iraq is a bigger disaster. Of course we can’t just leave and think the problem is over. But until we learn the lesson that both wars can teach us, we won’t be able to figure out how to go forward. We cannot continue to antagonize people. We have to rededicate ourselves to the lessons we were supposed to have learned from World War Two: collective security, a commitment to peaceful solutions and arbitration of disputes, that imperialism is a failed policy, and that the demonization of religious and ethnic minorities inevitably leads to horrific acts.
We lost in Iraq. We can learn from it and be better for it, or we can keep fighting this war until it bankrupts us financially and morally.
