Posted by
Bert Chapman on Friday, April 27, 2007 9:28:49 AM
The frustations we are currently experiencing dealing with Islamist sectarian strife in Iraq are causing critics of this conflict to bring up the spectre of Vietnam to cloud the minds of the public. Unfortunately, critics of our efforts in Iraq are learning the wrong lessons from the Vietnam War. The lesson everyone should learn from Vietnam, as applied to Iraq, is not to abandon allies when the going gets tough! When we left Vietnam we condemned the South Vietnamese to the rule of a tyrannical Communist regime which resulted in the sometimes tragic story of the boat people who left their now Communist state to risk their lives on the open seas. We also condemned Cambodians to suffer the genocidal holocaust of the Khmer Rouge regime. We abandoned the Hmong people in Laos to suffer under the Marxist tyranny of their own country which included suffering chemical "yellow rain" attacks.
By leaving Lebanon in 1983-1984 after the Marine barrack attacks by Islamist terrorists we sentenced that country to another two decades of Syrian occupation. By leaving Somalia during the early years of the Clinton Administration, we sentenced that country to more than a decade of additional anarchic chaos which is ongoing.
Numerous people in Iraq, at great risk and costs to their lives, have supported us and our noble efforts to create a better country. If we cut and run and abandon them we sentence them to the same grisly fate experienced by the South Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, and Lebanese. It's vitally important that when the U.S. commits its resources and military personnel to combat operations in another country that we carry out that commitment until it is successfully completed no matter the cost! Islamist terrorists want to throw us and other democratizing influences out of the Middle East so they can impose Taliban like regimes on that area of the world and on other regions. This week's idiotic congressional votes are telling the Iraqi people an d our enemies that we don't have the guts and moral principle to fulfill our commitments. These votes tell our relentless and remorseless enemies that we don't have the moral courage to fight them when things get tough and that we will abandon our allies in Iraq like we abandoned the nations and ethnic groups listed above. They tell potential future enemies in Iran, North Korea, and perhaps China that we don't have the stomach and long-term moral persistence to engage them in potentially protracted and costly struggles.
Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, John Murtha and other members of the cowardly terrorist appeasing curs club may be prepared to reconcile themselves to sectarian Islamist genocide in Iraq and wash their hands of America's allies again in Pilate-like fashion. Americans who care about the commitments their country has made in Iraq should rise up and tell these individuals what intellectual and moral cretins they are for their actions.