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November 23, 2005
Iraq = Vietnam? Maybe...
Here's what House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi had to say recently about our involvement in Iraq::
"This week, Iraqi leaders at the Arab League conference in Cairo called for a timetable for withdrawing foreign forces from Iraq, further evidence of how far out of touch President Bush's Iraq policy is from reality," Pelosi said in a statement.
"Congressman John Murtha's courageous statement ignited a long overdue debate in Congress and the country over the administration's failed Iraq policy. Mr. Murtha spoke truth to power: the war in Iraq has not made America safer, it has stretched thin our military forces, and it has damaged our reputation around the world," she added.
Is Nancy Pelosi trying to become the new Bella Abzug?
One thing is certain: Pelosi cares about the Iraqi people as much as Abzug cared about the Vietnamese people--which is to say, not at all. There has been a long-term campaign in the "progressive" education movement to denigrate learning by memorization, and I guess it's paying off because our collective capacity to remember has decayed to pathetic levels. Thirty years ago we were so eager to forget the nastiness of the Vietnam war that we utterly ignored what happened once we cut and ran. We had the war won militarily, the South Vietnamese were holding their own; but a small phalanx of Leftist congresspeople, supported by a lying mainstream media, succeeded in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
NeoNeocon has been dead on target with this idea for the last several months. Here she pulls a quote from David Horowitz' indispensable memoir Radical Son:
Assisted by radical legislators like Ron Dellums and Bella Abzug, Hayden set up a caucus in the Capitol, where he lectured congressional staffers on the need to end American aid. He directed his attention to Cambodia as well, lobbying for an accommodation with the Khmer Rouge guerillas. Nixon's resignation over Watergate provided all the leverage Hayden and his activists needed. The Democrats won the midterm elections, bringing to Washington a new group of legislators determined to undermine the settlement that Nixon and Kissinger had achieved. The aid was cut, the Saigon regime fell, and the Khmer rouge marched into the Cambodian capital. In the two years that followed, more Indochinese were killed by the victorious Communists than had been killed on both sides in all thirteen years of the anti-Communist war.
It was the bloodbath that [the Left's] opponents had predicted. But for the Left there would be no contrition and no look back.
NeoNeocon further illustrates that Hayden has not changed his stripes in the least:
It is really, really recommended that you read Hayden's entire document, in order to get a flavor of the unrepentant and unchanged quality of his thought processes and strategies. Just as in the 70s the Left undermined the idea of Vietnamization, Hayden is determined to undermine plans for Iraqization:
...we need to defeat the U.S. strategy of "Iraqization." "Clearly, it's better for us if they're in the front-line," Paul Wolfowitz explained last February. This cynical strategy is based on putting an Iraqi "face" on the U.S. occupation in order to reduce the number of American casualties, neutralize opposition in other Arab countries, and slowly legitimize the puppet regime. In truth, it means changing the color of the body count.
Note that one of the rationales for opposing Iraqization is the idea that it's based on a sinister and cynical racist exploitation of the Iraqis, rather than their empowerment and the need for the US to ultimately bow out when no longer needed.
There is no sign, aside from Pentagon spin, that an Iraqi force can replace the American occupation in the foreseeable future.
"Changing the color of the body count". Pure recycling of the old Vietnam Westmoreland-era "destroy the village to save it" rhetoric. Never mind that that strategy was abandoned in 1968 in favor of Creighton Abrams' far more effective plan. Hayden of course is expert at ignoring the root causes of the conflict; he is not interested in the slightest in individual liberty and real human rights.
I really don't know what he and Pelosi are interested in, other than a mindless defeat of the Bush administration.
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