Friday, June 08, 2007

Viet Nam and Iraq


As a personal policy, I won’t link to the New York Times, but Rick Moran writing at the American Thinker has the link to one editorial worth reading. I am not shocked but I am surprised the left’s paper of record publishes this editorial by Peter Rodman and William Shawcross. “The defeat of the American enterprise in Indochina, it is said, turned out not to be as bad as expected. The United States recovered, and no lasting price was paid. We beg to differ.” The authors then recount how millions suffer the victory of authoritarian rule.

I take this as a sign the Democrats believe they are on the verge of complete control of the United States government, and the responsible adults in the party are suddenly sobering up enough to realize victory means having to deal with an international reality infected with hatred and violence, resources and willpower. All actions have consequences and the collectivist movement will rightfully be assigned credit or blame as events play out in the religion of Islam while they govern America. Rick reacts to the editorial.

The Right Lessons To Learn From Viet Nam: Our war policies have been flawed from the get go and until recently, nothing we tried seemed to stem the violence in Iraq and indeed, made it worse in some respects. But there is a huge difference between mistakes made in planning and policy and the cold, calculated effort by the left to work to crush the morale of the American people so that they could use the Iraq War to vault back into power.

But if the left is trying to convince us that their withering criticisms of the justification for the war, its subsequent prosecution, and all the ancillary issues that have arisen because of it as well as vicious personal attacks on the President were only for the purpose of improving our policies so that we could achieve victory, only little children who still believe in Santa Claus take them at their word. Therefore, one must conclude that their stated reasons for wishing an American defeat in Iraq – that we “deserve” it or that it would teach us a lesson in “humility” – are a true reflection of their beliefs and thinking.

The message of Islam is that submission to authority brings peace. The message of America is that consent of governed brings widespread prosperity. The resolution of the conflicts between these concepts will be worked out over time. Only the volume of blood loss and the count of the corpses remain undetermined.