VIETNAM & IRAQ: AN INTERESTING PHENOMENON & A CRITICAL SIMILARITY
VIETNAM & IRAQ: AN INTERESTING PHENOMENON & A CRITICAL SIMILARITY
by
Ken Eliasberg
The left has 2 rallying cries that they fall back on whenever they need red meat for their base; where domestic policy is concerned, every scandal, real and imaginary, is linked to Watergate—thus the unending number of
“gates” we have witnessed over the years (the most recent of which is Scootergate, which may soon give way to Gonzalezgate). Whenever there is a hint of a military setback, Vietnam is scooped out of the Dem’s weaponry bag. Vietnam is an old reliable for Dems for it is pregnant with such lethal connotations. I’m not going to rehash the merits of our participation in Vietnam, except to note that it was, in its entirety, staged by the Dems, leading ultimately to the downfall of a very powerful Democrat President, Lyndon Johnson—a downfall principally orchestrated by Dems. And that leads me to the critical similarity that we now seem to be approaching between then and now, i.e. Vietnam and Iraq. That is, it seems that, spurred on by a completely irresponsible Congress (that has abandoned principle in favor of partisan politics), we are dangerously close to ending our participation in Iraq in much the same manner that we withdrew from Vietnam. That shameless withdrawal, occasioned by a Democrat Congress’s refusal to provide any military aid to an ally in a perilous position, in direct violation of our responsibilities under the Paris Accords, led to a bloodbath in Southeast Asia. As a result of our abdication of our responsibilities, South Vietnam fell, the Khmer Rouge took over in Cambodia, and, when the smoke cleared, some 2 and