Now Iraq May Be Another Vietnam

Aside from the fact that I wasn't born until after the whole hoary mess went down and so have no memory of it I have been thinking much the same thing ever since Democrats started talking non-binding resolutions. After years of resisting claims that Iraq was another Vietnam I am now ready to admit that those who made the claim maybe after all right. But only because those who made the claim over and over again have done their best to make it so.

Gambling on Defeat
By Michael Novak

Once again, they have repeated their deed of 39 years ago, turning victory into defeat, setting the stage for last-minute departures by helicopter, banging with rifles the up-reached hands of friends of the United States, who are begging not to be abandoned.

I thought that day that that obscene, humiliating, disgraceful departure from the United States embassy in Saigon was the most dishonorable day in American history. I still feel sick thinking about it.

That dishonor was brought about by a Congress determined to stop funding a war that had turned into its final lap toward victory. An arrogant Democratic Congress abandoned several million friends of the United States to torture, imprisonment, death. Two millions took desperate flight by sea upon open rafts or flimsy junks, to be set upon by pirates as well as pursuing foes.

Until now, I had resisted comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq. The dissimilarities are immense. They are as different as night and day. Besides, the victories won and the difficulties successfully overcome in Iraq, by sheer bravery and persistence, have been of historic proportions.

But now the actions of our own Congress have made the sickening memories of that cowardly flight from Saigon come pouring back, with all their now forgotten shame and dishonor.

Will the Democratic party — of which I was once a member — never learn? Will it lurch from generation to generation turning victory into dishonor and shame? That once brave and courageous party now boasts, boasts, of gambling on American defeat. Of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Again.