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September 25, 2004
Liberals just don't get it
In yesterday's post about learning the wrong lessons from Vietnam, I tried to explain why liberals don't understand that criticising the war helps our enemies in Iraq. Why does domestic criticism of the war matter? Because the people trying to fight against the creation of a democratic, moderate Iraqi government know that the only way they can win is to persuade the American people to pull their troops out of that country. And the best ways to get the American people to want out of Iraq are to a) kill as many US soldiers as possible, b) convince them that the war is going badly and is unwinnable, and c) that the war was a mistake in the first place and that all the sacrifices made to date have been made in vain.
Of course, this is exactly what the North Vietnamese did to us during that war. You would have thought that we would have learned something from that sorry experience. But you would have been wrong.
Take today's NYT as an example; their lead editorial criticizes the Bush campaign for being "divisive", "undemocratic" and even "un-American" because they keep saying that Kerry's negative comments about the situation in Iraq are helping the enemy:
The president has claimed, over and over, that criticism of the way his administration has conducted the war in Iraq and news stories that suggest the war is not going well endanger American troops and give aid and comfort to the enemy. This week, in his Rose Garden press conference with the interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, Mr. Bush was asked about Mr. Kerry's increasingly pointed remarks on Iraq. "You can embolden an enemy by sending mixed messages," he said, going on to suggest that Mr. Kerry's criticisms dispirit the Iraqi people and American soldiers.Interestingly, there was an article in that same edition of the NYT by John Broder reporting from LA's "Little Saigon" about Vietnamese-Americans' reactions to the presidential campaign's curious focus on the events of 30 years ago. Broder's piece includes this interview with a Vietnamese-American who evidently has more sense and historical perspective than the entire NYT editorial board:
Nguyen Chau, 55, who came to the United States in 1995, said he preferred President Bush to Senator Kerry, in large measure because of Mr. Kerry's antiwar activities after he returned from Vietnam. Mr. Chau, who was an officer in the South Vietnamese Army, said he served at the same time Lieutenant Kerry was in the country, but his fate afterward was different.We shall have to wait and see whether the US shows more loyalty to Mr. Allawi and the other brave Iraqis who are trying to rebuild their country than we did to Mr. Chau and his former comrades."I know he came back against the war, he didn't like the war," Mr. Chau said. "I heard and read the newspaper that he gave back his medals, that he was like Jane Fonda. I think he didn't know very much about the Communists."
Mr. Chau spent six years in a Vietnamese labor camp, and then 14 years trying to emigrate to the United States. As a former prisoner, he qualified for a special visa program approved under the first President Bush.
He said he approved of the war in Iraq and hoped only that the United States would stay to finish the job of wiping out the insurgents.
"They're doing the same thing to the Americans in Iraq that the Communists did in Vietnam," Mr. Chau said. "They should stay there until it's better. The United States should have stayed longer in Vietnam."
September 25, 2004 at 01:59 PM | Permalink
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