Over the weekend, the O.C. Register’s libertarian (small goverment) op-ed section traded places with the leftist (big government) op-ed section of the L.A. Times. Their two main op-eds were commenting on President Bush’s comparison of leaving Iraq to the U.S. departure from South Vietnam in the early 1970s.
The Register ran an op-ed by Mark Steyn, who wrote:
Well, it had a “few negative repercussions” for America’s allies in South Vietnam, who were promptly overrun by the North. And it had a “negative repercussion” for former Cambodian Prime Minister Sirik Matak, to whom the U.S. ambassador sportingly offered asylum….So Sirik Matak stayed in Phnom Penh and a month later was killed by the Khmer Rouge, along with about 2 million other people.
Stein himself is a Canadian chickenhawk, who never has served in the armed forces of any country.
He doesn’t note that U.S. forces fought in Vietnam, in strength, from 1965-1972 — double that of any other U.S. war. The war cost 58,000 U.S. troops killed and, in effect, bankrupted the U.S. economy, leading to the inflation and “malaise” economy of the 1970s. Wasn’t that enough?
If Steyn would have had is way, we’d still be fighting there, although he, of course, would have avoided service.
The North Vietnamese takeover of the South led to tyranny, putting South Vietnamese officials in cages, and the boat people’s exodus, many of them to Orange County, where they have been a wonderful addition to our community. But Vietnam now has a quasi-capitalist economy and mostly has religious freedom, although the communist party still runs a dictatorship.
As to Cambodia, Prince Sihanouk’s government was stable and fighting off the Khmer Rouge until it was destabilized by Nixon’s bombing of the North Vietnamese sanctuaries in Cambodia and his invasion of Cambodia. Destabilized, Sihanouk’s regime fell to the Khmer Rouge, and the bloodbath ensued.
In contrast to Steyn’s chickenhawk propaganda, the L.A. Times ran an op-ed by Andrew Bacevich, a decorated Vietnam veteran whose son was just killed fighting in Iraq. He writes:
In unconventional wars, body counts don’t really count. In the Vietnam War, superior American firepower enabled U.S. forces to prevail in most tactical engagements. We killed plenty of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. But killing didn’t produce victory — the exertions of U.S. troops all too frequently proved to be counterproductive.
So too in Iraq — although Bush insists on pretending otherwise. His speech had him sounding like President Lyndon Johnson, bragging that, in each month since January, U.S. troops in Iraq have “killed or captured an average of more than 1,500 Al Qaeda terrorists and other extremists.” If Bush thinks that by racking up big body counts the so-called surge will reverse the course of the war, he is deceiving himself. The real question is not how many bad guys we are killing, but how many our continued presence in Iraq is creating.
There’s no substitute for legitimacy. Wars like Vietnam and Iraq aren’t won militarily; at best, they are settled politically. But political solutions imply the existence of legitimate political institutions, able to govern effectively and to command the loyalty of the population.
In the Republic of Vietnam, created by the United States after the partition of French Indochina, such institutions did not exist. Despite an enormous U.S. investment in nation-building, they never did. In the end, South Vietnam proved to be a fiction.
So too with Iraq, conjured up by the British after World War I out of remnants of the Ottoman Empire. As a courtesy, we might pretend that Iraq qualifies as a “nation-state,” much as we pretend that members of Division I varsity football programs are “scholar-athletes.” In fact, given its deep sectarian and tribal divisions, Iraq makes South Vietnam look good by comparison….
Sometimes people can manage their own affairs. Does the U.S. need to attend to that mess? Perhaps not.
Here the experience of Vietnam following the U.S. defeat is instructive. Once the Americans departed, the Vietnamese began getting their act together. Although not a utopia, Vietnam has become a stable and increasingly prosperous nation. It is a responsible member of the international community. In Hanoi, the communists remain in power. From an American point of view, who cares?
Bush did not even allude to the condition of Vietnam today. Yet the question poses itself: Is it not possible that the people of the Middle East might be better qualified to determine their future than a cadre of American soldiers, spooks and do-gooders? The answer to that question just might be yes.
I would add that Bush himself, another chickenhawk, avoided service in the Vietnam War. Nor have his daughters served in Iraq. The same is true of chickenhawk Dick Cheney and his daughters. (I oppose sending women into combat, but Bush and Cheney do not. So they’re hypocrites for not sending their daughters.)
88 women have have been killed so far in Iraq. Two more were killed just last week.
What kinds of men are these — Steyn, Bush, and Cheney — who send young women to die, when they won’t serve themselves?
As to the Register, they need to dump the unlibertarian chickenhawk Steyn for the wise, and saddened, Bacevich.
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