Wizblog

Haunted By Vietnam

Because we're haunted by Vietnam, we will not turn our backs on Iraq. So says David Gelernter in this piece for the L.A. Times. I can relate to what he says is his own role in the mistake we made in the 70's by abandoning the Vietnamese people to Communism;

It was my fault, mine personally; I was part of the antiwar crowd and I'm sorry. But my apology is too late for the South Vietnamese dead. All I can do is join the chorus in shouting, "No more Vietnams!" No more shrugging off tyranny; no more deserting our friends; no more going back on our duties as the strongest nation on Earth.

Well we didn't fail the people of Iraq, at least not this time around. And while we made mistakes, we can and should be proud, says Gelernter:

The president's critics say that he has made mistakes; right again. He was too optimistic about the difficulties of hunting down a man or a biological weapon in a large country. He might well have been too optimistic about the difficulties of managing postwar Iraq. He was certainly too optimistic about the rest of the world's joining us; too many people were making too much money from Hussein's Iraq for the case by Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair against Hussein ever to be popular, for the world at large to care much about Kurdish infants choking to death on poison gas or about a political dissenter with his tongue cut out. But suppose we sweep up all the administration's mistakes and dump them in one pan of the moral balance. We'll put just one fact on the other side: Hussein is overthrown. What do all the president's mistakes amount to? How much do they count when we step back and take in the big picture? They count zero.

People ask: Are you proposing to overthrow every sadist tyrant on Earth? No, only proposing to be proud that we overthrew one.