Iraq is Ted Kennedy’s Vietnam

It’s not the first time Ted Kennedy has said it. He said it back in 2004 before the Elections, at the Brooking Institution. He said it again in January of 2005. And now he is saying it again in January of 2006:

"In Vietnam, the White House grew increasingly obsessed with victory, and increasingly divorced from the will of the people and any rational policy. The Department of Defense kept assuring us that each new escalation in Vietnam would be the last. Instead, each one led only to the next. There was no military solution to that war," Kennedy said. "Echoes of that disaster are all around us today. Iraq is George Bush’s Vietnam."

I don’t really recall the White House growing increasingly "obsessed with victory" during Vietnam. They seemed to be looking for the way out. And what an assinine statement! "Obsessed with victory"?! When you engage in warfare, is their a reason not to be "obsessed with victory"?!

What Ted Kennedy is, is obsessed with defeatism. He is a quagmirist of the first order. In December of 1974, the Democratic majority in Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act of 1974 to cut off all military funding of the South Vietnamese government. Ford vetoed the Act, only to have his veto overridden by Congress. This effectively neutered the pledge Nixon made to our South Vietnam allies.

[During the Paris Peace Accords, two written agreements were made and signed by Richard Nixon. One, was to offer reparations in the billions to North Vietnam, so long as they did not invade the South. North Vietnam never collected on that pledge, because, as we all know, they invaded the South. The other agreement was to offer assistance to South Vietnam, that should the North break their end of the agreement, America would give them whatever aid the South needed, even sending in air support and troops. Unfortunately, Watergate happened; and an unelected President Ford pleaded to Congress to honor our agreement. Congress did nothing to alleviate the vast suffering that occurred when the North streamed across the borders, into the South.]

How much suffering resulted from our withdrawal from Vietnam? From our losing the war in Washington D.C.? Was that honorable? Was it the right thing to do? The Ted Kennedys, the John Kerrys, the Jane Fondas, and the anti-war 60’s generation seem to think so. They learned all the wrong history lessons of Vietnam, and are proud of where they stand in the history books.

The difference today, however, is that a loss in Vietnam for America didn’t incur and incite North Vietnam to pursue the war further onto America’s shores. Today, the perception of a loss in Iraq by the United States will not only invite large-scale suffering upon the Iraqi people, but it will directly endanger us. The Jihadists won’t see our withdrawal from Iraq as the end of matters; they will only be emboldened and encouraged by an American defeat in Iraq. And we will find ourselves dealing with them back here on our own turf.