Because we live hereAdmit it, you loved the movie. From the classroom scene where paratroopers drop into a sleepy Colorado town to the closing prayer at the memorial of two brothers who gave all, Red Dawn is one of the best movies of the 80s. It captures not only the late cold-war times in which it was made, but also something stubbornly and quintisentially American: that spirit that says no matter the odds or the cost, we will fight them. Ask the Wolverines why they fought, and it was not about star-spangled banners or apple pie or baseball or proportional representation, they fought, in their own words, "because we live here" and the men with red stars and guns did not.
I'm reminded of that tonight by a
Buckley column which makes three points: we left Vietnam, terrible things occured after we left, and we are facing the same cut-and-run political pressure the longer we stay in Iraq. Buckley, while not laying out his own view so much, certainly attempts to make the case that what happened after Vietnam is likely to happen after Iraq. And perhaps he's right, it may very well occur. But Buckley fails, I think, to ask a very important question, and that is, "Could we have won in Vietnam?"
We had troops there in various capacities from 1960 to 1975. In 15 years we lost 50,000 men, spent untold billions of dollars, and in the end we left and bad things happened. In the end, we lost, even though we offered the Vietnamese a better life than they got. In the end all our effort was for naught*. We are urged, I suppose, to not make the same mistake in Iraq lest the same bad things happen. I submit to you that we have no choice, that we will leave at some point or other, and bad things may very well happen, and there is nothing we can do about them.
Who are we fighting in Iraq? We were told it was Saddam's loyalists, who wanted to return him to power, secular Sunni Baathists who pined for the days when they ruled the roost. We were told that we fought Shiite theocrats, in alliance with Iran, who want to join those two nations together and create a regional power. We were told that we fought al Qaeda, terrorists, Taliban, Islamic radical, fascists. These were not lies, for we have, at one point or another, fought them all. But most of all, and most ignored of all, we are fighting Wolverines. We are fighting people who are fighting us because they live there. Just like Red Dawn. Just like Vietnam.
The assumption in the smooth words of those who tell us to stay the course, to avoid cutting and running, to support the President, is that if we only hang together, we must win. We can construct a government and a society that will freely choose what we offer because that's where this road leads.
That's the choice we offered Vietnam. They chose poorly and paid dearly. But it was not our choice to make, only to offer; we bled ourselves white for 15 years until the American people decided their sons were more valuable than holding that door open any longer. Iraq will not last 15 years. We will not hold that door open for a generation, for our armed forces have not the power nor our people the patience.
But those who believe that America can do what it wants so long as we have a plan, so long as we have unity, so long as we try our best, had best look at Vietnam, because we had those for years but in the end we left. We had no choice. There was no victory to be had.
I did not start out believing that Iraq was Vietnam - in fact, one of my
first posts was a warning to avoid the comparison - nor do I believe it is today. But I do believe it has become unwinnable, if by that we mean that we must leave a stable democratic government, an ally, a city on a hill, behind. We are fighting Wolverines who fight us so long as we are there, who will not support a government we create any more than Red Dawn's Wolverines would have supported a Cuban-imposed government, no matter what benefits it offered.
So long as we fought on offense, removing Saddam and destroying his army, we were on solid ground and I supported that effort 100%. We were doing right, protecting the innocent from a monster who had used mustard gas on his own people, who stole their lives and their daughters and their future. Most importantly, we were fighting the kind of war an army could win. We are no longer doing that. Now we are fighting people who are fighting us because they live there.
Iraq is not Vietnam, but it is becoming so. The offense won in 100 days, the defense has been on the field for three years. We have killed thousands of Wolverines, yet we are no closer to victory than we were after those 100 days, because every Wolverine has a father and a brother - and if we stay long enough, sons and nephews - who will fight us because they live there.
We won the game, yet refused to leave the field for fear that the bad things that happened in Vietnam would happen there. They still might. The question is, how much will we pay before it happens over our dead bodies anyway?
* Not completely for naught, as there are thousands who escaped that hellhole due to our troops' valiant efforts. Their lives were saved because we fought for them. No war, not even Vietnam, is all good or all bad - never trust those who argue otherwise.