Talkin' Shit About A Pretty Sunset

Iraq is not Vietnam. Nowhere near it. Let me lay out the stark differences.

In Vietnam, the US picked up the reins from a dying colonial regime which had been fighting a widely popular insurgency. That insurgency had mass appeal because Vietnam had been ruled by foreign powers for over 100 years. When the US decided to become the new colonial overlord, it immediately subverted planned elections because they knew the wrong side would win (those fighting for indepedence). The US then fought a near genocidal war in three countries against peasant populations. They dropped more tonnage of bombs on those nations than were dropped in the entire Pacific theater of WWII. US casualties were miniscule compared to the mountain of rotting Asia bodies created by US aggression. Estimates of southeast Asian dead could top the four million mark, while only 58,000 Americans died. Even today, popular, educated discourse is about how much the US suffered at the hands of the Vietnamese, and how the US "lost" the war, despite the fact that the US economy and infrastructure remained healthy and functional while the Vietnamese were left with millions dead and carcinogens in their rice patties.

In Iraq, the US invaded a country against international law based on false pretenses. The US took over from no colonial entity. Compared to Vietnam, it's laughable that the pissants blowing up cars are called an "insurgency". They have no popular appeal. In Iraq, the US quickly started working with the many communists that had opposed a fascist regime. It's hard to even mention "winning" or "losing" because the US is not fighting any organized broad-based resistence. As opposed to Vietnam, the US did not subvert bona fide elections, but held them. The legitimacy of the elections was seen by the number of people who turned out. While the media spun it as if the people risked their lives to vote, the facts tell a different story: the pissant murderers who blow up cars are such a minority that it likely was not a huge risk to go to the voting booths. As with all US-run wars, the number of non-American dead is unimportant to policy-makers; a fetid mountain of foreign corpses could rival Mt. Everest and the focus would still be on how much the US has suffered with its 2,000 some-odd cadavers.

The US shouldn't leave Iraq immediately. Whatever your opinion on our motives for going into Iraq, to leave now would be adding insult to injury. There isn't any army or massive organized political movement waiting to take over like Vietnam. Elections have shown that there's a popular will to have a stable country. Iraq has unorganized, unmotivated forces; the iron fist of the US is needed until Iraq has its own. As Mao Tse Tung once said, "All political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." Until Iraq has a level hand on that gun, we can't leave. It's always been quick and easy for my fellow leftists to oppose war prima facie. A more difficult stance would be to recognize and accept the present reality.