Iraq and Vietnam

Captain Ed may have gone over to the dark side but there is still a rational voice on the right, Rick Moran. In IRAQ 5 YEARS GONE he looks at the forces that guaranteed that the VietNam war was never winnable.

In our ignorance, we failed to see that rather than liberators, we were seen by most Vietnamese in both the north and the south the same way the French were viewed – colonial occupiers. This made any government we supported illegitimate in the eyes of almost everyone. In the end, we went from fighting Communism to bolstering a cruel dictatorship. Yes, we killed a lot of Communists (and civilians), winning every major engagement but were forced to leave when it became obvious that there would be no end to it. The South Vietnamese government was in control at the point of our bayonets and there was absolutely no prospect for them to ever claim legitimacy with the South Vietnamese people.

And comes just short of admitting the same thing is going on in Iraq. The majority of Iraqis were glad Saddam was gone and we would have been greeted with those flowers as we left. While they wanted an end to the Saddam regime of terror the Iraqis did not want an American/Western colonial occupation. A government propped up by US military power will have no more legitimacy than those governments in Vietnam and at some point we will have another helicopters on the roof moment if we stay.