Q&A Friday #72: Iraq & Vietnam

24 Aug, 2007 by John Hawkins

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Question: “The Right consistently said there are no parallels between Vietnam and Iraq yet the President used Vietnam recently as a caveat against pulling out of Iraq.

Should he just leave Vietnam out of it or are there comparisons to be made that are worthwhile?” — libliever

Answer: “The Right consistently said there are no parallels between Vietnam and Iraq…”

Ehr…no, we haven’t. What we’ve done is point out that the way liberals have compared Iraq to Vietnam doesn’t work. We haven’t been there nearly as long, the number of casualties is much smaller, we’re fighting terrorists and gangs, not an enemy army, etc.

But, conservatives have been pointing out that the aftermath of a failure in Iraq could have repercussions similar to those of losing in Vietnam for quite a while. We’ve also talked about how the media has behaved similarly in both wars.

Besides, after Democrats have spent years making comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam, it seems a little hypocritical for people to get upset that Bush is turning it around on them and pointing out how they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in that war and condemned millions of people to death and tens of millions to be communist slaves as a result.

Do we want to repeat that same mistake in Iraq? Absolutely not.