William J. Bennett: This Isn't Vietnam

The New York Post ^ | April 11, 2004 | William J. Bennett

[quidnunc]

It is worth addressing what is happening in Iraq and what many of the naysayers are propagating, specifically, Sen. Ted Kennedy's comment that "Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam."

We need to be reminded that we are in a war. Many of us said right after 9/11 that this will be a long and hard war. And it will be. Because of many early victories, we cannot forget that wars are not easy and that they are not clean and, when truly meaningful, they are not short.

Many have been questioning our mission because of the violence in Iraq — but it is worth remembering what former Israeli foreign minister Moshe Arens once said: "The Middle East is not the Middle West." Violence in the Middle East is more of a norm than an exception. Nonetheless, well over 80 percent of Iraq is supportive of our mission to attempt to build democracy there.

The violence in Iraq is contained, now, to within Iraq — and no longer exportable, as it was under Saddam Hussein, to neighbors like Israel and Kuwait and, for that matter, Iran. Hussein slaughtered more Muslims than anyone in modern history, invaded two countries and fired missiles into Israel. Today he's in prison. Thank God.

"War," John Stuart Mill said, "is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling that thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

This is why our doubters today are wrong, and why Ted Kennedy's analogy to Vietnam is morally and factually false:

Iraq is not Vietnam:

-snip-

[tkathy]

Vietnam was started by democrats, undermined by democrats, and one of the many democrat failures in foreign matters.

[Ingtar]

Just saying a quick hello to everyone. It's been pretty busy here in Fallujah, as I'm sure you've seen in the news. I think we see as many CNN cameras as we do Iraqis with RPG's. I'm just here to pick up gear for my team before heading back into the chaos, so I figured I'd see how everyone was doing.

I won't have much, if any access to computers anymore. Certainly not for the next few weeks with all that's going on. So anyways, take care and I look forard to talking to you guys again.

A post on a gaming site by an acquaintance.

[Beenliedto]

Vietnam was started by democrats, undermined by democrats, and one of the many democrat failures in foreign matters.

Continued for God knows how many years (Six?), resulting in how many thousands of deaths (twenty five?) by none other than Richard (I have a sceret plan) Nixon. Pardon me, was he a dimmo?

[ClearCase_guy]

Vietnam was started by democrats, undermined by democrats, and one of the many democrat failures in foreign matters.

One could argue that the Terrorism War was precipitated by Clinton's weak and undefined Foreign Policy. So the Democrats started this war too.

Democrats like Ted Kennedy and John Kerry are doing their best to undermine this war too.

Democrats will not succeed in undermining this war, which will go on and be a great US victory. So, one could argue that this will be another instance of Democrats failing to achieve their foreign policy goals.

[Cobra64]

Sen. Ted Kennedy's comment that "Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam."

Why is it that no one bothers to mention that the Swimmer's brother, JFKennedy was the one who escalated our involvement in Vietnam; and that LBJ escalated it to 460,000 American troops in Vietnam.

[Shaun_MD]

"The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling that thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

Amen. I could not agree more.

[Cobra64]

Get your facts straight. JFK was the guy who got us involved in Vietnam. LBJ pushed American troop level to 460,000. Nixon got us out. BTW, we lost over 50,000 lives there.

[seastay]

Iraq and Vietnam are two different time and places for starters, duh... People making these claims are out of touch.

Sort of reminds me of the sanity of my 99 year old grandmother (God rest her soul) asking us "which horse did you ride in to get here today!

[gilliam]

Vietnam was lost by television. It was the 1st televised war, and no one really knew the power of the pictures of dead Americans being broadcast on the evening news, night after night. We won just about every battle we engaged in. During Tet we not only won, we for all practical purposes eliminated the Viet Cong, but all the American public saw were dead American boys. At that point we were winning the war handily, however Walter Cronkite got up on that roof top and declared the war a disaster, the American public believed him. A few weeks after that Johnson realized he lost the presidency and said he would not run again. Nixon came into office with a promise to get us out of the war.

Vietnam was tough, but it was winnable. The problem was that it was under-minded while it was going on. Very much like what Kerry, Kennedy and the Dems are doing now.

[logician2u]

A truly meaningful exposition on the demons that haunt Dr. Bennett would have to include his justification for smoking, drinking, gambling and other personal vices, to go along with the oft-repeated canard that we're bringing the war to "them" so they can't possibly bring it to "us."

Just about everything can be rationalized when you have Virtue, can't it?

[Authentic Patriot]

PFF!! 'Teddy "oh should I have went back and saved that drowning girl" Kennedy' should keep his alcoholic mouth shut on such matters.

I know Bush and his administration Powell, Cheney ect, remember very well they years of Vietnam, no matter what they where doing for a career.

I would think anyone of the age that remembers Vietnam would flinch and change something at even a scent of another Nam. I guess I'll take the killer Kennedy off the list of people of that age with common sense. Oh, my bad, hes been off that list since the day he was born!

[blackie]

Right-on, Bill Bennett!

We are winning ~ the bad guys are losing ~ trolls, terrorists, democrats and the mainstream media are sad ~ very sad!

~~ Bush/Cheney 2004 ~~

[rodguy911]

It's a shame that the real story of what is actually going on in Iraq instead of media spin doesn't get out more. Bill Bennett certainly knows what it takes to be a patriot. I think there are far more bennett types in the country than there are Kennedy/swimmer types.

[tpaine]

Of course "Iraq is not Vietnam:"

* The death toll is nowhere near Vietnam: At the height of Vietnam, we were losing up to 300 American soldiers a week and we lost 58,000 by war's end. Tragically, we have lost about 600 Americans in Iraq. But those numbers are not Vietnam numbers.

* Our war in Vietnam was complicated by a nuclear power - the Soviet Union - backing our enemy, and a concern that China would send 1 million ground forces in to fight us, as they did in North Korea. Because of our show of force in Afghanistan and Iraq, because we refuse to engage in anxious propitiation, there is no Arab street to speak of, no regional force that can send in thousands, never mind millions, of forces or threaten a nuclear response. Instead, we've seen surrender by places like Libya.

* In Vietnam there was a draft; our war against terror is based on an all-volunteer army. Our Armed Forces are made up of people who volunteered to take up arms and use force if they had to - they are a force for democracy if possible, but a force against tyranny for certain. This is precisely why we have an army, navy, air force and marines; and ours volunteered to do this.

* As Vietnam became more and more political, we sought "Peace with honor," as an objective. Precisely because of the votes of Ted Kennedy and George McGovern and others who denied the South Vietnamese the military and economic aid we promised, we had failure with dishonor, and South Vietnam collapsed.
In that tradition, Sen. John Kerry voted against $87 billion of aid last year to help build Iraq and support our efforts - but his vote did not carry the day, and we are keeping our commitments. We are making good on our promises, we will not leave and we will not abandon Iraq. The only way for Iraq to become Vietnam is for Ted Kennedy to have his way, as he had it in 1973.

* In Vietnam, as politics triumphed at home, our efforts failed abroad. In Iraq, our mission is clear, and much of it has been achieved: We rid the world of one of the worst tyrants of our age; mass graves are being emptied, not filled; we are helping to build the first democracy in the Arab world, and we vouchsafed the region, and ourselves, from a madman intent on building weapons of mass destruction.
This is a noble effort, and we will see a victory - and someday, peace - with honor. Vietnam was a loss; Iraq - as our entire War on Terror - will be a win, and not just for the United States but for freedom itself.
Iraq, Sen. Kennedy, is not Vietnam and shame on you for drawing that false and inapt analogy.

Kennedy's statement is more than false and inapt, however: it is dangerous: Such statements are taken seriously by our enemies who we should not let think we are about to abandon the mission if they continue their violence. And our soldiers should not be told by one of their senators that we are losing - and fixing to abandon their mission.

The Democrats need to get their story and their policy together. This week, Bill Clinton wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post lamenting that he did not act sooner in Rwanda, trying to stop the genocide there that claimed 800,000 lives. Kennedy, knowing of Saddam Hussein's slaughter, torture, and aggression that led to the gruesome and vile deaths of hundreds of thousands of Arabs and Muslims, berates our efforts to oust Hussein.

My question for the Democratic Party: Was Iraq a Rwanda that we intervened in to prevent from becoming a living hell?
Or, is it Vietnam, where we regret the deaths of so many because we tried to intervene and save the South Vietnamese? They can't have it both ways - Iraq is either a mission we salute based on past inaction we regret, or it's a mission we denigrate based on past action we lament.

President Bush speaks with one voice on this. Clinton and Kennedy do not. That is for them to solve. In the meantime, we carry on with the honor and dignity our mission deserves.


William J. Bennett, host of "Morning in America," a nationally syndicated radio talk-show, is the Washington fellow of the Claremont Institute, and a nationally known hypocrite.

[Beenliedto]

1969 11,616

My recollection is that Nixon was elected POTUS in '68. So where are the stats for '70 and '71?

[Beenliedto]

we lost over 50,000 lives there.

My point is that RMN was responsible for close to 25,000 of those deaths.

[Ingtar]

My fault -- I was miscounting years. The first two years of Nixon did have 25,000+ casualties as he drove NVN and China to the bargaining table.

1968 16,592
1969 11,616
1970 6,081
1971 2,357
1972 641
1973 168
1974 178
1975 161

By the time Nixon was elected, the news media had already defeated the United States. The large number of casualties came as a result of wanting to leave the country.