Senator John McCain spoke out in opposition to Senator Hagel's assertion that Iraq resembled Vietnam.
McCain said that in contrast to Iraq, South Vietnam "never had a legitimate government in Saigon that the people believed in and trusted."
The Vietnam war also featured "superpower engagement in a huge way," McCain added. "We have a problem [in Iraq] with the Syrians, but nothing like what the Chinese and Russians were doing with the North Vietnamese," he said
Another difference, said McCain: "If we fail in Iraq, the results will be cataclysmic. You'll see factionalization and eventual Muslim extremism and terrorist breeding grounds that I believe will pose a direct threat to the security of the United States."
"The whole situation is just very, very different," the Arizona Republican argued.
Yes, very different, but in some ways very much the same.
For instance, back in the day, Communists, specifically Soviets, instigated much of the anti-war sentiment here in the US. The Vietnam Moratorium Committee (VMC) staged huge anti-war protests but were
- Formed by associates of Communist front group American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and Communist-infiltrated group SANE;
- interlocked with the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (New Mobe), an antiwar mobilization group formed following instructions from Hanoi by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), a Trotskyite group infiltrated by the Soviets and friendly to Cuba
And the famed Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) were
- Inspired by Veterans for Peace (VFP), offshoot of front group set up by the Communist Party (CP) to protest the Korean War;
- initially run out of offices of Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade Committee (FAVPPC), which networked with numerous Communist front groups;
- formed alliances with New Mobe and VMC;
- leadership interlocked with Communist front group People's Coalition for Peace and Justice (PCPJ);
- politically allied with politicians tied to Communist lobbying groups such as George Ball, Allard Lowenstein, Eugene McCarthy, Robert and Ted Kennedy, Bella Abzug, George McGovern, Mark Hatfield, John Conyers, Ron Dellums, Charles Rangel, Michael Harrington, Paul McCloskey, etc.
- financed by left-wing sources such as Jane Fonda, United Auto Workers (UAW), Edgar Bronfman, Ted Kennedy, etc.
- legally represented by Communist lawyers such as Peter Weiss, Ramsey Clark, William Kunstler, Mark Lane, etc.
- jointly sponsored events with various Communist-linked individuals and groups including Black Panther Party (BPP), Citizens' Commission of Inquiry into War Crimes in Indochina (CCI), Jane Fonda, Yippies, National Peace Action Coalition (NPAC), Venceremos Brigade (VB), etc.;
- met domestically and abroad with representatives of North Vietnam, Soviet Union, Cuba, European Communist groups, and Arab terrorist group Palestine Liberation Front (PLF)
We see the same thing today.
Knowingly or not, the media of the day gave aid to the goals of the Communists and sided against freedom and liberty. Same thing today.
The Communist invaders of Vietnam never won a battle against US forces. Today, the Islamists are still looking for their first win.
Today, again, we are fighting a two front war. A war against Islamist from without and communists from within.
But the difference is we have learned at least some of the lessons of the Vietnam era; today, the anti-war movement is not left to take the stage alone. They no longer stage their protests unopposed.
More importantly, we know what happens when we abandon the cause of liberty.
Former Secretary of the Navy James Webb, a combat marine in Vietnam and an expert chronicler of the soldier's experience, poignantly made the point in a Wall Street Journal essay on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the war's end:
"History owes something to those who went to Vietnam, and to the judgment of those who believed the endeavor was worthwhile. We can still debate whether the war was worth its cost, but the evidence of the past 25 years clearly upholds the validity of our intentions. This proposition may sound simple, but to advance it is to confront the Gordian knot of the Vietnam era itself. "
The evidence of the past 25 years to which Webb refers is indeed the best illustration that the United States, despite the military defeat, prevailed in the larger struggle for a future of peace and prosperity through democratic capitalism. Days after the fall of Saigon, Stanley Hoffman wrote in the May 3, 1975 issue of the New Republic: "In this respect Vietnam should teach us an important lesson. On the one hand Hanoi is one of several among the poorest nations in the world that have tried or will try to create a collectivist society, based on principles that are repugnant to us, yet likely to produce greater welfare and security for its people than any local alternative ever offered, at a cost in freedom that affects a small elite." Tell that to the millions of Cambodians who lost their lives in the killing fields as a sacrifice at the altar of one-step collectivism. Or to the hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese, my father among them, who were sent to "re-education camps" after the war, where many of them perished. Or to the families and relatives of South Vietnamese considered suspect by the Hanoi government and thus deprived of access to the basic necessities of food, clothing, and shelter. Or tell it to the millions of Vietnamese, my family among them, who found communist persecution unbearable and took to the high seas in a diaspora of anything that floated.
Most relevantly, tell that to the people of Vietnam who lived under communist rule throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Instead of welfare and security, what they got was repression of all basic freedoms; dire poverty caused by central economic mismanagement and official corruption; and a government so bellicose that, during the early 1980s, it continued to build up its military even as its people suffered the most severe drought of the country's recorded history.
It would be wise for us to keep the brutality of the communist regime in mind...
I don't know about you, but rather than abandoning Iraq as the "anti-war" folks and their media surrogates advise, I would prefer that we fulfill the vision of President Kennedy as enunciated in his inaugural address
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
This much we pledge—and more.
For the sake of enslaved people's in the Middle East and our own security, let us not be distracted again.
