SEN. HAGEL'S VIETNAM SYNDROME
By JOHN BYRNES
NEW YORK Post Opinion
August 23, 2005
IT's every citizen's right to express an opinion on political matters — and the responsibility of elected officials to publicly discuss ideas and misgivings about policy. Still, you have to wonder what Sen. Chuck Hagel hoped to gain from his latest dissent.
The president is out to remind the public of the issues on the line in the war in Iraq. In Salt Lake yesterday, he laid out the case for staying the course: Defeating terrorists. Building a constitutional democracy. Spreading freedom and opportunity. Ridding the Mideast of terror and oppression.
But Sen. Hagel, a fellow Republican, publicly compared the Iraq war to Vietnam. Twice.
Not very loyal — and not very honest.
Take Hagel's rather contradictory comments on Sunday, on ABC's "This Week":
"We should start figuring out how we get out of there,
but with this understanding, we cannot leave a vacuum
that further destabilizes the Middle East. I think our
involvement there has destabilized the Middle East. And
the longer we stay there, I think the further
destabilization will occur. We are locked into a bogged-
down problem not unsimilar, dissimilar to where we were
in Vietnam."
This echoed what he'd said Thursday on CNN:
"The longer U.S. forces remain in Iraq, the more it
begins to resemble the Vietnam War."
According to Hagel, increased casualties means we can't be winning, we must be losing. By that definition, every war becomes a losing proposition on Day One.
Hagel has one valid point: The longer this goes on, the greater the risk that casualties will erode public support. But that becomes more likely when American politicians serve as the propagandists of enemy forces. The senator could make the point about public opinion without undermining the president. The war is not yet won, but it's far from lost.
What we need to win, is will. The will to defeat hardcore Baathists, who are fighting to restore a regime modeled on Saddam's and would immediately resume oppression of Shiites and Kurds and any other dissenters. The will to defeat "foreign fighters," aka terrorists, who pour into Iraq to face off with our forces.
Hagel is consistent in contradicting himself: He voted in 2003 to authorize U.S. military force in Iraq, and as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations committee helped pass that bill. And even now he allows that it's unwise to set a timetable for withdrawal:
"You must always have flexibility in these things, and a
judgment call by the president."
But he also called the president "disconnected from reality" in those Thursday remarks.
You can't have it both ways, senator. If this is another Vietnam, then your vote put us there. If the president is out of touch, why are you allowing him judgment calls? What are you after?
Whatever it is, could you remember something important? With rights comes responsibility — and the duty of a senator is not only to weigh in, but to weigh the facts first.
Maybe Vietnam wasn't worth fighting for. That's the accepted doctrine on the left. But, a few years after we pulled out, we allowed a vicious communist government to dominate Vietnam. Should we do the same again — let a rabid anti-American minority take over Iraq?
We didn't lose Vietnam on the battlefield. We lost it here. Because we couldn't sustain the will to fight. Because too many voices at home wanted to quit.
Don't mistake Iraq for Vietnam. It is a strategically located, oil-producing state. Millions of Iraqis voted in January's election. A dedicated but small insurgency would enslave those voters if we let it. Is an Iraqi civil war in our interest? Do we really want the country back in the hands of Saddam's loyalists?
The Iraqi government needs time. We gave the Vietnamese almost 20 years before we talked ourselves into quitting. Don't the Iraqis deserve another year or two, before we quit on them?
Sgt. John Byrnes served in Iraq with the Army National Guard's 2-108th Infantry Battalion. E-mail: jrb1013@aol.com
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