When it comes to Iraq, the difference between the right and the left is that the left believes the war is optional. According to the left, we can pull out of the country, let it go wherever it's going to, and suffer no ill effects.
The right begs to differ.
President Bush warned Thursday that pulling out of Iraq too soon would trigger a bloodbath akin to that of the Cambodian killing fields of the 1970s, while Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid declared that it is too late to stay because the war has already been lost.
Now maybe Reid is being misquoted. But if he's being quoted accurately, then any support for a withdrawal date is a call for a date on which the US announces its official surrender. He may not want to call it that, but the effect is the same as if he were being honest.
Reid cast Iraq as another Vietnam and Bush as another Lyndon B. Johnson, while the president described dire consequences if the past repeats itself.
Bringing up Vietnam seems to be intended to stop debate – sort of like calling someone "racist" or "islamophobic". But if the lessons of Vietnam seriously, one fact is that Vietnam was not lost on the battlefield. The US handily won every engagement, including the Tet offensive. Vietnam was lost in Congress, where congresscritters, tired of fighting, voted to cut off funding. Without US support, South Vietnam fell, taking the reputation of the US with it.
I believe Senator Reid is absolutely correct here. The war in Iraq is ours to lose, and Congress has the power to lose it for us.
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