REMEMBERING VIETNAM & THE DOMINO THEORY

Opinion by Dan Rattiner

The reason we have to Win the War in Iraq rather than Lose the War in Iraq, we are told, is that Iraq, without us, will collapse into chaos. Then it will fall into the hands of the Islamic Extremists who will use it as a staging point to defeat Capitalism throughout the region.

And so, from that perspective comes a strategy. We stay, we increase the troop levels, we clear out the enemy with the help of the Iraqi Army, the Iraqi Army then takes over more and more, we slowly withdraw and what is left is a stable government with a big army, one which is friendly to America.

Well, it’s a plan. But I keep thinking of that old saying which is, those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, and I keep thinking of Vietnam.

They said the same thing in Vietnam. It turned out the thinking was flawed. We slowly pulled out, leaving the South Vietnam Army in charge. And then the North crushed the South.

There are differences between now and then, but I think there are more similarities. I think it is worth remembering what happened in that war and how the President at the time decided upon “Vietnamization,” as he called it, which was the plan, over a long period of time, to hand the defense of the south over to the South Vietnamese.

Vietnam was a much bigger war. We had about 500,000 troops in Vietnam when President Nixon ordered “Vietnamization.” And we had been there, fighting to defend the South from attacks by the North, for six years. It had turned into a quagmire and in it, the South was bleeding to death, and many Americans were dying. Eventually 44,000 young Americans would die. At the same time in America, the war was becoming increasingly unpopular. People marched in the streets demanding that our soldiers be brought home.

The fear at the time was — according to the government — that if we pulled out suddenly, the North would overrun the South and South Vietnam would become a Communist state, manipulated by not only the Communist North, but by her big brothers in Communist China and the Soviet Union. Indeed, it had been the stated objective of officials in Moscow to bring communism to every part of the world.

Thus, the logic went, Vietnam would fall and if we did not stop them there, then Laos and Cambodia, then Thailand, Myanmar and then Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia would fall to the Communists. Then the Communists would be poised to take India and Australia. Thus would be the beginning of the end our way of life, as a result of what the government called the “domino” effect. It was the reason we went into Vietnam.

So in the year 1970, Nixon began drawing down the troops in Vietnam. In 1972, there were fewer than 80,000 American troops left there, and in 1973, with just a few troops remaining, the North swept into Saigon and the Americans and their South Vietnamese allies in that puppet government fled, mostly to California where, if memory serves, they successfully integrated into American society.

But there was no further war after Saigon fell. In Vietnam, there was cheering, and the war stopped. What it all really had been about was not the surge of Communism through Southeast Asia, but the determination of patriots to unify their country.

After it was over, there was even a brief skirmish between the Vietnamese and the Chinese over a border dispute. China backed off. They wanted no part of these fierce fighters. And so, Vietnam became an independent country and from that day to this, has followed the same Communist system that runs China, but free of any designs to take over any neighbors.

And shortly after that, amazingly, the Vietnamese forgave us, in the same way that many years ago, in this country, America forgave the British. In 1995, America restored diplomatic relations with Vietnam.

Of course, there are differences between Vietnam and Iraq. In Vietnam, our fight was with the Soviet menace. In the current circumstance, our enemy is Muslim Extremism, a movement which, in several countries, most notably Sudan, Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, is trying to topple governments in order to take over and build armies to convert or destroy the Christian world. Iraq was never in danger of being one of those countries. It was a longtime cruel dictatorship. And that dictator was openly hostile to Muslim Extremism. He never allowed it to set foot in his country.

In a twist of irony, it now seems possible that without the iron hand of Saddam Hussein, foreign terrorists of the Muslim Extremist movement COULD move in and take over. It is, today, that chaotic.

However, it seems much more likely to me that the Sunnis and Shiites, without us there, would join together to reunite their country to fight ANY foreigners, particularly foreigners who blow themselves up for Allah. Like Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, Iraq will probably wind up ruled by a strong, secular leader attempting to bring together all sides. That he might be another awful dictator is certainly possible, but given the experience of the other countries in the area, probably not likely.

So the boys will come home, and this will be far different than it was before. In the Vietnam era, because the draft was in effect, many of our young men wound up protesting the war by refusing to serve and by voting with their feet — going to Canada for the duration. The war was so unpopular at the end that when the soldiers came home they were booed and jeered for having participated. What a shameful thing that was.

In each war, we lost many young American men. Our troops who went to these wars were brave men fighting to protect their country.

Those who sent these troops off to fight meant well, but in the case of Vietnam, we now know, were misinformed because there was no domino effect. In the case of Iraq, we now know, they were misinformed about weapons of mass destruction. And Saddam Hussein was not in league with the Muslim Extremists.