Fruits of Retreat: Duby's 'Nam Lessons by John Podhoretz

FRUITS OF RETREAT
DUBYA'S 'NAM LESSONS
http://www.nypost.com/seven/08242007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/fruits_of_retreat.htm
By JOHN PODHORETZ August 24, 2007 -- AND so the world of conventional wisdom is even now rearing in horror at the mere thought of President Bush daring to compare the war in Iraq to the war in Vietnam - or, rather, describing the consequences of losing the war in Iraq by discussing the consequences of our loss in Vietnam and asking the American people if they want to see that disastrous past repeated as our inglorious future.

You could almost feel the outrage rising like steam heat from the left side of the blogosphere: Why, doesn't that evil moron know that Vietnam is our analogy?

Doesn't he know no one should be permitted to mention Vietnam in any context other than the one we use - as an example of an immoral, pointless and stupid war, a quagmire from which the nation was saved not by heroes on the battlefield abroad but by political opposition at home?

The Bush speech in question, delivered Wednesday to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, will remain the subject of hot debate because it is a remarkably substantive and thought-provoking document - really more akin to an article than a speech.

Bush contends that since the end of the Second World War, there has always been a deep divide in the country about the wisdom of trying to affect change in non-Western nations. And the speech offers interesting parallels between American skepticism about the positive effects of U.S. intervention in previous conflicts and American skepticism about our role in Iraq today.

After the Second World War, "some said Japanese culture was inherently incompatible with democracy," Bush said. "Joseph Grew, a former United States ambassador to Japan who served as Harry Truman's Under Secretary of State, told the president flatly that - and I quote - 'democracy in Japan would never work.' "

Others, he continued, argued that "democracy could not succeed in Japan because the national religion - Shinto - was too fanatical and rooted in the Emperor. Sen. Richard Russell denounced the Japanese faith, and said that if we did not put the Emperor on trial, 'any steps we may take to create democracy are doomed to failure.' "

Emperor Hirohito remained Japan's head of state. Shintoism remains the dominant faith. And democracy in Japan has worked. Its embrace of democratic institutions remains the most hopeful analogy for America's efforts in Iraq.

Bush next took on the more difficult question of our war in Korea, conducted by President Harry Truman, which grew to be almost as unpopular as the war in Iraq and was fought to stalemate.

"Throughout the war, the Republicans really never had a clear position," Bush said of his own party, which was at the time standing in opposition to Truman, a Democrat. "They never could decide whether they wanted the United States to withdraw from the war in Korea, or expand the war to the Chinese mainland. . . One Republican senator said the effort was just 'bluff and bluster.' He rejected calls to come together in a time of war, on the grounds that 'we will not allow the cloak of national unity to be wrapped around horrible blunders.' "

But, as Bush pointed out, "Without Americans' intervention during the war and our willingness to stick with the South Koreans after the war, millions of South Koreans would now be living under a brutal and repressive regime. . . Instead, South Korea is a strong, democratic ally of the United States of America."

Bush then daringly contrasted these experiences with the aftereffects of the U.S. defeat in Vietnam. He quoted the notorious headline on Sydney Schanberg's 1975 piece about the region following the collapse of South Vietnam: "Indochina Without Americans: For Most, a Better Life."

In the four years that followed that New York Times piece, more than 3 million Indochinese would die as a result of genocidal actions taken by the tyrannies that came to dominate them in the absence of the United States: "One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam," Bush said, "is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps' and 'killing fields.' "

Win in Iraq, as we did in Japan, or hold the line, as we did in South Korea, and there is hope for the future in Iraq and the Middle East. If we lose, we not only embolden al Qaeda and others, but will consign hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to their graves.

This is a bold argument, and it is already under attack for being "delusional" by those who believe there can be no end but disaster in Iraq. Bush argues that recent history teaches us something different, and there is nothing remotely delusional about his account of recent history.

Perhaps the real delusion here is to be found in the hearts and minds of those commentators who can't bear to imagine that there might have been a different ending to the war in Vietnam than the national disgrace they helped engender.

jpodhoretz@gmail.com