Another Vietnam?

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

– Thomas Jefferson, in a letter from Paris

TRENDING: Joe and his scissors

It is doubtful that America's loudest and most ferocious opponents to the War on Terror know the stakes for the Mideast – and the West – should we achieve anything less than total victory. Here at home, nothing speaks louder of their ignorance than recent fund-raising efforts on behalf of Democratic hopeful John Kerry, as reported in the Washington Times:

A Florida Democratic club has taken out a newspaper advertisement urging the assassination of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and another partisan group is running a national television commercial with an actor impersonating President Bush's voice saying, "I used 9-11 as an excuse to invade Iraq."

– "Kill Rumsfeld ad withdrawn," by Charles Hurt, April 14, 2004

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The Americans who put together this ad – and those who responded to it – are well down the same road traveled by the militant Islamists I described last week. Their hatred – given birth in their ignorance, then sheltered in the academic world – has taken them "well beyond rational human thought and debate. They have become one with their hatred, embracing death as the only remaining road to an imagined paradise." As the Rumsfeld ad shows, desperate Democrats and militant Islamisicts are traveling a parallel route toward the same destination.

There are a number of reasons for the anti-war crowd's ignorance and hatred. Most such critics are the progeny – both academically and literally – of their fathers and mothers. These, you will remember, were among the anti-war 1960's crowd which cheered Jane Fonda for sitting atop the very same communist anti-aircraft gun that had shot down American pilots. There, on her moral high horse, she proclaimed her support for North Vietnam's communist guerillas in their war against the democratic south. Thomas Sowell explains the outcome:

In later years, after the Communists were firmly in power in Vietnam, they admitted that the Tet offensive was a military disaster for them. In a 1995 interview in the Wall Street Journal, a communist official stated frankly that the key to their victory was the American home front, and that they were encouraged to fight on by all the anti-war demonstrations in the United States.

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– "Titanic irresponsibility: Part II," April 14, 2004

Are there similarities between Iraq and Vietnam? I see one: the lies and ignorance of the left. In Vietnam, America achieved "peace with honor." Communist North Vietnam treated the democratic South to reunification with slaughter. An American withdrawal from Iraq – which the left is panting after like a rabid animal – would yield only a few certainties.

The first certainty would be "peace with annihilation." There would be an escalation in terror against the West by militant Islamists who would interpret our withdrawal as a victory granted to them by Allah against the Great Satan (how else could they view it?). If the terrorists do not already have nuclear weapons, they shortly will – courtesy of North Korea, Iran, Pakistan and other supporters. "Give peace a chance" ... while Islam updates its WMDs.

Removal of America from the Middle East would almost certainly create the necessary power vacuum for a unified Arab attack on Israel. The Jewish state would be faced with extermination, or retaliation via nuclear weapons. The ensuing worldwide economic crisis driven by world oil demand – but without Mideast supplies – would quickly lead to political and military chaos. "Peace in our time."

In the days since Vietnam, the academic world has become orders of magnitude more ignorant of the West's history and contributions to civilization than their immediate forebears of the 1960s. This is because they have been worshiping, since then, before the false gods of multiculturalism, minority superiority, homo-eroticism, feminism's male-bashing, and non-judgmentalism. The rest of us have permitted this under the guise of tenure and academic freedom.

But academic freedom, as we all really know, is accorded only to those who have chosen the path of political correctness – and its big brother academic repression. Perhaps the only thing that has saved us this long is the natural tendency for youth to rebel against authority – regardless of its political persuasion.

Yes, Iraq does have the ability to become another Vietnam. But only with the willful complicity of the political left and the Democratic Party.