Monk

Rick Perlstein’s “Nixonland” affords us this shuddering glimpse into the Nixon White House, as the president and his men struggle with the Vietnam War, which has become our prototype for being stuck in a quagmire and which demonstrated that the Americans can be bloodied and beaten, even by Third World powers. They are discussing another wave of escalation against the north:

Connally urged him, "Don't worry about killing civilians. Go ahead and kill 'em. People think you are now. So go ahead and give 'em some."

"That's right, " concurred the president.

"There's pictures on the news of dead bodies every night," chimed in Haldeman. "A dead body is a dead body. Nobody knows whose bodies they are or who killed them."

I guess this was before Republicans came up with the concept of compassionate conservatism. In all fairness, Americans had been dying in that war for about ten years with no good end in sight, and there is no question about the totalitarian brutality of the enemy. However, the problem in Vietnam was the problem that we now have in Afghanistan, more than thirty years later: what are we fighting for?

All sweet souls of noble understanding want to see the fruits of democracy and freedom take root wherever the light of reason can shine, of course, but such grand ideals must achieve some recognizable form through real, man-run institutions, by a government, and therein lies the rub - along with all the corruption and all the betrayals and all that human misery, that familiar trail of broken dreams.

The United States backed a number of governments in Saigon, but there was no true democratic leadership, but only corrupt gangs taking advantage of the American need to have a native government to be fighting behind. And that is how things look with Afghanistan today and the Karzai government.

A key difference with Afghanistan, though, is the nature of the threat. Even if we cannot get a liberal republic, there is something to be said for having some forward bases in a region of the world that spawns terrorist cells, the country that was the original home of al-Qaida. It makes it easier to swat those cells down. It also helps to have a footprint in that region in the dread event that another massive invasion is required in some grimmer future.

Obama’s quandary is how to maintain a positive presence with the least pain in that alien, unwelcoming land. I am sure he did not want to be another president ceaselessly bleeding troops in a quagmire not of his making. Iraq is enough pain for any Administration. But it can all seem like one big swamp of illiberal, murderous fanaticism. Still, it is important to maintain your humane side, and not sink into the nihilistic doldrums of the Nixon Administration, not that I think we really have to worry about that with Barack Obama, who perhaps would have made a better pastor than a president.

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"You've betrayed Vietnam. Someday you're going to sell out Taiwan. And we're going to be around when you get tired of Israel."

-- Syrian Dictator

Mark Steyn is doing the quoting, in a piece supporting President Bush's use of the Vietnam War as an analogy for his case to stay the course, in the face of the controversy that the Vietnam analogy is more fitting for the left and why we need to withdraw from Iraq.

Losing in Iraq certainly isn't going to help America's cause, but not even having a real strategy to win isn't better. We don't seem to be able to do what it takes to win, so it is hardly insensible to cut our losses.

It is a nightmare.

It is so bad a nightmare that, if Iraq does fall into chaos and becomes effectively a platform and staging ground for anti-Western hostilities, we may have to go back sometime, maybe within ten years, and it is likely to be costlier and harder, but we might not have any choice.


(Source: Mark Steyn for The O.C. Register)

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“The troops will march in; the bands will play; the crowds will cheer; and in four days everyone will have forgotten. Then we will be told we have to send more troops. It's like taking a drink. The effect wears off, and you have to take another.”

-- President John F. Kennedy, 1961

Taking "Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974" back up, I thought this quote resonates well with today. Kennedy's Administration is divided between sending more troops into Vietnam. After the failed Bay of Pigs operation, Kennedy is not very eager to go down that route of escalation.

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