Bush warns of the cost of defeat

From The New York Times:

KANSAS CITY, Mo., Aug. 22 — President Bush delivered a rousing defense of his Iraq policy on Wednesday, telling a group of veterans that “a free Iraq” is within reach and warning that if Americans succumb to “the allure of retreat,” they will witness death and suffering of the sort not seen since the Vietnam War.

“Then as now, people argued that the real problem was America’s presence and that if we would just withdraw, the killing would end,” Mr. Bush declared in a 45-minute speech before a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention here. He added, “The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be.”

In urging Americans to stay the course in Iraq, Mr. Bush is challenging the historical memory that the pullout from Vietnam had few negative repercussions for the United States and its allies.

In truth the retreat from Vietnam was the first major indication to the world that America had lost its will to live. It was our willingness to turn over control of the national agenda to the absolute worst element in our society (the Left) and abandon an ally to certain devastation at the hands of a totalitarian enemy that inspired much of the trouble which America would face in the following years.

Osama bin Laden isn't the only one who observed America's cravenness and determined that the United States could be treated with contempt. From his Paris exile the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini deduced that the US would not commit its military forces to prevent a fundamentalist Islamic revolution in Iran. He read the weak and contemptible Jimmy Carter and the equally weak and equally contemptible Democrat majority which had gained firm control of congress in the aftermath of Watergate correctly. When the Ayatollah's forces took control of Iran, one of our most loyal allies, we did nothing but help arrange the Shah's safe exit.

The rest, as they say is history. America proved itself again and again to be unwilling to get into a fight and see it through to the end. In Lebanon and in Somalia the same pattern was repeated. Now the Left is trying to do the same thing in Iraq. This is what bin Laden is counting on.

To see the consequences of the disgraceful abandonment of Vietnam all one needs to do is visit lower Manhattan and look at that big hole in the ground where the World Trade Center used to be.