Charles Krauthammer had an editorial today about the relationship between Kerry and Nixon, via Vietnam.
While much of his editorial is fine, he misses some basic facts, and loses it at the end. He points out that Nixon ran on a similar platform to Kerry -- one of "Vietnamization" where we would enable the Vietnamese to defend themselves and so pull out our troops. He then points out that Kerry ended up criticizing Nixon for prolonging the war.
What Krauthammer fails to mention is that it was not Vietnamization that prolonged the war, or that Kerry criticized. Nixon actually expanded the war into Cambodia and Laos, and used his impressive relationship with China and Russia to basically ensure we had room to expand our own actions North without fear of retaliation from those larger communist powers.
Further, the problems of Vietnamization were many, including a corrupt and already unstable government in South Vietnam; the fact that we had spent years destroying the source of their culture and way of life (their villages), so that we lost the support of the people we were supposedly helping; the fact that we were preparing them to take over a battle that was already being lost, against a determined and organized enemy, and more.
While the basic concept is the same -- self-reliance and logistical support versus American troop support -- the situation is (hopefully) not.
Krauthammer also asks, "does [Kerry] imagine the administration is operating at anything less than breakneck speed to transfer the burden from American soldiers to Iraqis?"
Well, yes, I suppose Kerry does. Considering that the administration has been caught red-handed drastically exaggerating the number of Iraqis trained. And given the fact that they have had over a year to train them, and are just now really ramping their efforts up and -- oops -- begging for money to do so.
And then there's the fact that we haven't fully engaged other nations with shared interests in assisting with the training. So yeah, Kerry and others are probably kind of suspicious that maybe, just maybe, we could have done better.
Krauthammer also fails to note that Bush is also running on a similar platform of "Iraqinization," or that, like Nixon with Kissinger, the Bush triumvirate of Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld is one that thrives on secrecy, and on doing what it thinks is best without really consulting outside voices on the issue.
Just as Nixon did whatever he wanted even after Congress criticized his actions and removed his authority by repealing the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, so too Bush ignored the conditions and logic behind the authority granted him by Congress to wage war in Iraq, and doesn't seem to care too much what anyone thinks still.
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