The problem with Vietnam was that the U.S. withdrew its troops rather than fighting harder and longer
- From: Chim <ChimS1@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 25 Aug 2007 03:47:51 -0700
A Policy of Unrelenting Force
By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Posted on 8/24/2007
[
George Bush, famous for outlandish claims that have no bearing on
reality, has outdone himself by claiming that the problem with Vietnam
was that the U.S. withdrew its troops rather than fighting harder and
longer.
In a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, he didn't say how long
the U.S. should have stayed, but he did claim that the reason for the
bloodshed in Cambodia, and the prison camps in Vietnam following
withdrawal, was not the war itself, but the failure to continue the
war without end.
Presumably, then, if Bush were president for life back then, we would
still be in Vietnam, the draft would still be in place, and the
bloodshed would have continued for decades.
My, what a vision! You might think this is madness. In fact, it is the
reductio ad absurdum of a particular worldview that he and his friends
have adopted.
Along the same lines, a few years ago, William Bennett, the former
drug czar turned hyper-gambler, said that we shouldn't have abandoned
alcohol prohibition. It was working just fine. And after it was
repealed, drinking went up. Had we stayed the course, he said, we
would be a healthier and more moral society.
Many on the left say we should not have abandoned the 55mph speed
limit. Things were going just fine. The repeal has made our roads less
safe and increased people's dedication to the car and made us more
dependent on foreign oil.
Maybe we shouldn't have backed away from 90% income tax rates. Now the
rich get richer, as less of their earnings are tossed to the wind.
Maybe we can do the same about the wage and price controls as during
Hoover's and FDR's New Deals - why the heck did we abandon the war on
low prices? The same goes for wage and price controls under Nixon in
the early seventies - why did we just walk away from the war on high
prices?
For that matter, let's go back to the Civil War, especially given the
numbers of Confederate flags that still fly outside rural homes south
of the Mason Dixon line. The military occupation and anti-insurgency
was going well, and what did we do? We cut and ran, and left a whole
region to languish in racism and hate.
It's interesting how those who believe in force as an article of faith
eventually go the whole way, believing that the lessening of force is
never the answer, and that all the problems in the world call for one
and only one answer: ever more scary threats of violence. Force, for
this crowd, is the great organizing principle of society, the answer
to all existing problems now, in the past, and in the future. It
becomes for them the overriding social and political salve, and there
are no considerations that can possibly refute this contention.
We saw the extreme result of this mentality in the Soviet Union, which
pursued the path of force for 72 years, and blamed all existing
failures not on socialism but on the failure to impose this system
without any misgivings or regrets. A dictator with ultimate power can
impose such a system until the whole of society crumbles into a heap,
and still not be willing to face the errors of his ways. Force is an
article of faith. To embrace freedom means to concede the limits of
power.
In the case of Vietnam, there would have been no such thing as the
Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia had the U.S. not embraced Pol Pot. In
the same way, al-Qaeda got its start during the Cold War because the
U.S. saw the radical Islamicists as anti-communist allies. The
extremists in Afghanistan were once seen as glorious freedom fighters.
Their training camps, guns, and furnished caves were provided courtesy
of the U.S. taxpayer.
So it is in Iraq today. After the U.S. overthrew Saddam's government,
the plan was to jump-start a new central government under U.S.
control. That's when the fighting started. What group would control
it? There is no answer to that question, even today. The U.S. has
always thought the Shiites should run the show, religious law and all.
But that plan hasn't worked out.
On the day that Bush delivered his speech about the coming dawn in
Iraq, 15 Americans died in combat. Another 11 were seriously wounded
from a suicide bomb. On the Iraqi side, 154 died and another 175 were
wounded. The death parade marched through Baiji, Baghdad, Tikrit,
Iskandariya, Hawija, Flaifel, and Tal Afar. The mayor of al-Kharba was
assassinated.
This was in one day! Now, to the critical question that vexes all
political and social science: why? I don't mean the proximate cause. I
mean the ultimate cause. If you are Bush, the answer comes as a matter
of faith: these unruly people need more force. When that doesn't work,
the answer is additional force. When that doesn't work, we need more
force still. And so on, war without end.
There is no refuting these claims since the matter of cause and effect
requires a slightly complicated set of deductions. It is the same with
all matters of government control. It was prohibition of the alcohol
trade, not alcohol itself, that generated violence. It was price
controls, not the market pressure for high and low prices, that caused
economic problems. It was the 55-mile-per-hour speed limit that made
criminals out of 100% of drivers, not the normal propensity to want to
get where you are going at a reasonable speed.
And so it is with Iraq. The desire to get rid of the foreign military
occupier is a universal feature of political history. To recognize the
failure of force is to admit that the state cannot accomplish all that
it claims it can accomplish. It is to admit the big lie. Doing so
requires humility, a willingness to own up to mistakes, a desire to
face reality and to think about the long term. These are traits that
the state and its managers do not possess in large supply. Witness:
George Bush.
No, Iraq will not blossom like a rose garden the day after U.S. troops
leave. There will be bloodshed, and how much we cannot know. But the
critical thing is that these people will be governing themselves, and
the critical thing that prevents progress today - the presence of the
foreign occupier - will be gone. The solution is imperfect, to be
sure, but it is better than the opposite of turning the entire world
into a prison camp run by the U.S. government.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. is president of the Ludwig von Mises
Institute in Auburn, Alabama, editor of LewRockwell.com, and author of
Speaking of Liberty. See his Mises.org archive. Send him mail. Comment
on the blog.
.
- Prev by Date: Reporter's home set on fire following his investigative reports on illegal logging activities in Cambodia
- Next by Date: Favourites Syria crushed Cambodia 5-1 on Saturday to end the round-robin league with an all-win record in the five-nation Nehru Cup football tournament
- Previous by thread: Reporter's home set on fire following his investigative reports on illegal logging activities in Cambodia
- Next by thread: Favourites Syria crushed Cambodia 5-1 on Saturday to end the round-robin league with an all-win record in the five-nation Nehru Cup football tournament
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
