by Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n
FrontPage Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n As the last American troops roll south to Kuwait, the end of the war in Iraq invites unsettling comparisons to another war America declared over before losing its nerve and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Then as now, Democrats have taken the lead in putting at risk the gains purchased with a trillion dollars, and nearly 4,500 dead and tens of thousands wounded American soldiers.<\/p>\n For all of the obvious differences between the conflicts in Vietnam and Iraq, the effects of an overhasty withdrawal on American prestige promise to be similar. The period following the fall of Saigon in 1975 was one of Soviet expansionist aggression in Latin America and Africa, even as Democratic president Jimmy Carter scolded Americans for their \u201cinordinate fear of communism.\u201d Carter embodied the spirit of national self-loathing and guilty retreat \u2014 the \u201ccrisis in confidence\u201d as he called it \u2014 seemingly validated by the failure in Vietnam. In his inaugural speech he confessed the nation\u2019s \u201crecent mistakes,\u201d advised us \u201ceven our great nation has its recognized limits,\u201d and warned that America can \u201csimply do its best.\u201d This public pusillanimity was also noticed by the clerics in Iran, who began their modern jihad with the overthrow of the Shah, America\u2019s ally abandoned by an administration devoted to \u201chuman rights\u201d and disarmament, and addled by specious anti-colonial rhetoric. The mullahs confirmed their contempt for us by sacking our embassy and holding 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.<\/p>\n The audacity and success of this assault inspired the other jihadist groups \u2014 many trained and funded by Iran \u2014 that began attacking more boldly American and Western interests across the globe. The geopolitical lesson of American weakness was also noticed by a Saudi named Osama bin Laden, who preached to his trainees the cultural bankruptcy of America that Vietnam illustrated and that made America vulnerable to Allah\u2019s warriors. \u201cThe Americans did not get out of Vietnam,\u201d bin Laden preached, \u201cuntil after they suffered great losses. Over sixty thousand [sic] American soldiers were killed until there were demonstrations by the American people. [The Americans] won\u2019t stop until we do jihad against them.\u201d After 9\/11, bin Laden demanded \u201cthe American people to take note of their government\u2019s policy against Muslims. They described the government\u2019s policy against Vietnam as wrong. They should now take the same stand they did previously.\u201d America is a \u201cweak horse,\u201d as bin Laden famously said, noting American retreat from Vietnam, Iran, and Mogadishu, and our failure to retaliate for the other terrorist attacks that culminated in the carnage of 9\/11.<\/p>\n Those who quibble with bin Laden\u2019s historical accuracy about these events are missing the point. The perception of American weakness he articulated became a motivator of action, and the same perception is now arising following the withdrawal from Iraq. There is no question that this politically rather than strategically motivated retreat puts at risk whatever gains have been made over the past eight and a half years. A politically fragmented Iraq is faced with myriad problems and dysfunctions. It is ruled by a Shia clique that in the absence of American power is unlikely to respect the autonomy and rights of Sunni and Kurdish Iraqis. Sectarian violence is already accelerating. Al Qaeda and other violent terrorist outfits are still active, and will no doubt step up their attacks on sectarian enemies, foreign workers, and oil facilities. Shia Islamists like Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mumahidoon party, virulently anti-American and backed by Iran, are likely to become a more powerful force in Iraq after the Americans are gone, either dominating the government or forming a Hezbollah-like autonomous state-within-a-state. Not encouraging are the billboards that have sprung up in Baghdad showing al-Sadr trampling a US flag.<\/p>\n Moreover, the government is incapable of meeting these threats given what Lt. Gen. Frank Helmick, deputy commander of US forces in Iraq, calls \u201csecurity gaps,\u201d including \u201ctheir air sovereignty, their air defense capability, the ability to protect the two oil platforms, and then the ability to do combined arms operations for an external defense, synchronizing their infantry with their armor, with their artillery, with their engineers.\u201d Given these security weaknesses, increasing sectarian and terrorist violence abetted by Iranian support and meddling will create the conditions for any number of outcomes inimical to American interests, whether state collapse, a Syria-like grinding civil war, a nakedly Islamist government, another Saddam Hussein, or increased sanctuaries for jihadist organizations.<\/p>\n Whatever the outcome, the big winner will be Iran, whose regional influence will increase in the vacuum created by America\u2019s retreat, just as the Soviet Union was emboldened in its geopolitical rampage by our withdrawal from Indochina. Iran\u2019s leadership is already trumpeting the withdrawal as a sign of American \u201cfailure\u201d in Iraq, a \u201cgood omen for the Islamic\u00a0ummah<\/em>, especially for revolutionary nations,\u201d as the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei put it, but a \u201cday of humiliation\u201d for America, according to the Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami. Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff Hassan Firouzabadi made the implications more explicit: \u201cThe American soldiers had no other choice than to leave Iraq, and this is the beginning of all American forces withdrawing from the region and the people\u2019s intolerance of these ambassadors of death, colonialism, and plundering.\u201d Of course, the nation that will benefit the most from this \u201cfailure\u201d and \u201chumiliation\u201d will be Iran, with its deep ties to Iraq\u2019s Shia population and its record of strong support for the jihadist groups destabilizing the region.<\/p>\n Just as Jimmy Carter embodied the delusional idealism and failure of nerve that weakened America after 1975, so too Barack Obama has damaged American prestige and invited further aggression with his rush to leave Iraq and his failure to negotiate vigorously for a continued US military presence in Iraq. Of course political self-interest played a big role in this act of appeasement. Obama campaigned on the promise that he would end the \u201cdumb\u201d war in Iraq, calling the surge in troops a \u201creckless escalation.\u201d Given his serial failures to keep his other campaign promises like shutting down Guantanamo and ending military tribunals, Obama saw an opportunity in American war-weariness to keep at least this one promise, and he wasn\u2019t going to let any difficulties in negotiating America\u2019s post-withdrawal presence in Iraq get in his way.<\/p>\n But accompanying these political interests was Obama\u2019s ideology of American guilt and inevitable decline, and the disbelief in American \u201cexceptionalism,\u201d to be replaced by a vision in which America is merely a global \u201cpartner mindful of his own imperfections,\u201d as candidate Obama wrote in\u00a0Foreign Affairs<\/em>. Yet the rest of the world sees these pronouncements for what they really are \u2014 as signs of American retreat and weakness sure to invite further aggression. And we know what the most likely source of this aggression will be: an emboldened, oil-rich Iran, already killing our citizens and supporting our enemies, and increasingly likely soon to be in possession of nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n \u00a92011 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine As the last American troops roll south to Kuwait, the end of the war in Iraq invites unsettling comparisons to another war America declared over before losing its nerve and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[124],"tags":[1051,161,72,233,12,91,165,1040,261,88,296,250],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-li","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2545,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-libya-venture-and-double-standards\/","url_meta":{"origin":1320,"position":0},"title":"Obama’s Libya Venture and Double Standards","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 10, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The champion of shameless chutzpah has always been the guy who murders his parents then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he\u2019s an orphan. But White House spokesman Jay Carney might be the new champ, given his response to the House\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Libya"","block_context":{"text":"Libya","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/libya\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8598,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-tougher-on-congress-than-on-khamenei-read-more-at-httpwww-nationalreview-comarticle422339obamas-unpresidential-iran-speechtargetauthortid900280\/","url_meta":{"origin":1320,"position":1},"title":"Obama: Tougher on Congress than on Khamenei","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 11, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Obama's Unpresidential Iran Speech:\u00a0The speech was mean-spirited and dishonest \u2500 and may have been counterproductive. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online President Obama\u2019s speech last week advocating congressional approval of the Iran deal was mostly made-up history mixed with invective. Indeed, he talked far more roughly about his\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Iran"","block_context":{"text":"Iran","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/iran\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"(Pool Image\/Getty)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/pic_giant_010615_SM_Barack-Obama-G-500x292.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7627,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/how-obama-lost-the-middle-east\/","url_meta":{"origin":1320,"position":2},"title":"How Obama Lost the Middle East","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 3, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The president put politics and ideology ahead of preserving hard-won gains in the region.\u00a0 by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online In his first term, Barack Obama all but declared victory in America\u2019s Middle East struggles. As he precipitously pulled out all U.S. peacekeepers from Iraq, the president had\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Middle East"","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3012,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-the-great-american-hope\/","url_meta":{"origin":1320,"position":3},"title":"Obama: The Great American Hope?","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 17, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services There is great hope that President-elect Obama will change the course of U.S. foreign policy, create far greater goodwill toward America, and thereby ease world tensions. Such optimism is not based on former Sen. Obama\u2019s foreign-policy experience. In essence, he has none. Nor\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "January 2009"","block_context":{"text":"January 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/january-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3018,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-the-great-american-hope-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":1320,"position":4},"title":"Obama: The Great American Hope?","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 17, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services There is great hope that President-elect Obama will change the course of U.S. foreign policy, create far greater goodwill toward America, and thereby ease world tensions. Such optimism is not based on former Sen. Obama\u2019s foreign-policy experience. In essence, he has none. Nor\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "January 2009"","block_context":{"text":"January 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/january-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3209,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/soft-neocons\/","url_meta":{"origin":1320,"position":5},"title":"Soft Neocons","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 26, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"With Iraq improving, will Neocon ideas return? by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services More than seven months ago, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., claimed that Iraq was \"lost.\" But that was hardly the case. In fact, Sunni insurgents were just beginning to turn on al Qaeda and join\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "November 2007"","block_context":{"text":"November 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/november-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1320"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1321,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320\/revisions\/1321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}