This is not an issue of victory or defeat, or supporting the war or not. In order to have an informed and intelligent discussion about the best way to proceed in Iraq, as a political society we have to use words that have actual meaning.
No one advocates accepting defeat or rejecting victory. What they disagree about are actual specific actions - those are what we should discuss.
As much as I love a good conspiracy theory, this article from today's NYT suggests that the Russian invasion of Afghanistan was because of American defeat in Viet Nam. If only America had stuck it out until victory, there never would have been the Khmer Rouge genocide.
Accepting defeat is speaking in amorphous terms that remove the opportunity for meaningful discussion and suggesting that support for a single action or decision will mean the end of the world. Victory is embracing confidence that our American system of democracy will prevail; the people will ultimately make the right decision, and trusting that your ideas will stand on their merit rather than hollow rhetoric.
Defeat’s Killing Fields
SOME opponents of the Iraq war are toying with the idea of American defeat. A number of them are simply predicting it, while others advocate measures that would make it more likely. Lending intellectual respectability to all this is an argument that takes a strange comfort from the outcome of the Vietnam War. The defeat of the American enterprise in Indochina, it is said, turned out not to be as bad as expected. The United States recovered, and no lasting price was paid.
. . .The 1975 Communist victory in Indochina led to horrors that engulfed the region. The victorious Khmer Rouge killed one to two million of their fellow Cambodians in a genocidal, ideological rampage. . . .
The defeat had a lasting and significant strategic impact. . . . [the Soviet] of Afghanistan was one result.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/opinion/07shawcross.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment