Kissinger, Iraq and stability

Some of the people who consider themselves to be the best and brightest among us, guys like Henry Kissinger, are squawking that the war they and over 70% of Americans once supported, is now “unwinnable.” These new breed quitters opine, “We did our best. We defeated the Iraqi army in three weeks. We spent billions of dollars and thousands of lives over the last three years, but the Iraqi people have proven that they do not want and cannot sustain a democracy.”

First off, we should not be taking foreign policy advice from the guy who negotiated our last military defeat. What credibility does this guy have? Henry Kissinger lecturing us on this war is akin to Ohio State head football coach Jim Tressel, who is 5-1 against Michigan, letting former head coach John Cooper, who was 2-10-1, lecture him on how to attack the Michigan defense.

Henry Kissinger split a Nobel Peace Prize with his North Vietnamese counterpart, Le Duc Tho, for negotiating an end to the Vietnam War in 1973. A beaming Kissinger went to Geneva and accepted his award. Tho, knowing the war was not over, stayed in Vietnam and declined his award. After an acceptable interval, in April 1975, Kissinger’s “peace with honor” BULLS*@T was exposed for the line of crap it was when Saigon fell.

The result of what has been dubbed “Kissinger’s respectable interval” of US “peace with honor” strategy?

- 2 million dead Cambodians.
- Hundreds of thousands of dead and imprisoned South Vietnamese.
- Ten’s of thousands of South Vietnamese boat people.
- Decades of worldwide disdain for the US:
-- Foe’s see us as a paper tiger.
-- Friends view the US as an unreliable ally.
- The near destruction of our own military by craven politicians.
- A forever comparison of any military venture, no matter how successful (Afghanistan) or how necessary (Iraq), as being, “just like Vietnam.”
- The only good thing: a healthy mistrust of politicians.

I don’t care as much about the Iraqis and their willingness to embrace democracy as I do about American national interests. Iraq’s democracy is not the main thing. Confronting and defeating Islamo-terror-fascists is the main thing. If in the process, Iraq gets a democracy, fine. If in the process, Iraq is partitioned into three separate states, fine. If in the process, all of the Middle Eastern governments are exposed as corrupt dictatorships sending the entire region into revolt, fine.

Pols like to talk of “stability.” Let’s face it, that region has never been stable. Kissinger and like minded pols who talk of stability in that region first have to be asked to define stability. If ruthless terror supporting dictatorships, madras supporting proponents of a worldwide caliphate, kings, emirs and unelected “presidents” are their idea of stability, then let’s face it, the region is going to become a whole lot more unstable before it ever reaches a layman’s definition of stability. Something like, people going to work, doing the best that they can in a country where the government sets the conditions for opportunity and success and peacefully relinquishes power when the people desire change.

Henry Kissinger negotiated our defeat in Vietnam. Because the stakes are so much higher, he’s the last guy we should be listening to now.