Letters to the Editor
smalltownguy
Published Letters: 1
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Yeah, Iraq isn't Cambodia
[Read the article: The paranoid withdrawal fantasy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Anyone with a map can see that. Yet, you attempt to describe the situation as if the only forces molding the situation were the US, the Vietnamese, and Cambodians. NO analysis of the cause, events, and ESPECIALLY the aftermath can be anything but horribly distorted, if you leave out the role of the Communists, the Soviets in particular, and the partisans in the US who fomented domestic insurrection for political purposes.
To focus SOLELY on "bombing cambodia" and pretend that Pol Pot wasn't responsible for millions of deaths, or at least wasn't as big of monster as we make him out to be, is to deliberately try to mislead people about the big picture.
Which brings us to Iraq. There ARE cultural components to the violence in Iraq, but they are actually quite small. The big picture, is that just like Vietnam and Cambodia, the field of conflict is just the site, not the factor. Again, we have major outside forces which are seeking to exert control over a region. While we had the Soviets and so on back in the 60's and 70's, we now face Iran, Syria, and a multinational loose coalition of ideologues, who have GENERATIONS of experience at fomenting and infiltrating middle eastern countries and societies.
To ignore the largest components of the factors in the Vietnam conflict, and now in the Iraq conflict is to be willingly blind, or else to be deliberate in an effort to paint a picture which is not true.
The methods and means by which the wholesale slaughter would be DIFFERENT in Iraq, but it would VERY much happen. Iran, Syria, and assorted loosely affiliated organizations spread throughout the middle east and elsewhere as well, are pouring huge amounts of money, people, and talent into the conflict now. What they would do if we left, is to foment civil war. To continually inflame until they found a way to spark a Sunni - Shia all out war, to spark conflict between the Kurds and Turkey, to foment endless terror until a "solution" rises in the form of a strongman theocratic tyrant rises and rules by absolute force. Pol Pot had his ideology, this new force would have its as well, though while different, the OUTCOME would be just as devastating.
The Middle East has not had any kind of peace over the last century, nor the one before that. Archeology shows us the monuments - some large and some small - to the passing of great powers and conflicts, in an endless progression.
HOW COULD THERE EVER BE PEACE if the ideologies based upon absolute control are left to rule? Humanity itself cries out to the rest of the world - how could we leave countless millions in the grip of these sick and murderous ideologies? They must be defeated, if for no other reason, than the defense of humanity itself.