August 30, 2007

President bush’s speech last week to the Veterans of Foreign Wars continues to reverberate in the media and blogosphere.

Vietnam was a political failure of will. When the U.S. pulled out, it doomed hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Vietnamese to death, imprisonment and refugee status as boat people, who were lucky to get out alive, though many drowned.

The president said the same would happen if we pullout of iraq before stability is established. The President said people who think America can get out of Iraq with minimal human costs are sadly mistaken. “Whatever your position is on that debate,” the President said, “one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America’s withdrawal was paid by Millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like ‘boat people’, ‘reeducation camps’ and ‘killing fields.’”

There is one big difference between Vietnam and Iraq. The Vietnamese didn’t come after us. The Islamic terrorists have and will again if they are not defeated.

Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist based in Washington, D.C.