I recently read King's speech at Riverside Church (available from Alternative Radio) and was astonished at the cogent analysis and compelling case he made. And yes, it resonates strongly now.

Should be required reading for us all.

Vietnam may have had a degrading impact on the American soul, but you can talk to Vietnamese-Americans all over northern Virginia about the impact our abandoning it had on them. In light of what actually happened after 1975, the portions of King's speech on the National Liberation Front make painful reading ("less than 25%" of the membership is communist, its really all about peasants vs. landlords, etc). We may come to decide we can no longer bear the costs of Iraq, but let us speak softly if at all about the "moral" impetus behind the decision. If we leave Iraq in the near future, we leave it under the sway of killers without conscience, just as we did Vietnam.
For such men, Haditha style massacres are acts of ordinary policy, not crimes to be punished.

"For such men, Haditha style massacres are acts of ordinary policy, not crimes to be punished." But Haditha style massacres _are_ commonplace US policy in Iraq. For example, I'm sure you remember, Fallujah, when we Haditha-ed an entire city: maybe not, it wasn't allowed on TV. Haditha, actually, is only being punished because the neighbor was a video journalist whose evidence of the crime is more or less undeniable.

So, right now Iraq is in the hands of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, and Haditha massacres are common policy: it might be just as bad under an Iraqi alternative, but it can't get much worse. We've screwed things up so badly, and since it is their country and all, I say the Iraqis deserve a shot at running things.

I didn't say there was a "bloodbath" in Vietnam in 1975, though certainly small scale massacres were a common enough tactic by the Vietnamese insurgents. Read any detailed history of the Tet offensive for what happened in cities like Hue when they were briefly occupied. What I did suggest is that calling American withdrawal from Vietnam some sort of unambiguous "moral" victory overlooks the rampant cruelty and desperation experienced after 1975 by hundreds of thousands of people who had depended on us. Again, just talk to virtually any Vietnamese-American you happen to meet. Martin Luther King in his Riverside speech at least recognized that we would need to provide asylum to those in fear of their lives. I wonder if he realized just how many there would be. I wonder if he realized just what lay in store for the peasants supposedly united for better conditions against their landlords. Withdrawing from Vietnam may well have been the right decision, the costs of continuing being larger than anything we could hope to gain. But a moral triumph? Not a chance.

This is the dilemma: Being there is morally compromised, and leaving is also. The unfortunate choice is to find the lesser harm, not the obviously right choice (which does not exist).

Why did a situation develop that any Vietnamese were dependent on us? Because we intervened.

A conservative argument has some weight here--sometimes helping hurts. Since the only way we could help South Vietnam was through the offices of their corrupt government, helping only helped the upper class.

Leaving Iraq may cause damage and we will have to accept that guilt. Staying may cause more damage. In any case, after leaving, damage caused directly by us stops. Harm reduction is the best we can achieve.

Three things -

1) Don't buy into the revisionist history stated above.

2) I believe it was over 58,000 US dead.

3) I believe the estimates are over 2 million Vietnamese dead.

Tom

I agree with the need to repair the damage we helped caused. How much of the damage has been caused by either Zarqawi going after Shiia Iraqis and Iraqis Sunni and Shiia settling scores?

Daniel A. Greenbaum