Irony Is Not Just A River In Egypt

On the heels of Bush's cross country campaign against the "Cut and Run" democrats, Bush is now on a three nation tour of the far east.

One of those nation that Bush will be visiting is Vietnam. The irony of this trip could not be greater. Bush spent two solid months of crisscrossing this country, begging and pleading for people to return a Republican majority to the Congress. He bellowed over and over that a Democratically controlled congress will cut and run from Iraq and the world will come to a quick and decisive end, and now he is visiting Vietnam...

Vietnam is the last major conflict in which we cut and run. It was said that the whole of the far east would fall to communism. The American way of life would be jeopardized.

Now, 25 years later, Bush is attending a conference in Hanoi. Americans and Europeans flock as tourist to the same beaches that we "fled" from a generation earlier. The American way of life was preserved despite the pro-war faction's predictions. Post war analysis has pretty much definitively determined that the war in Vietnam would never have been winnable without 50,000 more American lives lost. 25 years since we cut and ran and the world didn't end.

The is because cut and run is not the end of the world. It wasn't then, and it is not now.

If Truman had cut and run in 1950 from the Korean war as soon as the status quo had been regained and the North Koreans had been pushed back to the 38th parallel, it would have saved 10,000 American lives. Instead, he decided to push the North Koreans all the way to China which ended up extending the war by three years. In the end, we ended up with the same result as we would have if we had just ended the war in 1950.

I have never advocated an immediate pullout of American troops. But lets stop the idiotic propaganda war of saying that cut and run is un-patriotic. Sometimes, cut and run is the best and most viable option. If you are down $20,000 at the poker table, is it really manly to keep on betting and lose the house as well? If we stop the name calling and the fake patriotic machismo, maybe we can finally have an honest discussion about how to best conduct the war in Iraq and the war on terror. From a purely global strategic position, cut and run might be the very best thing for the American people, the Iraqi people, and the War on Terror.