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As good as our word

What if we would have gone to war with Hitler...

An Iraqi Sunni man begs U.S. soldiers to protect his house and neighborhood in Baghdad. The soldiers took down his name and number and promised to stay in touch.
CREDIT: Chris Hondros/Getty Images

By Eric Von Haessler

What if we would have gone to war with Hitler just after he invaded Poland? We might have lost thousands of soldiers putting Adolf in his place—and many Americans would have wondered if our boys died for someone else’s cause. Certainly there would have been a faction claiming it was Poland’s problem and that it should have been their fight.

But hindsight shows us that at least 6 million lives would have been saved if Hitler had been defeated before constructing his first concentration camp. That’s 6 million souls before we get to the many thousands of dead American soldiers it took to finally bring Hitler to his knees: In one month in 1946, in Normandy alone, we would lose almost 10,000 soldiers—more than twice as many as we have lost in four years in Iraq (and we won in Normandy).

Now flash forward to Cambodia on April 17, 1975, just two weeks before the last American soldiers withdraw from neighboring Vietnam on April 30: The regional power vacuum created by America’s departure from Vietnam is filled by diabolical leader Pol Pot—who, with his Khmer Rouge troops, takes the capital city Phnom Penh. He will spend the next four years brutalizing and killing 2 million people identified as so-called enemies of the state; many of these were Vietnamese refugees from the bloodbath next door caused by the American withdrawal. (At least 1.5 million out of Phnom Penh’s population of about 2.5 million were such refugees.) This, in a country that had a population of only 7 million at the time.

During these hazy days of summer 2007, when everyone and his mamma has turned against the Iraqi mission and is demanding nothing less than full and quick withdrawal, it might be instructive to stop thinking about correcting the past and start thinking about what is likely to happen in the near future.

We’ve given our word to a lot of innocent people in Iraq that we would stay and try to keep order. So far, despite some setbacks, we’re still good for our word.

There is bound to be a bloodletting when we leave Baghdad that may well rival what happened in Cambodia after we left Vietnam. That means there are thousands, maybe millions, of people alive today who will be brutally murdered if we leave. How would you like to be the family in Iraq who vocally supported our efforts there once we’ve left? At best they’ll get a kangaroo court; at worst they’ll just be shot in the head and kicked into a mass grave.

Those who never wanted this war will say they warned us and they can’t be held responsible. The mood seems to be that this is all just a problem that needs to get fixed. But we can’t fix Iraq by leaving. History isn’t correctable like that. History just keeps unfolding from the present moment onward.

When thousands of innocents are getting their throats slit in the vacuum left after our withdrawal, it may be enough for Leftists in this country to comfort themselves by blaming it all on Bush. But that’s cold comfort to an ordinary Iraqi who took us at our word and was then left abandoned to these beheading monsters.

Wars are always bad. Mistakes and misjudgment have been a part of every winning campaign this country has ever mounted. Find a paper from late 1862 and see what people were saying about Lincoln and his “war of choice.” The difference between our winning campaigns and our losing efforts has simply been our will to fight.

So here we are again at a historical precipice. Another Cambodia is poised to happen. Are we really prepared to just sit back and watch it go down?

The truth is that because al-Qaida is involved in all of this, we won’t be able to just let it happen. Which means we’ll eventually end up going back to stop it. Why not take care of these little Hitlers now, rather than wait for the holocaust to come?

If we walk away from Iraq now, we’ll lose a lot more soldiers in the future trying to get it back. SP

More of Eric Von Haessler’s observations can be found at myspace.com/madpundit

COMMENTS

Comment by Tim Shea | Friday, July 27, 2007, 11:07 PM

In reference to withdrawal and the" leftists" complicity and near Cheneyesque
"slaughter to be of innocent Iraqis" you say

leftists can....Blame Bush. But that’s cold comfort to an ordinary Iraqi who took US AT OUR WORD and was then left abandoned to these beheading monsters. OUR WORD????
What was that fucking word ?
Was it Shock orwas it Awe? And where were the words "Innocent Iraqis" (aka collateral damage) before our blood lust neocons screamed for their heads as payback for their non involvement in 9-11.
For Eric and others who are historically challanged
Hitler was condemned for his invasion under false pretenses, and it actually led to declarations of war by France and England.
Thereby honoring an established treaty.
But Hitler wasn't an empire and some countries and people has the rightiousness to stand up and say NO but still millions died.And now people are standing up to an Empire and still more will die. That is a sad fact.
That is the historical parallel.
Not "What if Hitler could Fly?"
Please point to our honoring of a treaty or international law when, as you imply in your piece we rushed to aid innocent Iraqis. Who I believe have responded in the majority that the US should leave.
And the photo on the page hints of one among the many reasons.
The name of the photojournalist- Chris Hondros - is best known for the photos taken iin Iraq when U.S. troops opened fire on a family of eight approaching a checkpoint in a car. Both parents were killed while the six children in the backseat looked on.
Well were they Innocent Iraqis then ?
Or do they become innocent only when needed by ab alarmist call for more deaths ?

Comment by azar | Saturday, July 28, 2007, 11:12 AM

well let me inform tim shea of something 1 in iraq if you do not slow down at a check point and keep going i would say 99.9% of the time you have something you shouldnt have also hee are signs in arabic telling you check point slow down dim headlights. so apperantly they had something to hide if they got shot at and did not stop. as for the war we need to stay and keep our obligation if we leave it will be the next afghanistan. no doubt about it. we need to vote those liberal dems out because the have done nothing to support our troops and have accomplished nothing at all. all they have done is argue over the dumbst stuff like pelossi i want bigger airplane. now look at us the enemy who watches tv is laughing at us because our congress can not tell there ass from a hole in the ground.

Comment by Tim Shea | Saturday, July 28, 2007, 5:12 PM

Azar
It appears that you have access to a computer. May I suggest you do a cursory investigation of both topics you address.Pelosi and the plane rumors and the story behind the photo.
What I was addressing was the use of the up until now unheard term "-innocent Iraqis" as yet another reason to continue the pursuit of an inane undertaking,
I also spoke to the false analogy, hysterical posing as historical, comparison of the invasion of Poland and our presence in Iraq.
The quality of the argument Mr. Von Hasseler
uses is based on no more facts than Mr. Chernoff's gut check. Tossing in some atrocities is a lame attempt to paint a future yet seen, much like the visions of triumphant entries in WWll Europe posed as the template for pre war sales

Comment by Tommy | Sunday, July 29, 2007, 4:22 PM

Well said man.

Comment by Misty Novitch | Thursday, August 09, 2007, 10:38 PM

I just wanted to make sure Mr. Shea and the "Editor" who gave him a "note" in the hard copy of the paper this week (Aug 5-11) that there was only a link to a bunch of UN resolutions.

Mr. Shea asked a specific question, to which he was not given a straight answer: How did we follow international laws/treaties with Iraq? Which one specifically did we use as legal justification for this war?

The answer given by whom I assume is Ms. Ramage, was not specific and would require a lot of looking up to proove it DOES exist, which I don't believe it does.

I dunno bout yall, but I think it falls on her to proove some kind of legal justification DOES exist and not on him to proove that it doesn't.

Comment by Tim Shea | Friday, August 10, 2007, 10:28 AM

Misty Novitch, thank you for the reference to the hard copy. I, sadly enough, do not live in or near Atlanta.
I assumed that someone publishing on an internet site would be aware of that possibility if he or she decided to respond.Other than a closing argument by a DA it is the best way I know to have the last word.
From your mention of UN resolutions I guess there was some veiled attempt to legally justify the Iraq invasion. My only recourse to that particular sleight of hand is to remind readers that Mr.Decider pulled UN inspectors out before they completed their job. Citing the UN and ignoring the UN - another mark of the honesty of this administration and this type of argument.