3597

The fallout of Vietnam--dragons and tigers

As misguided but sincere Christians return home from the pitiful march on Washington on the 4th anniversary of the war, some trying to recapture their youth and energy of the 60s and 70s, it's instructive to note this article in the Jan-Feb 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs. I am not familiar with the author, Lee Kuan Yew who was Prime Minister of Singapore from 1959-1990, and I would have preferred some attention to the 3 million people we abandoned to be slaughtered by the Communists, but he does have a less parochial view than American peaceknickers who think everything is about us. He presents an Asian viewpoint as to what the benefits of that war were.

"I am not among those who say that it was wrong to have gone into Iraq to remove Saddam and who now advocate that the United States cut its losses and pull out. This will not solve the problem. If the United States leaves Iraq prematurely, jihadists everywhere will be emboldened to take the battle to Washington and its friends and allies. Having defeated the Russians in Afghanistan and the United States in Iraq, they will believe that they can change the world. Even worse, if civil war breaks out in Iraq, the conflict will destablilize the whole Middle East, as it will draw in Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey." p. 3

"Conventional wisdom in the 1970s saw the war in Vietnam as an unmitigated disaster. But that has been proved wrong. The war had collateral benefits, buying the time and creating the conditions that enabled noncommunist East Asia to follow Japan's path and develop into the four dragons (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan) and, later, the four tigers (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Phillippines, and Thailand). Time brought about the split between Moscow and Beijing and then a split between Beijing and Hanoi. The influence of the four dragons and the four tigers, in turn, changed both communist China and communist Vietnam into open, free-market economies and made their societies freer." p. 7

He also predicts the next president (I'm assuming a Democrat) will be facing a long-term fight against Islamist militants, a battle which is only in its early rounds. And I predict lots of career building activity for our leftist protestors as the older ones go into nursing homes and make way for the younger.

Iraq War