We deposed Saddam. That was our mission. Time to come home.

So we could what, leave it for the terrorists to take over and leave it worse than we found it? That has never been the MO of America. We are doing the same thing in Iraq and Afghanistan that we did in Germany and Japan.

As always Ace, thanks for the link. You are the wind beneath my traffic, or something like that.

That has never been the MO of America.

We disagree.

I don't think that the mission was simply to depose Saddam, though Bush on the carrier beneath the "Mission Accomplished" sign could easily lead one to think this.

No, the mission was ostensibly to remove a threat to the US. It turns out that there wasn't such a threat at the time, but there would be if we simply left without enabling the Iraqis to reach a stable political state.

No, it wasn't the North Vietnamese communists' fault that millions of SE Asians died, it was Amerikkka! Not the North Vietnamese communist-backed Khmer Rouge, but Amerikkka!
Keep trying to re-write history, that's all the left can do to make itself look good, because the truth is too ugly.

I didn't said we never waivered from that MO. Vietnam was an unusual experience all the way around. Nothing about it fit any MO.

How 'bout in normal circumstances, America does not simply engage in a war and leave the countries worse off than we found them? There are more cases of that than not. Again Vietnam being the exception, but not the rule.

Uncle - North Vietnam's support for the Khmer Rouge was minimal at the most, and actually antagonistic for most of the KR history. Prior to the deposition of Sihanouk the NV supported him against the KR, as Sihanouk was providing the NVA with sanctuaries and supply lines. Between Sihanouk's deposition, by the US backed Lon Nol in 1970, and the US withdrawal in '73 the NV provided the KR with minimal assistance. The Paris Treaty included North and South Vietnam and Laos, but NOT Cambodia, something that the KR considered treachery on the part of the NV. The KR took power in '75 and embarked on their genocidal policies until the re-united Vietnamese invaded and overthrew the KR in '78.

The Left obviously are not the only revisionists.

No, sir.
The NVA backed the KR so that they (the NVA) could control eastern Cambodia in order to establish and maintain the Ho Chi Minh trail, their lifeline into South Vietnam. The NVA and Viet Cong then further aided the KR in combat against the Cambodian government starting in 1970, finally withdrawing forces from the battle in 1973 when KR troops had grown ten-fold, and the KR held tow-thirds of Cambodia. Yes, after 1975 (when Pol Pot and the KR finally took the rest of the country) things got ugly, and in 1979 Vietnam invaded. That's 1.5 million dead Cambodians later.

Vietnam was a singularity. We lost/retreated.
The usual pattern is the US gets its ass kicked, rolls up its shirt sleeves, and then proceeds to hammer the foe into the ground.

Very recent history; skip #1.

Uncle - The NVA had not reason to support the KR prior to 1970. Rather the NVA had reason to NOT support the KR since the KR were fighting the NVA's ally Sihanouk. Also, the NVA invaded and deposed the KR in '78, not '79.

"...the Iraqi Foreign Minister fears the US will leave Iraq too soon."

A fear I have had since the old regime fell. So far I have not noticed this administration actively disengaging, and hope I won't until an Iraqi governemnt says it can handle things by itself - which BTW seems to be a real possibility faster than I would have predicted two years ag.

The fact is, neither the Cambodian holocaust (I don't use that term lightly, but that is what it was) nor the Vietnamese "boat-people" nor the conquest of Laos, nor the re-education camps for South Vietnamese, happened until AFTER the US left, not before. All these were things Nixon, LBJ, et al tried to prevent - and it was largely the left and the anti-war movement that takes credit for the US withdrawel.

The left did not do the killing - but they knew full well it would happen because that is what ALWAYS happens when communists take over - and they supported them anyway. The blood spilled is partly on their hands.

Uncle: After the millions murdered by Stalin and the millions murdered in the Holocaust, and the millions murdered by Red China, how could we turn our backs and let this happen?

Aaron: We're one hell of a large exception.

The Three Million:

To answer your first question (rudely, since it wasn't posed to me but to Uncle), blame Walter Cronkite. Well, not him personally, but you know.

Still, our biggest problem, and maybe it was unavoidable, was that unlike with the world wars, it wasn't really clear who we were helping. The people of South Vietnam, sure, but they had a heinous regime for quite a while. (We managed to square this circle somehow with Indonesia, South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, etc., but for lots of reasons starting probably with geography it didn't work in Vietnam).

By the time the South Vietnamese had moved appreciably towards reform, there were no objective observers left to do the appreciating. A crucial window of opportunity had closed and the domestic perception gelled, then hardened, then shattered into pointy pieces. The press and smarty-art internationally minded students had become cynical/wary about the entire project ... when along came a spider. Yippie!

I wonder if David Horowitz ever stays up at night wondering what he would have done had "people power" actually somehow taken over, back when he was a li'l Lenin . How many he would have ordered killed. Seriously. The man is driven by personal demons - which make for great reading (his memoir is what started my own conversion from moonbattery) - and not one for moderation of any type.

Horowitz and Collier's book Destructive Generation is a classic.