Dear Editor,
It was disheartening to read Professor Ethan Deneault’s letter to the editor in last week’s Minaret, in which he concluded, ‘Support the troops. Let them win. Cheers.” Professor Deneault has ignored history and current events in his delusional call for victory. Surely after four years of failure in Iraq, amidst an increasingly violent civil war, it is time for President Bush to admit what the great majority of Americans already know: this ill-advised war is lost.
I agree with Professor Deneault’s assertion that we in the West are engaged in a long struggle with militant Islam. However, the war in Iraq is not a vital front in that war, as Deneault asserts, but is a dangerous diversion into which we have poured precious resources with no hope of a return. This total commitment to a disastrously conceived war precludes our putting resources into other areas’mdash;such as Afghanistan or the hunt for Osama bin Laden’mdash;where they might be more effectively used.
Professor Deneault’s letter is filled with numerous misleading statements. None is more foolish, however, than his assertion that ‘If we appear weak, we are weak, and that is to their [presumably our Islamic enemies] advantage.’ We learned from the experience of Vietnam what happens when we prolong a losing conflict because we cannot afford to appear ‘weak.’ Over 58,000 Americans died there, a majority after President Nixon said that he had a ‘secret plan’ to end the war. After all the dire predictions that the loss of Vietnam would result in the fall of Asian countries like dominoes, what happened? Nothing. The political map of Asia remained unchanged, and Vietnam is today one of our valued trading partners and a tourist destination.
It is clear already that we did not invade Iraq to combat any real terrorist threat. That was simply the excuse that the Bushies thought that they could sell. And, with’ Secretary of State Powell’s duplicitous remarks about WMD, they did. The real reasons for our invasion will be ferreted out by future generations of historians. I suspect that they will uncover a cynical desire to secure Iraq’s oil supply; neo-con fantasies about ‘projecting American power’ and ‘bringing liberal democracy’ to this most undemocratic piece of the planet; and probably some Oedipal yearnings to succeed where Pops had failed. To date, over 3200 Americans and countless numbers of Iraqis have lost the lives in this senseless conflict. Time to end the war and turn the scalawags out of office.
Terry Parssinen
Professor of History