Why We Must Stay in Iraq

Vietnam is once again in the air. Last month's antiwar demonstrations in Crawford, Tex., have been heralded as the beginning of an antiwar movement that will take to the streets like the one of 30 years ago. Influential pundits -- in the manner of a gloomy Walter Cronkite after the Tet offensive -- are assuring us that we can't win in Iraq and that we have no option but a summary withdrawal. We may even have a new McGovern-style presidential "peace" candidate in Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold.

America's most contentious war is being freely evoked to explain the "quagmire" we are supposedly now in. Vietnam is an obvious comparison given the frustration of asymmetrical warfare and savage enemies who escape our conventional power. But make no mistake, Iraq is not like Vietnam, and it must not end like Vietnam. Despite our tragic lapses, leaving now would be a monumental mistake -- and one that we would all too soon come to regret.

If we fled precipitously, moderates in the Middle East could never again believe American assurances of support for reform and would have to retreat into the shadows -- or find themselves at the mercy of fascist killers. Jihadists would swell their ranks as they hyped their defeat of the American infidels. Our forward strategy of hitting terrorists hard abroad would be discredited and replaced by a return to the pre-9/11 tactics of a few cruise missiles and writs. And loyal allies in Eastern Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia and Japan, along with new friends in India and the former Soviet republics, would find themselves leaderless in the global struggle against Islamic radicalism.

The specter of Vietnam will also turn on those who embrace it. Iraq is not a surrogate theater of the Cold War, where national liberationists, fueled by the romance of radical egalitarianism, are fortified by nearby Marxist nuclear patrons. The jihadists have an 8th-century agenda of gender apartheid, religious intolerance and theocracy. For all its pyrotechnics, the call for a glorious return to the Dark Ages has found no broad constituency.

Nor is our army in Iraq conscript, but volunteer and professional. The Iraqi constitutional debate is already light-years ahead of anything that emerged in Saigon. And there is an exit strategy, not mission creep -- we will consider withdrawal as the evolution to a legitimate government continues and the Iraqi security forces grow.

But the comparison to Vietnam may be instructive regarding another aspect -- the aftershocks of a premature American departure. Leaving Vietnam to the communists did not make anyone safer. The flight of the mid-1970s energized U.S. enemies in Iran, Cambodia, Afghanistan and Central America, while tearing our own country apart for nearly a quarter-century. Today, most Americans are indeed very troubled over the war in Iraq -- but mostly they are angry about not winning quickly, rather than resigned to losing amid recriminations.

We forget that once war breaks out, things usually get far worse before they get better. We should remember that 1943, after we had entered World War II, was a far bloodier year than 1938, when the world left Hitler alone. Similarly, 2005 may have brought more open violence in Iraq than was visible during Saddam's less publicized killings of 2002. So it is when extremists are confronted rather than appeased. But unlike the time before the invasion, when we patrolled Iraq's skies while Saddam butchered his own with impunity below, there is now a hopeful future for Iraq.

It is true that foreign terrorists are flocking into the country, the way they earlier crossed the Pakistani border into Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban, and that this makes the short-term task of securing the country far more difficult. But again, just as there were more Nazis and fascists out in the open in 1941 than before the war, so too there were almost none left by 1946. If we continue to defeat the jihadists in Iraq -- and the untold story of this war is that the U.S. military has performed brilliantly in killing and jailing tens of thousands of them -- their cause will be discredited by the stick of military defeat and the carrot of genuine political freedom.

All this is not wishful thinking. The United States has an impressive record of military reconstruction and democratization following the defeat of our enemies -- vs. the abject chaos that followed when we failed to help fragile postwar societies.

After World War II, Germany, Italy and Japan (American troops are still posted in all three) proved to be success stories. In contrast, an unstable post-WWI Weimar Germany soon led to something worse than Kaiser Wilhelm.

After the Korean War, South Korea survived and evolved. South Vietnam, by contrast, ended up with a Stalinist government, and the world watched the unfolding tragedy of the boat people, reeducation camps and a Southeast Asian holocaust.

Present-day Kabul has the most enlightened constitution in the Middle East. Post-Soviet Afghanistan -- after we ceased our involvement with the mujaheddin resistance -- was an Islamic nightmare.