Winning Still The Best Memorial

Memorial Day weekend is upon us and reflecting on the sacrifices of our servicemen is in order. But as we reflect on their sacrifices, we must also reflect on the result of those sacrifices - the result of victory.

The most galling aspect of the present-day "debate" about Iraq is that no one offers any kind of defense of actually winning in Iraq. With all the reckless comparisons of Iraq to Vietnam, it is worth noting how the debate then shied away from offering a defense of winning there. That was a huge error, because there was then and is now manifest reason to win.

It remains a tautological fallacy that the US could not win in Vietnam, and the Left is trying its best to make a tautology out of the idea that we can't win in Iraq. How they can think this way is puzzling, because in Vietnam the communist enemy, despite being allowed the strategic initiative, nonetheless at no point of direct US involvement held any kind of tactical upper hand. William Westmoreland's "war of the big battalions" approach was hardly the best use of resources and personnel, but despite its sloppiness it succeeded in bleeding the enemy, and the switch by Creighton Abrams to actually holding gained ground and then securing it and building the army of South Vietnam made the South secure enough that American troop reductions were steady and there was comparatively little fighting throughout 1971. This further pushed the Soviet-backed North Vietnamese to use their only remaining option - full-scale armored assault, which was stopped and their ability to sustain offensive action effectively wiped out.

It was here, though, that civilian-manifested defeatism pushed the US to throw away Indochinese gains, ultimately resulting in the conquest of the region by Hanoi. Thus did the US throw away success because it refused to consider winning as an option.

Ultimately this is why Vietnam remains such a bitter memory, a bitterness impossible to imagine had the US stayed through to even the admittedly limited triumph of a Korea-style division of the region - a result that nearly transpired, as shown by the writings of Sir Robert Thompson then and later. Korea likewise was a frustrating war but one in which the US managed to achieve an objective - stopping invasion of the South by the Communist North. The end result was certainly anything but ideal, but it was a real accomplishment nonetheless, and the result - a prosperous Korea as well as Japan and other regional nations - should speak for itself.

Antiwar types disingenuously talk about sympathising with the troops; the best sympathy one can have is the best memorial to their sacrifice - backing victory in their endeavor.

Winning is always the best memorial.