Basically, the Right has used the argument that we can't leave Iraq because then there will be a genocide, just like after we left Vietnam there was a genocide in Cambodia. This argument has annoyed the hell out of me since forever, because it has a flawed notion of cause and effect. Last week, James Taranto of the WSJ wrote a scathing indictment of Democrats who want to pull out of Iraq, and even singled out Senator Kerry (in addition to Obama):
One may take the position that genocide would not be the likely result of an American retreat from Iraq. That is the view of Mr. Obama's Massachusetts colleague John Kerry, the 2004 presidential nominee. Mr. Kerry, who served in Vietnam before turning against that war, voted for the Iraq war before turning against it. He draws on the Vietnam experience in making the case that the outcome of a U.S. pullout from Iraq would not be that bad. "We heard that argument over and over again about the bloodbath that would engulf the entire Southeast Asia, and it didn't happen," he said recently.
"It didn't happen" -- just as Mr. Kerry predicted it wouldn't. In his June 1971 debate with fellow swift boat veteran John O'Neill on "The Dick Cavett Show," the 27-year-old Mr. Kerry said, "There's absolutely no guarantee that there would be a bloodbath. . . . One has to, obviously, conjecture on this. However, I think the arguments clearly indicate that there probably wouldn't be. . . . There is no interest on the part of the North Vietnamese to try to massacre the people once people have agreed to withdraw." Mr. Kerry acknowledged that "there would be certain political assassinations," but said they would number only "four or five thousand."
Then he names every bad thing that happened afterwards, acting like it was a direct result of the U.S. pulling out of Vietnam. Senator Kerry had an LTE in the paper:
Exaggerated Claims Of Violence in Vietnam
Date: 08/04/2007
By John Kerry
James Taranto misinterpreted my words and misreads history ("'It Didn't Happen,'" Opinion, July 26). I know the tragedy that followed a tragic war. John McCain and I led the effort to locate American POWs and ultimately normalize relations with Vietnam. I traveled to Cambodia to help create a genocide tribunal to bring to justice the butchers of the killing fields.
But what did not happen was the region-wide war or immediate chaos predicted by many who believed we had to maintain our massive military presence in Vietnam. A brutal dictatorship consolidated power in Vietnam, the region's refugee crisis worsened and two years after we left Vietnam, Cambodia's Khmer Rouge launched a genocide.
Mr. Taranto mistakenly views the violence after 1973 as a direct result of our withdrawal. In fact, the violence arose from the conditions that led us to withdraw: a Vietnamese civil war we couldn't stop supported by a Cambodian insurgency we couldn't bomb into submission. It's horrifying that so many South Vietnamese suffered. But, even accepting Mr. Taranto's estimate of 165,000 Vietnamese deaths -- double that of most academic sources -- this is a significant decrease from the preceding eight years when 450,000 civilians and 1.1 million soldiers were killed.
We should not repeat the mistakes of Vietnam in Iraq, but let's have an honest debate rather than a hysterical one. The agony of exiting a quagmire is that there are few certainties and no good options. That choice was created not by the advocates for changing course, but by the architects of a disastrous war.
Sen. John Kerry
U.S. Senator (D., Mass.)
Washington
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118617215323687653.html