Are the people of Iraq better off right now than they were in the year 2000?

You can skip the rest of this post if you want. It's mostly musings on this general subject, and you won't like them anyway.

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A long time ago I made a post that said, to the effect, "what is the Left going to say and do if, somehow, we win? If Iraq works?"

It seemed impossible for some people to process that concept.

Of course we weren't going to win. Of course there will be a raging civil war that destroys the country. Sectarian violence will never end. Anbar is lost to al Qaeda. All the Iraqis are on the side of the insurgents against us. The country will split and die. Americans will come back from overseas hanging their heads in anger and shame, just like last time.

If Iraq ends up working, there's really no place left to go, is there?

They can cling to the idea that "the war wasn't about a democratic Iraq," and take what comfort they can from that. Bush still sucks, so it's all okay.

They certainly won't be thinking about the implications of Iraq's past WMD, Saddam's plans for future WMD, the bloody invasions of neighboring countries, and the domestic horror that was the hallmark of Saddam's rule, all of which died in gunfire and at the end of a rope.

I'm beginning to wonder how much of this is psychological for part of the Daily Kos Left. How much of Iraq is woven into the entire Vietnam paradigm of American armed force as inevitably futile and evil.

I was at college in the spring of 1975, at the fall of Saigon. I watched TV at the student union. I saw cheers and applause as our troops fled, as helicopters were shoved off carrier decks. Where did this come from? When Paris fell, the French stood by the roadsides and wept. I like to think that outside the insular college environment, things were different.

How did the Fall of Saigon happen? Our troops were long gone. All we had to do was send the South arms, and money, and support. We didn't. We cut military support, and worked to bring down the South's government. The problem wasn't the Communists, it was the South's leadership, and surely if we gutted that, the Communists would see how enlightened we were and go home? I spent a long time researching this period in our political history, and it wasn't pretty.

And I learned something about what role "negotiations" and "talks" play for ruthless regimes. Apparently a lot of people haven't learned this lesson, even now.

Where I live there are MANY Vietnamese. Bring up the subject of the war to one of the older ones, and almost all of them will change the subject. But look at their eyes, first.

It's been painfully obvious that much of the Left does not WANT America to win this war. Over time, I've been slowly working out why.