Stopping Short of Stage 4 and Boat People

Liberal critics of Iraq have certainly been right that Iraq has become another Vietnam--but with a small but important difference about how that happened.

Leftish opponents of the Iraq War constantly said it would be another Vietnam War. And they were right!

In both Vietnam and Iraq, we defeated our enemies on the battlefield and left a fledgling but struggling democracy to face vicious opponents.

In both Vietnam and Iraq, our enemies finally attacked after we were gone, defying the notion that we had "peace with honor" "responsibly ended the war."

The difference is that in Iraq, the enemy was too weak to capture everything as North Vietnam's mechanized legions did by driving all the way into Saigon in 1975, which shamed us into doing something to reverse the defeats in Iraq at the hands of ISIL.

I can only imagine that many on the Left (perhaps including those in the administration) wish that ISIL had swept all the way to Baghdad and Basra in one surge of attacks.

Then, the administration could have said, "Oh, darn the luck--it's too late now to intervene" and offered humanitarian help to the waves of refugees fleeing by land and sea from the tender mercies of the jihadi conquerors.

So there is that small difference.

The Obama administration does seem to be the master of the 4-stage response to crises:




Sadly, ISIL's weakness prevented the Obama administration from going all the way to stage 4.

Drama? No Obama.

At least the Foreign Office doesn't have a stage 5 apology.

On the bright side, our fracking technology operates outside of the 4-stage system and is our most effective foreign policy tool at the moment.