Letter: Iraq looks more like Vietnam every day

Sunday, April 29, 2007 | 7:26 a.m.

I think we better obtain some definitions about "war" and "winning." I thought the war was won when the president declared " Mission Accomplished." What are we trying to win now? Is it to stabilize the government of Iraq and stop the civil war there?

Gen. David Petraeus has said that Iraq needs a political solution and, without it, there will be no peace between the Sunnis and Shiites, no matter how many men and women we put on the ground. This is Iraq's problem, not ours.

Sen. John McCain, whom I admire very much, said it could be argued that we left Vietnam too soon. We went into Vietnam on the premise that unless we stopped communist North Vietnam we would see the communists take over all of Southeast Asia. Well, we did not stop the communists and we did not see any communist advance.

So I disagree that we left Vietnam too soon. (Vietnam is now a trading partner.) Now we are being told that if we leave Iraq, the radical Islamists will take over Iraq and attack us from there. There are about 300 million Islamists throughout the world, so if radicalized they could attack us from anywhere.

If the Iraqis want to keep the democratic type of government that we have set up for them, let them do so and form their own army and police force and attempt by political negotiations to bring the civil war to an end. But it is their problem, not ours.

So Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is right - we must set benchmarks on when we should leave. Otherwise we will fall into the morass as in Vietnam and lose many more personnel. We must not let the threat of what might happen mislead us into the same mistake we made in Vietnam.

Tom White, Henderson