Last week may have been one of the worst weeks of President George W. Bush’s presidency. According to Gallup, the President’s approval rating is at 45 percent and a majority of Americans now believe it was a bad idea going to war with Iraq. More and more today, Iraq is looking like Vietnam did more than 30 years ago.
Respected Republican Senator Charles Hagel has compared Iraq to Vietnam, and he has also said that America needs to “start figuring out how to get out” of Iraq. Hagel argues that “stay the course” should not be the nation’s policy. Yet, the Bush administration still claims that America should stay where it is.
I have long believed in the idea that if “it isn’t broken don’t fix it.” Well, the majority of Americans now believe Iraq is broken, and we are simply “staying the course.” While I don’t condone America leaving Iraq within the next three months, the Bush administration should look in another direction than “stay the course” — a three-word policy that has cost over 23,000 Iraqi civilians and 1,861 American soldiers their lives.
America is now seeing larger rallying points for anti-war demonstrations. Like Vietnam veterans, Iraq War veterans are coming out against the war. A mother is protesting the war and demanding a second meeting with the president — and she’s doing it right outside his vacation ranch in Crawford, Texas. The America of 2005 is starting to look more and more like the America of 1967.
By the sound of news out of Iraq, the war isn’t going to get any better. In fact, it is going to get worse. On Sunday, in an interview with the Associated Press, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker said the current troop levels in Iraq would remain the same until 2009. This is the Pentagon and the military “staying the course.” By 2009, the rates of casualties in Iraq might dramatically rise, and even now there are about 138,000 U.S. troops serving in Iraq.
Vietnam was a war in which the blame was passed from those responsible to those who followed. Vietnam was a war about Communist containment. Vietnam caused America to be torn apart, while the level of apathy for America’s government and future rose.
Iraq has been no different. Bush’s war will most likely be placed on other people within the administration and onto the next administration. The Iraq war is not so much about Middle East containment, as it is about Middle East infiltration. Iraq has caused a larger rift to be created between the two aisles and more apathy to be generated for America.
Just as the Vietnam War destabilized the American and Vietnamese political, social and ideological landscapes, Iraq is destabilizing the Middle East and modern-day America. The rift between America and the Middle East has already been widened since the end of World War II, and the Iraq War is causing more hatred for the United States in the Middle East — and the rest of the world, for that matter.
Just as was the case in Vietnam, there currently looks like no end is in sight. Just as President Nixon escalated the Vietnam War by sending troops into Cambodia, the Bush administration is eyeing Iran. I have always believed Iran was the greater threat to the world when comparing it to Iraq. Yet, I do not condone the Bush administration’s sending more troops into another conflict.
With the vigilance of the Bush administration, all a dissenting American can hope is for Bush to take pity on our soldiers’ souls, and for 2008 to ring in a new era.
Write to Matthew at
mlstephenson@bsu.edu
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