Lee Kuan Yew, the former Prime Minister of Singapore, argues that because America was in Vietnam so long, other south-east Asian countries had time to improve the lives of their people enough to resist communism — which they could not have done had America let Vietnam go Communist in the 1960s. The long view has to be applied to Iraq also....
What should terrify us is this: The result of an American defeat in Iraq would be even worse than in Vietnam. As the al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Musab al-Zarqawi, said before he was fortunately killed by a US air strike: “The shedding of Muslim blood is allowed in order to disrupt the greater evil of disrupting Jihad.” If Iraq collapses, such nihilist killing will spread. As in Cambodia, mass murder is the only alternative to what the US-led coalition is trying to achieve under its UN mandate.
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