McCain Rebukes Hagel

Click on the title for the complete News Max story.

Hat Tip to McQ at Q and O.

Sen. John McCain rebuked his Senate colleague and good friend Chuck Hagel on Sunday, saying that the Nebraska Republican was wrong to claim last week that Iraq was becoming another Vietnam.

Friends can have disagreements and if Chuck Hagel was mine, I would disagree with him too.

McCain said that in contrast to Iraq, South Vietnam "never had a legitimate government in Saigon that the people believed in and trusted."

Not only that, our objective was never clear. We were stuck in a defensive posture. We were in a protective role against a true insurgency, a communist insurgency. Our objective in Iraq was to remove Saddam and plant a democratic republic. I will say that our hands have been tied, more than I would have preferred. But our hands were ridiculously tied in Vietnam.

The Vietnam war also featured "superpower engagement in a huge way," McCain added. "We have a problem [in Iraq] with the Syrians, but nothing like what the Chinese and Russians were doing with the North Vietnamese," he said.

Another difference is the Soviets, Chinese, or any other communist country never attacked the mainland United States. The 9/11 Commission Report established that there was a connection between Iraq and Al-Qaida. (The left has psychologically blocked that portion of the report, from their already extremely selective memories.)

But Al-Qaida did attack us and the jury is still out on how big of a role Saddam played. Just because there has been an investigation and a report, does not mean that we have all of the facts, even yet. There are things we may never know.

Don't get me wrong, the Soviets used a massive threatening propaganda campaign against the U.S. and incidents of espionage were widespread. But they never flew planes into three buildings, in this country.

Another difference, said McCain: "If we fail in Iraq, the results will be cataclysmic. You'll see factionalization and eventual Muslim extremism and terrorist breeding grounds that I believe will pose a direct threat to the security of the United States."

McCain says some things I very much disagree with from time to time, but overall I think he gets it, and Hagel does not. For this statement, is the crux of the whole matter, when comparing (or contrasting) these two conflicts.

I'll throw in a couple of other differences, at no extra cost:

1. We were able to outspend the Soviets into submission. We will not be able to that with Islamic terrorists, they are funded by the $70 per barrel oil money.

2. Vietnam U.S. Military Deaths - 58,169 in 11 years. Iraq Military Deaths (as of 28 Aug 05) - 1877 in 2 1/2 years.

That breaks down to an average annual death toll of:

Vietnam - 5288/year

Iraq - 751/ year

This means that the Iraq War casualty rate is only 14% of the casualty rate in Vietnam.

Don't get me wrong. Any death in the line of duty is too much, but we have to be realistic here. There is no comparison here. In fact, it is more of a contrast. There may be a handful of similarities, here and there. But the amount of differences far outweigh the amount of similarities.