Advice to Congress
November 18 | Posted by mrossol | American Thought, Military, The RightFormer Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, who died this week, writing in a Jan. 17, 2007, op-ed for the Washington Post:
The brewing fight in Congress over continued funding of the war in Iraq . . . is an ominous reminder of 1975, when Congress cut off funding for the Vietnam War three years after our combat troops had left. With the assistance we promised South Vietnam in the 1972 Paris Accords— U.S. equipment, replacement parts and ammunition—it had won every major battle since we left. But Congress lost the will to keep our promise and killed the appropriation. The result was a bloodbath.
I spent 16 years in Congress, much of the time on the House Appropriations defense subcommittee grilling defense secretaries about the conduct of the Vietnam War. Then, as defense secretary I spent four years on the other side of the table, holding fast to an exit strategy I believed in, “Vietnamization.” I never lost a vote during those four years. But it would have been devastating if Congress had cut the purse strings before our troops were withdrawn and before the South Vietnamese had learned to stand on their own. . . .
Finally, Congress must set the tone by admitting who the enemy is—political correctness be damned. There is the moderate, Westernized Islam on which we have hung our hopes, and there is everyone else. . . . And if allowed to play out to its goal of world domination, radical Islam will make the “domino theory” of Southeast Asia pale by comparison.
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