Dominoes And Caliphates

As I listened to the President assert during today's press conference that "if we fail there, the enemy will follow us here," I thought about how, as time passes, the intellectual and linguistic parallels between Iraq and Vietnam become more pronounced. One almost gets the sense that the White House dispatched a few interns to LBJ's presidential library in Austin to spend a few days digging through the archives, and they wore out the copy machines.

My point here is not to draw a comparison between Iraq and Vietnam per se, though by now readers know where I stand on that. The comparison by itself is useless, after all (and no doubt a bit tired at this point). The value in that comparison is understanding that the language of political desperation never changes, nor does the nature of the deception -- whether about "dominoes" or "caliphates" -- that necessarily accompanies that language:


To ignore aggression now would only increase the danger of a much larger war.

LBJ 1/4/65


Let no one think for a moment that retreat from Vietnam would bring an end to conflict. The battle would be renewed in one country and then another...our own security is at stake.

LBJ 4/7/65


Nor would surrender in Vietnam bring peace, because we learned from Hitler at Munich that success only feeds the appetite of aggression. The battle would be renewed in one country and then another country, bringing with it perhaps even larger and crueler conflict, as we have learned from the lessons of history.

LBJ 7/28/65


To yield to force in Vietnam would weaken that confidence, would undermine the independence of many lands, and would whet the appetite of aggression. We would have to fight in one land, and then we would have to fight in another--or abandon much of Asia to the domination of Communists...As long as others will challenge America's security and test the clearness of our beliefs with fire and steel, then we must stand or see the promise of two centuries tremble.

LBJ 1/12/66


We have chosen to fight a limited war in Vietnam in an attempt to prevent a larger war--a war almost certain to follow, I believe, if the Communists succeed in overrunning and taking over South Vietnam by aggression and by force. I believe, and I am supported by some authority, that if they are not checked now the world can expect to pay a greater price to check them later...I think I reveal no secret when I tell you that we are dealing with a stubborn adversary who is committed to the use of force and terror to settle political questions.

LBJ 1/10/67


Throughout this entire, long period, I have been sustained by a single principle: that what we are doing now, in Vietnam, is vital not only to the security of Southeast Asia, but it is vital to the security of every American....The heart of our involvement in South Vietnam--under three different presidents, three separate administrations--has always been America's own security.

LBJ 3/31/68


And so on. The point, of course, is to be profoundly skeptical of any justification for preemptive or preventive war, particularly after the war goes south. For all his deception, at least Johnson was fairly consistent in his definition of the mission and the consequences of "failure" -- Vietnam wasn't marked so much by mission creep as by strategy creep. In contrast, let's never forget how far we've come from a short preventive war based on nonexistent weapons to perpetual war justified by "if we fail there, the enemy will follow us here."