Whose History?

This is an article detailing a speech in which the President talks about how history will supposedly vindicate the invasion of Iraq.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20387818/

In the speech, the President talks about Vietnam. Now, the approved version of history that we're supposed to remember is that we "cut and ran" from Vietnam and bad things happened.

But, the history we might remember is that we made war on a country where we understood neither the culture or the people (sound familiar?).

The message by those in the pro-war ranks was that if Vietnam falls, all the dominoes will fall - Asia will be all communist (sound familiar? If we "cut and run" or don't "stay the course" the Al Qaeda will take over the world). Last time I checked, I don't think that happened?

Another piece of history to remember - the US military fought bravely in Vietnam, but a corrupt and incompetent string of "governments" were not able to capably administrate the country (sound familiar? Look at the inability of the Al Maliki "government" to provide any of the routine mundane things that governments must do) .

More history. Our military was totally devastated both from a morale standpoint and and operational standpoint. This devastation took 20+ years to rectify itself. Do we have it in us to do it again? The jury is out on that one.

Wow, I guess the President is right. History can be applied to the Vietnam war to provide useful lessons.

Then the President cites Korea, and the history of Korean conflict. The history that I think we can glean from that is that 50 years from now we'll still have soldiers in Iraq as we have soldiers on the fringe of the empire on the DMZ?

I would like to suggest another historical parallel - The Battle of Adrianople, late Roman Empire (and there are a lot of people comparing the current US situation to Rome as detailed in a previous blog)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Adrianople

This is an excerpt from the above article that sounds a lot more accurate than anything the President is drooling out:

"The battle was a devastating blow for the late Empire. In effect, the core army of the eastern Empire was destroyed, valuable administrators were killed, and all of the arms factories on the Danube were destroyed following the battle. The lack of reserves for the army led to a recruitment crisis, which accentuated the strategic and morale impact of the defeat."

And now let's extend it out further. If we attack Iran, which many believe we are going to do, historians in future years are REALLY going to be scratching their heads. "Let's see. They had two wars going very badly - they were stretched thin and overextended, and they started a THIRD war with a bigger, more well equipped country. What the HELL were they thinking?"

This war will come due. Not today, not tomorrow, but it will come due. All the money that we borrowed will come due. All the devastation to our military will come due. All the neglect of the homeland will come due.

History will be the judge. My view is that it will be very harsh.