History's lessons

What is this world coming to? Now even Henry Kissinger says that we have lost the war in Iraq. Doesn't he understand that we must continue to fight there for the next ten, twenty, thirty years or more? We must fight to the last Iraqi! Then we can keep the oil and repopulate the country with more docile inhabitants, ideally of non-Islamic variety. I dare to hope that President Bush, with his almost unique foresight, understands this point very well.

Speaking of President Bush, his visit to Vietman recalls some history that I must rehearse once again, though it is familiar to all of us. After we pulled out of Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand all fell to red insurgencies, as the domino theory had so accurately predicted. All these countries, with Hanoi at the lead, formed a united Communist bloc in solidarity with China and the Soviet Union. It was our failure of nerve that led to our present predicament. I hate to be pessimistic, but it looks as if we will never escape from the menace of the unbreakable Moscow-Beijing-Hanoi alliance.

Let us recall this True History (with apologies to Lucian) in this grave hour. With this experience, how can we even think of withdrawing from Iraq?