More Beinart vs. Goldberg on Vietnam

It's gotten hard for me to read The Corner without running into the Battlestar Galactica spoilers, and I plan to spend the balance of this evening catching up via TiVo. But I also made time to watch and listen to Episode 2 of the "PB&J Show" (a/k/a "What's Your Problem?"), a recorded online debate between Peter Beinart and Jonah Goldberg. Mr. Goldberg was generous enough to link my post from Saturday about their on-going debate, so I was curious to see what was said next between them.

I was not disappointed. Which is to say, as I expected, Mr. Beinart displayed an abysmal grasp of history, precisely the "memory hole" about which I wrote on Saturday. Rough quote: "To me, what's really remarkable about Vietnam is how little, given what everyone had said, our defeat in Vietnam ended up mattering.  I mean, maybe Cambodia fell, but even in that region, American allies didn't topple." Mr. Goldberg then pointed out that many more people died in Southeast Asia because of our abandonment of South Vietnam than have died in the current liberal cause célèbre, Darfur, and noted that liberals always leave that part of the story out when they're talking about Vietnam. In response, Mr. Beinart said (again, rough but close quote): "Well, the moral story of Vietnam is multi-faceted. I mean, we also killed a lot of people while we were there, through pretty savage bombing, particularly under Nixon. And while you can say Cambodia wouldn't have happened if we hadn't left, you can also say Cambodia wouldn't have happened if we hadn't come."

So you see, according to Mr. Beinart, a few thousands of civilian collateral casualties incident to American strategic bombing — many of which were the result of the North Vietnamese government's pioneering use of the "human shield" concept, i.e., surrounding likely targets with civilians — is morally comparable to the genocide of millions in Cambodia, and to the killing, imprisonment, and/or violent displacement of millions more in what had been South Vietnam.

And besides, the genocide was our fault anyway.

So there you go, folks. If you wonder, as Mr. Goldberg has been doing, whether the Democratic Party will be deterred from a cut-and-run policy in Iraq by fears that the resulting bloodbath in the Middle East will later cost Democrats at the polls, then there's your answer: No, they won't be deterred, because they are confident that they won't suffer any such consequences, because the people they're counting on to vote for them after the bloodbath are the people as colossally foolish, and as stupendously ignorant of (or willfully blind to) history, as Mr. Beinart. It worked for the Democrats with respect to Southeast Asia, for whose abandonment and destruction in 1974-1975 the Democrats never paid a political price. Why should they think it won't work now in Iraq?

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UPDATE (Wed Mar 28 @ wee-small-hours): It occurs to me that, in fairness, I should acknowledge some other options that the Democratic leaders may be counting upon, besides voters who are ignorant of, or willfully blind to, history. There are, I posit, some number of voters who know and appreciate the above-referenced and shameful history in Southeast Asia, and have not blinded themselves to it, but who nevertheless conclude that they will vote for Democratic candidates anyway.

That might be because there are other issues (e.g., abortion rights or support for organized labor) that they deem more important than foreign policy and the global war on terror. That might be because they are sincerely convinced that the Republicans' nominees would cause even worse consequences to America and the world than the likely bloodbath in the Middle East, and that keeping the Republicans out of power is more important than any other consideration. Or that might be because they are unconvinced that there will be a bloodbath at all, or at least not one of any lasting consequence to the U.S., in the Middle East. None of these motives are wicked or unpatriotic. And of course, these categories are not all mutually exclusive or absolute.

I want to avoid the trap, all too easy to fall into, of hurling blanket demonizations at the "other side" or at those who vote for the "other party's" candidates, and my original statement above stepped over that line. I know that I have at least a handful of readers who regularly vote the Democratic ticket, others who split their tickets, and yet others who are genuinely independent/undecided. There are also conservatives and Republicans who have contrary views on the Iraq War. I hope those readers will comment when they see me engage in such over-generalizations. Civil disagreement is welcome here; and one thing that I admired in listening to Messrs. Goldberg and Beinart debate was their reciprocal civility and goodwill.

However, people who fall into one of the four categories posited in this update may still be accurately described as excusing the cut-and-run Democrats from paying any political price for the consequences of a forced, premature withdrawal from Iraq. And obviously, I disagree with their conclusions. Obviously I have no way of knowing how many fall into these categories.

Still, if Mr. Beinart is representative, that suggests that not many do — because based on his written and oral arguments, he clearly seems to be in the "ignorant of, or willfully blind to, history" category. To know for sure, one would have to ask more detailed follow-up questions than Mr. Goldberg had the opportunity for, such as: "How many civilians do you think were killed by American bombing in Vietnam, and how many do you think perished in Cambodia and the former South Vietnam? Do you know what happened in Laos in 1975 and after? Do you know what happened between China and Vietnam, or Russia and Vietnam, after 1975? What, if anything, changed in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines between, say, 1965 and 1975 — and what's significant about that earlier date in the Vietnam War's history? Tell me specifically why you think Republicans are "silly" to argue that South Vietnam could have resisted the North indefinitely, a la the South Korea or West German paradigms, if American support had continued? What impact would other world events (e.g., the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, or the growing American trade with China) likely have had on Southeast Asia if South Vietnam had stayed viable that long? Why do you rule out the likelihood that America's abandonment of South Vietnam, even after withdrawing its ground forces and minimizing the risk of further substantial casualties or POWs, encouraged such things as the truck bomb at the Marine barracks in Lebanon, the seizure and hostage-taking at the American embassy in Tehran, or continued superpower proxy wars in Angola and Central America?"

I would be fairly surprised to get knowledgeable answers to these questions from someone who equates deaths in Vietnam due to American bombing and the subsequent genocides in Southeast Asia, but I suppose I could be wrong.