A news report by the website Mail Online that ISIS is only one mile away from Baghdad has raised alarm bells. Fierce fighting was reported to be taking place between Iraqi government forces and ISIS militants.
Six weeks of intense bombing by America and its allies has failed to stop the ISIS juggernaut that has conquered vast swaths of Iraq. Wherever they conquered, there were massacres and rapes. More than 1,000 Iraqi troops were killed in the outskirts of Iraq’s capital in the recent round of fighting.
Will Baghdad fall? This conjures up images of the fall of Saigon in 1975. There certainly are many similarities between the two wars. In Vietnam, it was Communism that was the threat. In Iraq today, it is Islamism. Both Communism and Islamism are totalitarian ideologies.
The Islamist seeks to conquer the world so that Sharia (Islamic Law) may be obeyed throughout the world. In a similar way, the Communists believed that the whole world should be communist and tried to export revolution all over the world.
In both Vietnam and Iraq, America tried to plant the seed of democracy in difficult conditions. South Vietnam held elections, albeit imperfect ones. But the Communist promised no elections at all, only totalitarian rule. In Iraq, elections were also held.
This attempt to bring democracy to Iraq was a challenge to the ideology of Islamism. The seed of democracy was planted in the barren soil of the Middle East. It faced the competing ideology of Islamism. In addition, tribal loyalties complicate matters. For it to have even a slim chance of success, the US needed to keep its military presence for a generation at least to prevent the nascent democracy from being overthrown by Islamist forces like the ISIS or by Iran, an Islamic state.
The US remained in Europe after World War II to protect Europe from another totalitarian ideology. Had the US withdrawn prematurely, Europe would have gone communist. So the US should have done the same in Iraq as it did in Europe.
Islamists want totalitarian rule based on Sharia (Islamic Law). Sharia is a misogynistic, Islamic supremacist ideology where other faiths are treated unequally. Sharia law rejects democracy which puts man as sovereign. For them only Allah is sovereign. See the picture below.
This picture says it all about their ideology. The protester rejects democracy and advocates Sharia. She wants it for all the world. Islamists consider democracy as a kind of idol worship because it places sovereignty on man instead of on Allah. Man, through the ballot box decides what laws he should live by.
This, according to the Islamist, is a great offense to Allah who solely has the right to decide what sort of laws man should live by. These laws are the Sharia. From the poster she was carrying, we can see that her ideology is opposed to democracy.
The second similarity is that in Vietnam as in Iraq, it was the left who aided these totalitarian forces. Leftist groups in America agitated to bring the troops home from Vietnam, paving the way for a Communist victory in Indochina, at a time when some believed the war was won. Today, it was again the Left that urged American withdrawal from Iraq, at a time when the Islamist forces, then known as Al Qaeda in Iraq, were defeated. ISIS is simply the offshoot of Al Qaeda, sharing in its ideology, though it differs from the tactics.
Do not forget that President Obama promised his leftist voters in 2008 that he will withdraw if elected. When he finally withdrew in 2011, he reminded his voters that he had kept his promise.
Obama said, “As promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year.”
The American Left has in both Vietnam and Iraq acted in a manner that helped America’s totalitarian enemies. Was this deliberate?
It does seem to be more than a coincidence that the Left again advocated and ultimately achieved a course of action that helped an enemy whose ideology is opposite of what America stands for.
As a result, Baghdad may fall to ISIS. Just as there was during the American withdrawal in Vietnam, will there be another picture of a helicopter rescuing staff at the US embassy?
A successful businessman and author, Robert H. Lee has spent years extensively researching the history of nations for his book Saving Democracy from Suicide. (LINK: www.savingdemocracyfromsuicide.com) A self-professed Americaphile, Lee resides in Singapore with his family, but he previous lived in the United States where he went to the University of Michigan for his MBA.