Liberals should be careful what they wish for.

Some Liberals want us to lose the war. Others simply want us to withdraw. They see the result of that a repeat of our withdrawal from Viet Nam.

Let me review for you who are too young to remember what followed the withdrawal from Viet Nam. The troops came home to a country that either ignored them of spit on them.

In Cambodia we had the killing fields in which anywhere from 1.7 to 2.3 million people were killed out of a population of 7 million. Call it genocide.

In Viet Nam hundreds of thousands were imprisoned in “re-education camps” in which tens of thousands died and roughly two million people fled the country, primarily in boats, and roughly half of them died or were killed.

The American people were distracted by the resignation of Richard Nixon. The “peace” movement in the US and elsewhere were not interested in accepting responsibility for the aftermath of their actions. So the “collateral damage of ‘peace’” was consigned to the back pages. Where it had to be noticed because the stench of rotting bodies was too strong, all blame was assigned to Nixon, Kissinger and the “baby killers” who returned from Viet Nam.

There are all sorts of ways that today’s “peace activists” want to end our fight. This morning I watched Senator Webb expound on his recommendation for ending our involvement in Iraq: negotiation. He was never pressed by Tim Russert who his negotiating partner was, what he had to negotiate with and what we should be doing while negotiating. I suspect that he would answer that we negotiate with Iran and Syria. But we are not currently at war with either of these countries and it’s not totally clear to me that they are in control of the people we are fighting. Now perhaps we should invade both counties, or threaten to because they are helping the people who we are fighting. But I’m totally sure that Senator Webb would be horrified at the suggestion.

But that’s another essay for another day.

The opponents of the present war should be careful because the troops coming back from Iraq are not the young draftees who want to hide their uniforms and blend into the crowd like the Viet Nam era troops did. These are all volunteers. They are older. Many are reservists who have careers. They are articulate and well spoken. They are gung-ho for the mission. Many have volunteered for multiple tours. And if you try to spit on them, they will bust your chops.

From milbloggers we know that the media portrayal of life in Iraq and reality are two different things. Our soldiers know the face of the enemy. And they know that they have more than one enemy. And I know enough about these people that when they come back, they won’t be coming quietly if they have been forced to retreat in defeat because of modern-day Copperheads.


And this time there will not be a monolithic media who can write the script for the end of the war like they did after Viet Nam. This time our fighting men and women will not be silent. This time the “new media” like talk radio and the blogosphere will give them a voice. This time, my lads, they may very well come for you.