Whopper Of The Day

John Kerry, on video, claiming that he's met people who were in re-education camps in Vietnam, and, hey, they're OK.  The claim here is that 165,000 died in those re-education (read: concentration) camps.  I wonder if John Kerry has met any of them?  I wonder how they are doing?  Kerry also ignores the fact that, according to the Black Book of Communism, the communist government of Vietnam is responsible for killing one million of its own citizens, most of them after the Americans left and Saigon fell.  Perhaps he is ignorant of what all those Vietnamese were doing climbing on rickety boats to come to America in the 1970s. 

Kerry utters this dangerous falsehood to explain away the evils that will no doubt occur if the United States were to withdraw from Iraq in the near future.  So he has to convince the American people that genocide did not occur in Vietnam after U.S. withdrawal, even though any educated person knows it did.  Lucky for Kerry, history education is quite poor, so he'll probably get away with this.  Of course David Obey (D-WI) said recently about a withdrawal:

I wouldn't be surprised if it's horrendous. The only hope for the Iraqis is their own damned government, and there's slim hope for that.

The New York Times, arguing for withdrawal (registration required), says:

Americans must be clear that Iraq, and the region around it, could be even bloodier and more chaotic after Americans leave. There could be reprisals against those who worked with American forces, further ethnic cleansing, even genocide. Potentially destabilizing refugee flows could hit Jordan and Syria. Iran and Turkey could be tempted to make power grabs. Perhaps most important, the invasion has created a new stronghold from which terrorist activity could proliferate.

Those in favor of American withdrawal from Iraq must come to grips the potential bloodbath, indeed genocide, that might follow.  This does not mean the withdrawal is a bad idea, for one could reasonably argue that  the continuing loss of American life preventing atrocities in Iraq is not worth it for one reason or another.  But I suspect that should the U.S. withdrawal prematurely, very soon after we'll be setting up the Coalition for Iraq just like we have the Coalition for Darfur.  After Vietnam, much of the anti-war movement (with notable exceptions such as Joan Baez) ignored the viciousness of the Communist government for fear it would discredit their movement.  Apparently, John Kerry is playing that game thirty years later.  Let's hope that should there be atrocities in Iraq after the end of U.S. involvement, all of us can rally in support of the Iraq people, and, as Michael Medved and Lanny Davis argue today, in support of refugees.