Democrats masters of defeat

Donald Kirk:

Cries for a deadline for withdrawal of American troops from Iraq conjure bitter memories.

I was a young reporter in Vietnam on April 30, 1970, when President Nixon ordered American troops across the border into Cambodia. I jumped into a helicopter for a low-level ride from a base on an old French rubber plantation to Cambodia on the first day, then flew back on the same helicopter an hour or so later — enough to justify the dateline, "The Fishhook, Cambodia," for the story that I filed from the U.S. military press center for the next day's edition of the old Washington Star.

The next day, I rode with American troops on an armored personnel carrier, then made my way on the backseat of a motorcycle to the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh.

Those were heady days. I remember vividly what some of the GI's were saying — "about time" was a comment I heard more than once. The tide of the war was turning, and American forces were no longer hamstrung by bureaucratic nonsense from Washington that had kept them from overrunning North Vietnamese base areas just across the border.

We saw the stacks of Soviet arms inside the border, and we walked out with souvenirs — evidence of Soviet support of the North Vietnamese, who were still denying any role in South Vietnam. A U.S. military policeman confiscated the Soviet-made SKS rifle that I was carrying the moment he saw me. But the story was not over.

So great was anti-war pressure across America that Nixon, soon after announcing the foray into the communist base areas, placed a strict limit on the presence of American troops in Cambodia — no more than 60 days. Nor would they go down much beyond the Ho Chi Minh trail network which Hanoi had been sending supplies to for years.

That wasn't all. Just to pin down American forces still more tightly, the next January, our Congress passed the Cooper-Church amendment barring military operations inside Cambodia as a condition for the military budget.

The North Vietnamese suffered devastating blows while American troops were there but had plenty of time to regroup and mount a full-scale invasion of South Vietnam two years later — the Easter offensive — in which they were again thrown back, only to recover and return one last time in the winter and spring of 1975 when all American troops had gone.

Now Congress is playing the same game. Forgetting the lesson of 1970, the House and Senate want to set a limit on the duration of U.S. military operations inside Iraq. (Emphasis added.)

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They have not forgotten. They still think that was their finest hour. It is what they are attempting again. Their ridiculous position on Cambodia and Laos as Democrat sanctuaries for the communist is what they are proud of. They want to turn Iraq into a sanctuary for al Qaeda. For the Democrats when the going gets tough they want out.