Doing the Right Thing for the Iraqis

Re “U.S. Mustn’t Betray Iraq as It Did South Vietnam,” May 3: Quang X. Pham is right on every point. As a Marine rifleman and interpreter, I lived with the Vietnamese in a village south of Danang in 1968-69, and I know what great people we betrayed. Our refusal to help them in 1975 showed just how ugly Americans can be when we really put our minds to it. It cost millions of Southeast Asians their lives and America a big chunk of its soul.

We have an opportunity in Iraq to make up for the way we treated the Vietnamese. The question is whether we still have enough heart to do what’s right.

Paul M. Sewell

Los Angeles

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Pham destroys his whole argument in four of his own words. He says that our soldiers must finish their job “whatever that may be.” That’s the problem. We went in under false pretenses (weapons of mass destruction, ties to Al Qaeda, imminent threat), with no specific goal and with no exit strategy. How can we possibly tell if we’re hitting the target if we don’t know what the target is?

Monroe Slavin

Encino

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“Armies of occupation breed hostilities and further wars.” Gen. Douglas MacArthur said those words over 50 years ago, after he led the most successful occupation in U.S. history. How could the Washington elites not know that? Or did they not want to know? Now who pays their tuition? As for Iraqi terrorists, try spelling them “Iraq homeland militia forces,” which is what they really are. The recent photos of abused Iraqi prisoners disclosed the “terrorists.”

William Wells

Santa Monica

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Re “A 1930s Lesson in Stillborn Democracy,” Opinion, May 2: Army Maj. Joel Rayburn cautions that we must not leave Iraq before a stable democracy has been achieved. He then proceeds to make the best case I have heard for us to pull out. He explains that the British, in 1920, tried to establish a viable democracy in Iraq. Twelve years later, having written the Iraqi constitution, they left. Three years after that, the Iraqi army was running the country. In 1940, the British returned to reestablish the constitutional monarchy. They maintained control until 1955. Rayburn then acknowledges, “Three years later, the Iraqi army seized power again, ending constitutional government in Iraq for good.”

The British were in control for 27 of the 35 years between 1920 and 1955 and democracy could not survive. I don’t see that as a great argument for “staying the course.”

Al Kubera

Orange