If we go to war, please don’t go just half way

Today is the day President George W. Bush has set the deadline for going to war in the Middle East and I find myself thinking back on the Vietnam War.

Images on television prompt memories, sound bites and spin all carry a familiar ring. It isn’t the violence and carnage that reminds me of Vietnam.

Some of the political debate over going to war reminds me of the half-hearted commitment we had to winning the war in Vietnam. Some of the television reports about preparations for war remind me how people in Washington D.C. handcuffed our fighting forces in Vietnam.

Sen. Tom Daschle and like-minded Democrats seem more intent on gaining a political edge over Republicans than safeguarding American troops who fight the war in Iraq. Rather than presenting a united front to the world, they quibble over details and half measures. What concerns me about our preparations for war in Iraq is that we never seem to learn. When we fought in Vietnam, we wouldn’t bomb North Vietnamese cities. We didn’t in-vade Cambodia and cut enemy supply lines. Still, American fighting men won the war several times.

We had the war won in 1968 after Operation Pegasus. We won the war again after our counter attack to the Tet Offensive. Politicians like Dasch-le never let our military deliver the knockout punch. If we had, thousands of young American soldiers would have lived to raise families.

I’ve never thought war solved anything, but I know we never went to war with Russia during the cold war. Why? I think it was because they knew we had enough nukes to destroy their civilization if they attacked us.

Likewise, they could have destroyed us. I remember they called it MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction.

That policy acted as a deterrent to people like Donald Rumsfeld and Ossama Bin Laden who seem to want war. Unless we’re prepared to wage an all-out war, what deterrent do countries like Iraq have to prevent them from participating in terrorist activities?

My son just graduated from Oak-ville Senior High School and I would hate to have him in harm’s way un-less our country was willing to fight a war in the Middle East in the most efficient manner possible and with all the weapons at our disposal.

In Vietnam, our nation wasn’t willing to do that. I hope we learned our lesson or else I hope we never go to war again.