HispanicVista Columnists

Is Iraq Lost?
By Raoul Lowery Contreras

Watching the American minority of people who want us to lose the "war" in Iraq saddens me.

We hear ad nauseum how the American majority wants our troops home, the polls tell us so. We hear that the majority is against the war, the polls tell us so. In fact, according to the Pew Hispanic Center only 25 percent of American Hispanics support the war, a drop of 6 percent since the last survey.

What we don’t hear is that this American minority actually wants to lose the war so they can revel in what they call "America’s worst blunder in history."

This is being written on the day in history that the last U.S. troops left Vietnam in 1973. What happened in the next two years is exactly what many clear-minded people said would happen. The "Domino Theory" came to life.

As most Americans weren’t even born by that day, allow me to recount what the Domino Theory was; i.e.: If South Vietnam fell to the Communists, the rest of Southeast Asia including Laos and Cambodia and maybe even Thailand, Burma and Malaysia would also fall to the Communists.

Laos and Cambodia did fall to the Communists after we left. Thailand has "Muslim" rebels operating in its south today and Burma changed its name to Mynmar when authoritarian Army generals took over the country before Communist rebels did. It is from this area of the world that most illicit heroin has come to us from since 1973, it’s called the Golden Triangle.

Back to Iraq. If we leave like we did in Vietnam, will Iraq fall apart and come under influences of Iran and or Muslim terrorists? Without a doubt, those are certainties.

So, why don’t the pollsters of the Pew Hispanic Center and all other polling firms ask this question: Do you want the United States to lose the Iraq War? Why isn’t this question asked? It isn’t because most Americans, especially many of those who can remember what happened in Vietnam, would answer no to that question.

How about this question: Did you support Democrats Harry Truman, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and William Jefferson Clinton while they kept American soldiers, sailors and Marines in Japan, Germany countries we defeated and Korea for 56 years?

Or, do you know that United States has lost 800 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines a year in the Iraq War, 4000 total, mostly by roadside bombs not in battle while 30,000 others have been wounded? The answer would be no.

Or, by comparison did you know that more than that number of American sailors alone died during the 96 day Battle of Okinawa in1945 against the Japanese plus another 8,000 soldiers and Marines died while 38,000 were wounded? The answer would be no.

Or, do you know that the Iraq government has now passed many of the political benchmarks they need to, to solidify their elected constitutional government?

Or, do you know that Iraq is now pumping enough oil to almost be self-sufficient with none of it coming to America?

Or, do you know that the rebel Shiite cleric and "Mahdi Army" leader Moqtada al-Sadr has called on his militia followers to stop fighting after a week in which his followers tried to fight off Iraqi government forces in the southern city of Basra and scattered other areas?

Given these facts and the analysis of the Sadr forces realizing that they cannot win in a protracted fight with the American-trained and supplied Iraqi Army, the Sadr move looks like a capitulation. Coupled, then, with the pacification of Sunni forces in the western Anbar province where more Americans died in fighting than anywhere else in Iraq the situation looks positive, doesn’t it?

The probability that a majority of Americans would tell a pollster they want America to lose this 5-year old war to a group of non-Iraqi terrorists after losing 4000 dead isn’t even imaginable.

If an honest pollster would ask the questions I pose, a majority of Americans, Hispanic Americans in particular would answer in the positive. Only a tiny minority would differ by wanting to pull out, leave and lose Iraq to terrorists. To those, thousands of American families who have lost men and women or had them wounded in Iraq would ask -- Why?

Contreras’ books are available at www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com