My father, a naturalized American citizen, served in the U.S. Army for 24 years. He served this country in both Europe and the Pacific during the Second World War and he served this country during the Korean Police Action. He went on to work with wounded Vietnam vets for the Civil Service.

While I was growing up, my family watched the Vietnam War and the American peace movement explode on our television sets. My father, a very traditional man who couldn't stand rock-and-roll, who had rather strong ethnic views, and who stood proudly upon his service record, wasn't very fond of drug-abusing hippies who couldn't dress well or hold down respectable jobs.

So, imagine my stunned disbelief on my 12th birthday when he turned to me and said, "Son, if this war is still going on when you turn 18, I am sending you to Canada".

This was years before President Carter declared his very controversial 2-year amnesty program for American Draft Resisters, most of whom (approximately 50,000 if I recall correctly) were living in Canada. These men, many of whom desired very much to be reintegrated into their homeland's society, were not being spit upon, despised, and hidden away from public view like the veterans. They were not being stared at by fascinated and horrified children as were the veterans who were missing limbs, whole sections of their bodies, eyes, and in some cases happy, fulfilled lives.

When I visited my father at work, I felt sorry for the soldiers I saw being treated in the hospital where he taught them to walk again, to take care of their most basic needs, and to stand tall and proud because of their service to their unsupporting country. I know I stared at them, feeling a sense of dread. "Will that happen to me? Will I be sent to Vietnam?"

The Vietnam War began long before the United States became involved. It began, in some ways, with the French "colonization" of Southeast Asia more than 100 years ago. European colonialism was responsible for nearly every major war fought in the past 300 years. It was responsible for much of what happened in Vietnam.

But what many people in the United States and western Europe don't understand is that much of Vietnam's conflict was also due to its own cultural heritage. Through more than a thousand years of conflict with imperialist neighbors and foreign powers (China ruled northern Vietnam for about 1,000 years), the northern and southern regions of the country that we today call Vietnam were often at war with each other.

Throughout my life, I have heard many interesting, fascinting, and eye-opening stories from Vietnam veterans. How many of those stories are true? I have no idea. But there is a seed of truth in all of them, even the tales completely made up because the Vietnam vets saw things that we here in the United States never saw. One vet told me that during his tour in Vietnam he fell in with a local family whose men served in the South Vietnamese army, the North Vietnamese army, the southern government, the Viet Cong, and (if I recall correctly) a criminal organization.

The American played poker with these Vietnamese men every week, and he was never once threatened while interacting with them. Maybe his fellow soldiers would have shot him for not informing on the VC, but he made an interesting point to me. The men were not fighting because they believed in their causes, they were fighting to ensure that at least one of them came out on the winning side. It would be his duty to protect the rest of the family when the war was over.

In the American War Between the States, many families were similarly divided by ideology, rather than by pragmatism. We had brothers, fathers, sons, and uncles shooting at each other because each believed the other was wrong. In Vietnam, there were certainly ideological standards that held sway in both the north and the south, but many families were simply trying to cope in a war that seemed like it would never end. The last round of shooting began when the Japanese invaded and continued for 30 years.

Some historians suggest that American politics laid the seeds for our grief in Vietnam around the time of the First World War. Apparently, a very poor but determined Ho Chi Minh came to America to ask for help in getting the French out of Southeast Asia. Our government, historically loyal to the French (a sentiment not always shared by the French), refused to take any action. It fell to the Japanese to run the French out of Indochina. Of course, the Japanese wanted to stay, and that didn't work for Ho Chi Minh and his followers.

Ho Chi Minh is believed by some people to have turned to Communism out of pragmatism. It met his needs for inspiring and nurturing the nationalist spirit of the Vietnamese people. Of course, not all Vietnamese people wanted to live under Communist rule -- particularly in the south. So, when the Japanese were defeated, Ho Chi Minh's desire to unite his people under a Communist regime was opposed by other Vietnamese idealists. Unfortunately, the French wanted to reset the world stage to pre-war arrangements: and the United States agreed to let France reassert its power in Southeast Asia.

It took the Vietnamese people almost 10 years to evict the French. However, by the time Dien Ben Phu was falling to Ho Chi Minh's peasant army, Joseph Stalin had driven American politicians into an anti-Communist frenzy. We had sacrificed eastern Europe to the Soviet Union in the name of peace (hollowly echoing Neville Chamberlain's "Peace in our time" concessionism which had led to the Second World War). We had restored European colonialism in Africa and Asia. We were hunting down some of the most creative minds at home in the hope of seeing them hang for treason.

Is it any wonder we pissed off half the world with our bizarre politics?

Today's anti-war activists dredge up the ghosts of Vietnam without really stopping to think of why we ended up there. Because of our own short-sightedness and loyalty to friends, we embroiled ourselves in a nearly endless war in Southeast Asia which ultimately led to the deaths of about 5 million people (if you include the slaughter of 2 million Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge, who at one time were American allies).

Appeasement of greed and tyranny led to the Second World War because no one wanted to stand up to Adolf Hitler, but as was pointed out by a British general in 1918, the armistice imposed on Germany and its allies at the end of the First World War was really only about a 20-year truce. The Allied Nations imposed such unbearable reparations upon Germany that they ensured no peaceful German government would stand for long. The German people were shamed, humiliated, and despoiled because Kaisar Wilhelm allowed himself to become embroiled in a stupid, pointless, needless war.

Of course, that war was blamed on the assassination of two people, an Austrian Archduke and his wife, by a Serbian man who would today be characterized as both a terrorist and an insurgent. We can't blame the Serbs for the First World War because they only wanted to be free of Austrian rule. We can't blame the Germans for the First World War because they didn't start the shooting. But we can blame the Allies for the Second World War because they made it impossible for Germany to recover from its defeat and the fall of its monarchy.

So, what does all this have to do with Iraq, Afghanistan, and today's anti-war movement in the United States?

Everything.

Remember the old adage, "Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it." In the United States, the anti-war movement is struggling to prove that adage true.

We set ourselves up in 1918 to fight a second, larger war because we allowed Britain and France to dictate unrealistic peace terms.

We set ourselves up in 1945 to fight both the Cold War, the Vietnam War, and many lesser regional conflicts most of you have never heard of because we allowed Joseph Stalin to keep eastern Europe and because we restored Britain and France's colonial empires to them.

Meanwhile, back in the Middle East, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had also signed a mutual defense treaty with Saudi Arabia (in the 1930s) to ensure that America's growing dependence on oil would be shored up by a friendly alliance in the Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabia, as many people know, happens to provide a lot of oil to us. And, of course, after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, he turned his tanks toward the Saudi border.

But Saddam's power grab didn't just come out of nowhere. He had proven to be a very useful tool in our Cold War, as well as an effective foil for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran, while it was ruled by the Shah, was an American satellite power in the Middle East. It had the largest, best-trained, best-equipped army in the region. Iran stood between the Soviet Union and the Persian Gulf (and the Indian Ocean). The Soviet Union, like the United States, had a great thirst for oil. It was in America's anti-Communist interests to make the acquisition of oil as expensive as possible for the Soviets.

We didn't interfere with the Shah's rule over his own country. Dictators, despots, and murderers have always had a friend in American government. We pledged our loyal friendship to a French monarchy which became so reviled it was overthrown in one of the bloodiest revolutions in history. Our loyalty was so strong we stood by and did nothing while the Marquis de Lafeyette languished in a Revolutionary prison. We said nothing while Parisian mobs hunted down the nobles and aristocrats who had risked their lives to win our freedom.

Instead, we lauded the onset of "democracy" in France and when that experiment proved to be too unstable, we accepted with grace the rise of a powerful dictator who appointed himself Emperor over Europe. In fact, we even financed his wars by buying a few million acres of land. Is it any wonder the British government burned down our first White House?

American interests in the early 1800s were much narrower than they are today. Our international concerns dwelt mostly on the mistreatment of our citizens by foreign powers on the high seas. We endured as much humiliation from the British as we could, and then we stood up to them in the War of 1812. Of course, had it not been for the Napoleonic Wars, we might have borne the full brunt of British fury. Maybe our own experiment in democracy would have proven too young and unstable to withstand a return of the monarchy if the British could have directed their full attention to us.

Nonetheless, our friendship and loyalty to France was not well-repaid. While the northern states crushed the southern states in a 4-year war during the 1860s, Napoleon III (nephew of the first self-proclaimed emperor) invaded Mexico, violating the Monroe Doctrine laid down less than 20 years before (essentially, President Monroe told the European powers to stay out of the Americas -- we would tend to the colonial pursuits here).

N-III installed the Austrian Maximilian as Emperor of Mexico (my father once told me that a family ancestor had served in the firing squad which executed Maximilian and my mother's adoptive family traces its descent back to the most famous Duke of Wellington -- the one who defeated Napoleon I -- so my interest in European colonialism is something of a family tradition, you might say).

For his part, after freeing the slaves in the rebellious states (and leaving the slaves in the loyal states as slaves), President Abraham Lincoln suggested to N-III that he ought to be honoring the Monroe Doctrine. Conveniently, after General Lee surrendered to future President Ulysses Grant, it turned out that the United States had both the largest army and the largest navy in the world. French support for Maximilian dried up quickly.

So much for our loyalty to old France. We weren't about to put up with any foreign powers in our backyard. Did anyone mention Haiti? I didn't think so.

The United States settled into a semblance of isolationism after Mexicans recovered their freedom from the French. In fact, we actually stepped up our bullying and trampling of the sovereign nations of "Indians" who still occupied land we felt should be righfully ours. And when we had finished handing reservations to the Native Americans, we turned our attention to Spain, which may or may not have blown up an American ship that probably should not have been hanging around Cuba.

The Spanish-American War, which lasted two years, showed the world that the United States could bully European powers, too. We stripped Spain of some valuable and strategic possessions (such as Cuba and the Phillippines). And for good measure, we sent marines to various places around the Gulf of Mexico to show that we might be speaking softly, but we were still carrying a mighty big stick (thank you Teddy Roosevelt).

Truth be told, American industry was responsible for much of our bullying and blustering from the 1860s on. The railroads and telegraph companies wanted to secure the western states against native peoples. American shipping wanted a canal through the Isthmus of Panama. And for some reason, our aristocratic families decided that Santiago Chile should become the vacation capital of the world. Cuba? It was a good source of cigars and bananas.

As we flexed our commercial and military muscle, we developed an intrinsic appreciation for traditional European colonialism. It took the great nations of Britain, Spain, and France from 1492 to about 1620 to figure out that they could exploit every other region of the world for their own personal gain. It took Americans about 10 years to figure out, "Hey. We have the biggest stick but ain't no one listening to us. We need to change that."

They started listening quickly, especially after we turned our guns on them.

Economic interests led to our bloodiest war, the War Between the States (you may think of it as a Civil War, but it wasn't very civil). More than 600,000 battlefield deaths were recorded in that war. We logged barely more than 400,000 battlefield deaths during the Second World War. What that means is that between 1861 and 1945, the United States became very good at killing people. We learned to kill by the hundred thousand before it was all over, but our killing wasn't always inflicted with guns and bombs. We used poison, Smallpox, starvation, and anything we thought might serve our interests.

We bombed Dresden, which had no strategic value, for no reason other than that we could do it. Even the fact that the Nazis had moved Allied prisoners of war into the city didn't stop us from raining death down in recorded history's largest, most destructive carpet bombing operation. When people speak about the horrors of the Second World War, they think of Nazi death camps and the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But Dresden should never be forgotten.

When the news media today speak about the intense anger and distrust that are expressed by people around the world, Americans don't really appreciate what that means. They drive their cars, wear their fine clothes, and eat expensive imported foods. Virtually every luxury we have was created by someone in an exploited village or town somewhere. A few activists try to point out the harm we inflict on other nations, but they are largely ignored.

For example, when we finally got out act together and sued the tobacco companies, we forced them to disclose the truth about how poisonous cigarettes and other tobacco products are, even to reveal how these products are chemically engineered to be as physically addicting as possible. And we demanded huge reparations from them to ensure that American health care would be able to at least cope with millions of tobacco-induced deaths from cancer and emphysema.

But why did our state and federal governments do nothing about the sales of tobacco products? I don't mean here in the United States where we are inundated with tons of advertising telling us how unhealthy and dangerous tobacco is -- I mean overseas, where hundreds of millions of people are still being exploited by the tobacco companies? Asia in particular is being slowly poisoned to death, and barely a whisper of warning about the perils of tobacco addiction has crossed the Pacific from these peace-loving shores.

Americans get upset when they are directly affected by any adversity, such as poor health (heck, someone even sued McDonald's for serving unhealthy food -- what a shocker that was!). We don't like the fact that we have to pay over $2 per gallon for gasoline. We grumble and complain about the windfall profits of the oil companies (how many billions of dollars did they make in 2005?). But we don't want to stop paying other nations for their oil.

In fact, the people who complain about our invasion of Iraq haven't stopped driving their cars, have they? I wonder where they think the oil is coming from? It ain't Iraq, folks. Less than 5% of American oil imports came from Iraq. Why? Because we didn't like Saddam Hussein.

Oh, Saddam was once our boy. When the Shah of Iran was overthrown and the Ayatollah Khomeini revealed he was just another murderous evil dictator looking for a power grab, we had to scramble to find another satellite power in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia wouldn't do because it sits on a lot of our imported oil. And there aren't that many Saudis anyway. We needed someone who could field a big, threatening army. Well, conveniently, Saddam had managed to butcher and murder his way to the the top of the Iraqi government. So, when he ambitiously started building up his army, we made sure he knew we didn't care if he attacked Iran.

The strategic advantage for the United States in the Middle East is for none of the Arab countries to become powerful enough to threaten Israel. What is so special about Israel? Well, that depends on who you talk to. But I can tell you that my grand-father, who served in Europe in World War II, served in a unit that captured one of the Nazi death camps. My grandmother told me that what he saw there changed him forever. Men like my grandfather were determined never to see anyone brutally murder an entire ethnic group again.

So, the United States has supported Israel because historically not many people have been friendly to the Jews. Certainly not the Europeans. The Nazi death camps were just the last of a growing series of ethnic brutalities that had been inflicted upon the Jewish people for a couple thousand years. Maybe seeing the emaciated, bloodless bodies piled up in heaps in the camps finally gave America a clear vision of the awful consequences that come from bullying other people. Maybe guilt plays a great part in our national support for Israel.

But the fact that so many people in the Islamic world cry out for the destruction of Israel doesn't help the situation. Islamic extremists and moderates who express hatred and condemnation for Israel sound like Nazis, and we don't like Nazis. American interests therefore include preventing the rise of any more Napoleons, Hitlers, and Nazis. Sure, some Americans sympathize with the Nazis -- they even claim the Holocaust never happened. But even America has a few genetically impoverished people and our constitution says they are allowed to wallow in ignorance and stupidity if that is what they want to do.

Our constitution just doesn't say we have to put up with ignorance and stupidity in other parts of the world, so when people start talking about destroying Israel and killing Jews, we get angry. Why? Because we don't want to fight any more world wars. The Second World War did not teach American leaders all the lessons I, personally, would have liked for them to learn. But that war did teach many Americans that we have a unique responsibility to all the peoples with whom we share kinship.

And the blood of every ethnic group in the world runs through American veins. People often forget that. The United States is the most ethnically diverse nation in the world. We have drawn immigrants from every nation, every tribe, every society. There is no land in the world where a war can occur and not affect at least one American family.

That's why our failure in Somalia is so shameful. We were not defeated there any more than we were defeated in Vietnam. We did not surrender to anyone. Our armed forces were never defeated on the battlefield. No one said, "It is time for you Americans to go." We simply got up and left and pretended that we had been defeated.

President John F. Kennedy was the first American president to commit American ground troops to combat in Vietnam. President Lyndon Baines Johnson escalated our involvement in the war. Before President Richard Milhous Nixon fulfilled his first-election promise to bring our troops home, we ended up killing or helping kill about 3,000,000 Vietnamese people (although about 1,000,000 of those people were "friendly" South Vietnamese).

Many Americans speak of the high toll we paid in human life in the Vietnam War. More than 50,000 American service men and women were killed there. And many Americans complain that the South Vietnamese did nothing to help themselves. Well, that's not true. The South Vietnamese people paid a heavy toll for their loss. More than 240,000 South Vietnamese soldiers were killed. Thousands of civilians died, many killed by American soldiers (sometimes intentinally).

Many Vietnamese, especially in the north, came to view the war as "The American War". We were depicted as invaders by the Communist leadreship. The fact we were asked by the South Vietnamese to help them defend their country against the North Vietnamese doesn't ameliorate our actions there. After all, we sent an army and navy to establish widespread semi-permanent bases. We also bombed and poisoned huge portions of the countryside.

Make no mistake: the war would have gone on had we not intervened. It probably would have been much shorter. Maybe fewer South Vietnamese people would have been killed. We'll never know because we did intervene, and we intervened in such a way that we forever changed Vietnamese culture. We are no better than the Chinese who dominated northern Vietnam for 1,000 years.

One of the great ironies of our Vietnam experience is that our Domino Theory proved to be both accurate and load of hogwash. In the wake of our withdrawal from South Vietnam, Southeast Asia fell under the domination of the Communists: Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand all experienced a period of instability in which Communist activity was significant. The Khmer Rouge proved they could be worse than either the Red Chinese we had fought in Korea or the North Vietnamese. And, ironically, Vietnam and China almost immediately fought a war with each other (Vietnam won).

The Communist takeover of Southeast Asia collapsed. Today, even Communist Vietnam is gradually becoming a more Socialist Vietnam. They still speak of "the American War" in official documents, and have dedicated many museums to immortalizing that depiction. But the Vietnamese people are generally friendly toward Americans. Many of them are fascinated by us, and they think we are physically beautiful people (so a Vietnamese friend of mine tells me).

The Vietnam War led to a huge exodus of South Vietnamese people who, now known as Viet Kieu (Overseas Vietnamese) to their relatives back home, have spread across the planet in a diaspora reminiscent of the Jewish diaspora. About 2 million Vietnamese have settled here in North America. Many of them arrived with virtually no money, no assets, and no hope of returning home. Whole families braved pirate-troubled seas and horrific typhoons to sail to Hong Kong, Malaysia, and other ports of hope in small craft about as seaworthy as many of the boats used by Cubans and Haitians to reach the United States.

Something which I don't feel is a consequence of the Vietnam War, because it happens in other parts of the world, is the export of Vietnamese women and children. I don't mean just the "human trafficking" that is associated with sexual slavery and other forms of servitude. I include in my crude use of "export" the migration of Vietnamese children who are adopted into foreign families (a commonplace occurrence with children from eastern Europe and Africa as well) and Vietnamese girls (they are considered "women" only if they marry) who marry men from other countries.

In a sad, bizarre twist, some Amerasian children (children of American soldiers and Vietnamese girls) were adopted by Vietnamese families who used them to gain entry to the United States and then abandoned them. But now many young Vietnamese men find it difficult to marry Vietnamese girls here in the United States. The girls, as they grow up in America, become Americanized and often date Caucasian and Hispanic (and other ethnic) Men. There are actually Web sites maintained by young Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese men living in the United States where they speak openly of "Angry Asian Male" syndrome -- their growing resentment at the rejection they feel from girls of their own ethnic heritage. Some of these young men have begun returning to Vietnam to find wives. In Vietnam, a young Viet Kieu man may have financial advantages his native cousins cannot hope to share.

Although Asian cultures are steeped in family traditions, they have been polarized by the infectious values of western civilization. I fear that EuroAmerican colonialism now rears its newest Hydraic head in the form of cultural contamination and assimilation. The traditional loyalty to family is threatened by the insularity of the individual which is encouraged by the industrialized society of the Western world. Asian philosophy has begun to grope for explanations of and solutions to cross-cultural influences that have never been seen or experienced before. After all, for centuries, the dominant Asian nations were accustomed to engaging their own colonial policies. Colonialism first appeared in Asia, as it turns out.

The Islamic Middle East is nothing like eastern Asia, though. Islam crosses ethnic and cultural boundaries with the ease and flexibility of American denim and tobacco. And almost since its inception, Islam has engaged in its own form of colonialism. Islamic armies carved a bloody path across northern Africa and up through Asia Minor to impact European peoples from both the east and the west. The Iberian peninsula was captured in 712 CE and the last Islamic country was overthrown only in 1492. The Spanish Reconquista lasted more than 700 years and in some ways helped to launch European colonialism. Portugal, for example, could not expand very much into Europe, so it had to expand oversea. And King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella fortuitously funded a strange little expendition organized by an Italian adventurer. Thanks to Columbus, Europeans began to look westward with a mixture of curiosity, hope, and ambition.

Had it not been for Islam, there probably would be no United States of America today, because the Spain that fought with England from the 1500s through the 1700s would not have existed. The Americas would not have been colonized by Spaniards and Portuguese, but rather by the descendants of Iberians and Visigoths. England would not have followed the Spanish to America.

If it were not for Islamic extremists who insisted on carrying Islam across the map with bloody swords, there would have been no Crusades. And yet, when President George W. Bush used the word "crusade" to describe American's retributive action against Al Qaida in 2001, Islamic leaders and scholars (and common people) around the world cried out with anger and reprehension that we were once against being insulting and threatening.

It is the cruel irony of Islamic history that Jihad -- the struggle to spread Islam to those who neither want it nor need it -- is given honor by people who frequently welcome strangers into their homes, offer them great courtesy, and share burdens and hardships with their neighbors freely and willingly. There is a total disconnect between the love expressed in everyday Islamic life and the hatred and intolerance directed toward non-Islamic peoples.

Israel is reviled among Islamic peoples for many reasons, none of them rational. They have shed no tears over the Jews and Christians who were slaughtered in the name of Islam. But they weep tears of joy when any Palestinian succeeds in deploying a bomb against the people of Israel (many of whom are Muslims). Only when those bombs are turned against other Muslims (as in Jordan and Iraq) are they seen as evil.

The great cultural disconnect between average Muslims in the Middle East (and some Muslims living in western nations) and the non-Muslim world is broader than any other dichotomy in human experience. It's okay for Mujahedeen to speak casually of slaughtering infidels (non-believers) but it's not okay for Christians to speak of carrying war to those who make war on them.

Of course, should Christians even be making war on anyone? After all, Jesus advised Christians not to be concerned with matters of this world. But then, he gave that advice at a time when his followers only numbered in the hundreds or thousands. They didn't control any countries or have responsibility for maintaining peace. The apostles Peter and Paul, however, laid the groundwork for Christian warfare by advising Roman soldiers who accepted Christ as their savior to fulfill their duties as soldiers faithfully (except where they had to choose between God and blasphemy, of course).

Many American fundamentalist Christians today fail to understand that message. When the Great Anti-Abortion Movement (Operation Rescue) was sweeping across America, fundamentalist Christians ignored the Biblical warnings against involving themselves in the affairs in the world, and the admonishments to "obey the authorities". Operation Rescue sanctioned civil disobedience (law-breaking) as a means of protest. Hypocrisy replaced faith. Hatred and intolerance replaced love.

So, Christians are in no position to be pointing fingers at Muslims concerning hypocrisy. There are plenty of apostates in both camps. For the time being, however, the Christian world doesn't have an organization like Al Qaida (at least, not unless you believe the movies that suggest that the Knights Templar may still be operating in secret). Hence, the balance of terror and injustice is rather evened out. Christian-dominated nations like the United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany continue to exploit the economic resources of Islamic countries, and Islamic countries are the birthplace of numerous Jihadist movements.

Saddam Hussein, unlike Osama Bin Laden, didn't want to crush his enemies and see them driven before him in the name of Islam. He just wanted to be a really powerful guy, the leader of the Arab world. To be leader of the Arab world, he was going to have to conquer a few Arabs. He seems to have felt that the United States would not have cared about Arabs killing Arabs. If anything, Saddam's wars should have rid the world of a few Jew-hating Jihadists, so why should the United States object to invasions of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia?

Well, there are those icky treaties. Treaties are magical things. They hold all the value that can be strategically placed into them for as long as it is strategically necessarily to value them. In other words, treaties are conveniences that separate wars.

On a national level, we can say that we chose to honor our treaties with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia out of purely selfish interests. We didn't want to fight for the oil. After all, who in America cares where the money goes to as long as we can drive our gas-guzzling cars down to the protest line? Why does it matter who controls the oil as long as we can use our oil-produced electricity to malign and lie about our President?

The first President Bush insisted that his war to free Kuwait was about "unbridled aggression". Like my father, President George Bush was a World War II veteran. He had seen first-hand just how savage the nations of the world can be to each other. He had risked his life in war to defend this nation against its enemies, and I believe sincerely he had no wish to put American soldiers in harm's way.

But we fueled the machine that Iraq built with our self interests. We needed a regional power to threaten Soviet interests and to get back at Fundamentalist Iran for humiliating us. President Ronald Reagan was responsible for that policy, although he was never informed that we were connecting our anti-Sandinista Contra program with our anti-Khomeini Iran-Iraq War program. He just knew that the Communists and Khomeinis of the world were the bad guys and they had to be stopped somehow.

Saddam was the least ugly of the available partners in his part of the world. He was willing to prostitute his nation's young men for our political interests, and so far as we could determine he had nothing to do with the Beirut bombing that killed 200 American marines in 1982.

The Beirut bombing is probably the only time in modern history that an American expeditionary force has been soundly defeated and driven from a foreign shore. We didn't send our marines to Beirut to fight a war. We sent them there to show our support for the Lebanese people. Naturally, some vicious people took advantage of our naivete and slaughtered our marines in a show of strength that outmaneuvered our foolish show of strength.

Lebanon had fallen into chaos in the 1970s. In a pattern that would be repeated in other nations in that part of the world, Lebanon's central government collapsed and the country fell into civil war. Various extremist groups armed their own militias and aligned themselves with nearby powers. Some Christian groups began working with Israel so naturally some Muslim groups sought allies among Israel's enemies. The nearest Israeli enemy was Syria.

Syria, Egypt, and Libya had once attempted to form a Pan-Arabic state. However, the ambitions of the various leaders (Hafez Al-Assad, Anwar Sadat, and Moamar Khadafi) so conflicted with each other that the experiment in Pan-Arabism failed quickly. Other experiments were to follow, including the league of Arab nations which attacked Israel without provocation in October 1973 (while the United States was still heavily engaged in Vietnam). The month-long Yom Kippur War proved to be a lesson in humiliation for the Arab nations.

Israel's Defense Forces were not caught sleeping. They defeated the Egyptians, Syrians, and Jordanians soundly and drove their armies back. The United States launched around-the-clock support flights, resupplying Israel with munitions, fuel, and other critical supplies. American logistics ensured that Israel would not only survive, but would soundly defeat the Arab armies. A clear Israeli victory served American interests to the extent that we would not become embroiled in another regional conflict. That was a great fear at the time, and it was a fear which guided American diplomatic efforts to bring a quick end to the war.

Humbling the Arab armies, it was believed, would buy some valuable time for Israel to establish credibility. Many people around the world were critical of Israel for not returning land it had seized from the Arabs in the 6-Day War of 1967. The Arabs were constantly attacking Israel but were portraying Israel as the aggressor. American politics favored the underdogs in certain parts of the world, and Israel was an underdog who happened to be powerful enough to maintain an American presence in the midst of numerous Soviet satellite states.

But what about Iran? The Shah was on our side, right? Well, the Shah of Iran had his own priorities. Mostly, he kept the Soviet Union from expanding south to the warm water ports of the Persian Gulf and the oil-rich lands of Arabia. If Joseph Stalin could have sent tanks into the Middle East, he would have. He just didn't have enough tanks to spare from eastern Europe and the Chinese border (the Soviet Union maintained more than 1 million combat-ready troops along its border with China for about 30 years).

While Iran counter-balanced the Soviet threat, India counter-balanced the Chinese threat, Israel was counter-balancing the Arab threat. Of course, if there was no Israel, whom would the Arabs be threatening? That is a question which has often been asked, but the fact is that the United Nations recognized Israel and actually mandated the creation of a Jewish state. What the Palestinians (and many other Arabs) objected to was the way many Palestinian families had been ejected from their homes. Their land was simply taken away from them without compensation.

The tit-for-tatism which has dominated Middle East politics for the past 3,500 years has led to so many grievances that there is simply no way to honestly and fairly place blame on any modern people for starting the conflicts. They all derive from ancient prejudices and grievances. Families continue to hold grudges because they continue to endure new insults and humiliations. The same is true of larger groups.

American policy in the Middle East has therefore been dictated by a desire to ensure the existence of Israel and a desire to ensure the flow of oil into the cars and homes of American peace activists. We have the power to ensure both situations continue regardless of who objects to these interests.

Soviet expansionism into Arab politics nonetheless made Israel an important satellite for American power. And because of the civil war in Lebanon, Israel seized an opportunity to create a buffer zone to protect its people against Palestinian and allied militia groups operating in Lebanon.

The presence of Israeli troops in the Golan Heights (claimed by Syria) and in southern Lebanon humiliated Hafez Al-Assad and threatened Syria with Israel's strategic dominance. Syria therefore began developing interests in Lebanon, intentionally destabilizing Lebanon and Israel through the powerful militias. The Lebanese divisions became so fragmented that at one time between 12 and 15 militias controlled separate portions of the country. The United States, concerned that Lebanon might lead to another war between Israel and the Arab states, hoped to introduce stability by sending in the marines as a "show of strength".

The problem is that we were speaking much too softly and we forgot to take our big stick with us. President Reagan declared that he had no intention of engaging in "nation-building". The only problem with "nation-building" by the United States is that it had all too often used nation-building to create satellite powers. The Nicaraguan Sandinistas seized power from an American-backed dictator who was the last in a series of American-backed dictators. Why did the United States help overhrow governments in Latin America from the 1950s through the 1970s?

I'm not going to pretend to understand that one. It supposedly has something to do with a fear of Soviet influence (which officially didn't emerge until after Fidel Castro declared himself a Communist in 1958).

Nicaragua became a Cuban client-state, and Cuba was a Soviet client-state. Client-states (satellites) were extensions of the Superpowers. America had them all over the world: Turkey, Iran, South Vietnam, Angola. Every time a Soviet Mig-anything landed in a new country, the United States either began funding an insurrection with the hope of overthrowing the Soviet-friendly government or it began building up an army across the border in the hope of stabilizing the region by balancing power between opposing nations, one of whom would help ensure that American economic interests would be protected.

And that is crucial to understanding why American presidents kept playing with the Domino Theory. They argued (persuasively, if not correctly) that the Soviet Union would eventually take over the world if they were allowed to scoop up every small nation that need economic help. Communists seized power in only a few Latin American countries, and thanks in part to United States foreign policy (which included CIA-funded insurrections) most of those governments did not last long. Fidel Castro has defied the odds.

Africa became the Soviet Union's playground. The Soviets were able to destabilize the region by fanning the flames of nationlism. Anti-European colonialist sentiments ran high in several nations. The United States found itself relying more and more upon weak nations to maintain the status quo. We also had to work with South Africa in some situations, but after the American Civil Rights movement became popular in the 1960s South African Apartheid made that arrangement politically difficult.

Sub-Saharan Africa never rose above secnod-tier importance for American-Soviet political machinations, but so many militias and civil wars were created that Africa remains to this day a hotbed of strife and conflict fueled by ancient hatreds. In some countries, Christians and Muslims oppose each other much as they did in Lebanon.

Lebanon became a Syrian satellite state after the American withdrawal. The Syrian friendvasion became necessary because the militias were almost totally out of control. In late 1983 I took a class on the Modern Middle East. Each student was assigned a nation to study. We were each expected to report our findings to the class. My history professor scheduled my report for the last one of the term: I had Lebanon.

When I finished summarizing the total disarray and chaos that Lebanno was experiencing at the time, one of my classmates asked me what I thought it would take to restore stability. I said I felt it require the intervention of a foreign power with no less than 50,000 troops. In less than 2 years, Syria sent 50,000 soldiers into Lebanon. They gradually disarmed the militias and eventually Lebanon was allowed to form a new government. Of course, Syria maintained tight control over that government for years, but recently they have begun to reap the harvest their colonialist ambitions sowed for them.

Which brings us back to Iraq. President Reagan found himself not only humiliated in the Arab world, he now had to contend with two powerful states that were diametrically opposed to American interests. But Iraq sits squarely between Iran and Syria, and there was always traditional antipathy between Iraq and Iran. The popularity of the Baath political party in both Syria and Iraq made it seem unlikely that Iraq would challenge Syria, but Saddam happily and greedily turned his war dogs loose against Iran. As long as Iraq fought Iran, there wasn't much hope of Iraq assisting Syria in any more wars against Israel.

Well, until Saddam began building nuclear weapons. Did he really intend to make them? In the 1980s, only the Israelis seemed certain of that. They pre-emptively destroyed a nuclear fuel facility to prevent Saddam from acquiring nuclear capabilities. Many people have asked why the United States did not attack Iraq. But the 8-year Iran-Iraq War was serving American interests, and Israel was very well capable of handling a strike against Iraq. In fact, some commentators said the United States cuold not have pulled it off.

This was the era when President Reagan was still trying to launch the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI -- which the news media mislabelled "Star Wars" in an attempt to derail the program). Had it not been for SDI, American technology would not have finished the cruise missile program in time for the First Persian Gulf War.

Cruise missiles were designed in the 1970s. They just didn't work very well at first. SDI raised a broad spectrum of technological challenges, one of which was how to empower cruise missiles with abilities that today seem rather tame. The American computer science community was very critical of SDI because it assumed they could prove the correctness of their software. That is, they had no real idea of how to write programs that they could be sure would actually shoot down enemy missiles instead of, say, civilian American airliners.

Israel's priorities don't always align with American priorities, however, and after Saddam Hussein began gassing his own people, it became clear that his priorities weren't even close to acceptable. We could tolerate differences of opinion and strategy with Israel, but what if Saddam began attacking more of his neighbors? He eventually concluded a truce with Iran but he continued to build up his army. He was obviously hoping to strike out at someone, but whom and when?

It was necessary for Saddam to seek enemies outside of Iraq. As a brutal dictator, he daily created new enemies inside Iraq. His only hope of maintaining control over his people (those he wasn't murdering) was to instill in them a false sense of nationalism. So, Saddam turned his tanks toward Kuwait and fired a shot that was heard around the world.

Problem was, Saddam had a 1 million man army, 7,000 tanks, and about 700 combat-ready aircraft. With that kind of firepower, it seemed well within his capability to take on Israel. And because Israel had pre-emptively bombed an Iraqi facility, Iraq had a grievance to lay at the feet of the world, should it want to attack Israel. While not many governments would have expressed sympathy with Iraq, many common Arabs felt great sympathy for Saddam. Saddam was, in 1990, the only Arab strong man who had not been resoundingly humiliated by Israel. The Israeli bombing raid was a surgical strike.

Muamar Khadafi had attempted to make himself an Arab strong man, but he miscalculated when he ordered attacks on American citizens. As soon as Ronald Reagan felt he could present compelling evidence to the court of world opinion that would show Libya was actively engaged in killing Americans, he ordered an airstrike on Tripoli. Khadafi's own house was bombed, and his 1-year-old son was killed. Khadafi himself was wounded but he appeared on Libyan television, proudly proclaiming that Reagan had failed to get him.

Nonetheless, Reagan's message rang through loud and clear. Khadafi stopped trying to terrorize Americans because he had been shown that America does still carry a big stick.

Anwar Sadat had removed himself from the Arab Strongman Championships when he made peace with Israel. Egyptian Islamic extremist rebels engineered Sadat's assassination and Sadat's successor, Hosni Mubarak, continued Sadat's policies of conciliation and friendship with Israel and the United States. Egypt, long considered to be a culturally wealthy country with a large intellectual elite class, stood to benefit more from trading with the United States and its allies than with the Soviet Union. We did not realize it at the time, but the Cold War was winding down because the Soviet Union's economy was struggling to keep pace with the American economy (in fact, the Soviet economy never matched the American economy).

Saddam therefore gradually came to see an opportunity in his own failures. That is, because he had not humiliated Iran, he needed to find another enemy in order to keep fueling Iraqi nationalism. And because of Islamic politics, Saddam had already alienated the Shi'ite Iraqis from his regime. Saddam is a Sunni, and he relied on the Sunnis to maintain his power. Shi'ite Iraqis were generally sympathetic to Shi'ite Iran's cause. What Saddam needed was a way to unite Sunni Arabs under his rule. By continually expanding his power, he would not only make it more difficult for his enemies to overthrow him, he would move closer toward reuniting the Arab-Islamic world, which had been divided for centuries (in the wake of European colonialism).

So, a minor dispute with Kuwait over where some of Kuwait's oil was coming from, as well as a weak claim of sovereignty over Kuwait, gave Saddam a quick and simple war. He couldn't attack Syria because Syria was a powerful nation with a large army. He couldn't attack Jordan because Jordan had been his ally. He couldn't attack Iran again because that would lead nowhere really quickly.

So, that left Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Kuwait was smaller than Saudi Arabia and would be easier to conquer. It could serve as a useful training ground for the Iraqi army. Also, Kuwait would immediately expand Iraq's access to the Persian Gulf -- access it had lost in the Iran-Iraq war.

For its part, the United States miscalculated in dealing with Saddam. As he built up his rhetorical case for invading Kuwait, Saddam conveyed his intentions clearly. President Bush should have said in no uncertain language that the United States would honor its treaty with Kuwait. Instead, he sent U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie to confer with Saddam. Glaspie has been criticized for not handling Saddam as carefully and forcefully as she should have. Bush has been criticized for putting a woman into a position where a man might have served better. Saddam's cultural perspective on the importance of women may have undermined Glaspie's credibility. But she was ultimately critized by the U.S. Congress for being too vague and indirect when she should have told Saddam in no uncertain terms that if Iraq invaded Kuwait the United States would retaliate.

And so we stumbled into the First Persian Gulf War. It was not a war for oil, as its critics mislabelled it. It was a war for saving face. We had an obligation to fulfill. Had we refused to honor our treaty with Kuwait, other nations would have been right to question the value of their treaties with the United States. Saudi Arabia, while openly sympathetic with anti-Israeli sentiments in the Arab world, had never directly participated in the wars with Israel. American influence is generally credited for the Saudi restraint toward Israel.

Of course, the one unforeseen consequence of our treaty with Saudi Arabia was that, when we honored it by sending troops to defend Saudi Arabia (Operation Desert Shield) against an invasion from Iraq (Iraqi troops only stopped at the border as American troops took up defensive positions), we infuriated a former ally named Osama Bin Laden.

Bin Laden had not been very important to U.S. policy, but he had joined the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan during their 8-year war with the Soviet Union. Afghanistan had enjoyed a long period of stability until the 1970s, when King Zahir Shah introduced a measure of democratic reform. Disagreements between traditionalists and reformists led to a coup in which the king's own cousin deposed. Afghanistan became a Communist state and a new Soviet satellite at the same time that Iran was turning out its own monarch. Suddenly, Soviet reach in the reach was increasing while American influence was faltering.

In the 1980s, the United States helped launch and fund a rebellion that led to a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Afghanistan is often called the Soviet Vietnam, but whereas the South Vietnamese people welcomed American intervention in their war with the North Vietnamese people, there were only a handful of Communists in Afghanistan. The Soviets were completely unwelcome invaders, and the Afghan army evaporated as its soldiers deserted rather than support the invaders.

Bin Laden and other Arabs like him responded to the call for help to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. The United States gladly provided weapons and money to the Mujahedeen and their allies. It has been said that the United States intentionally kept its support low-key for the purpose of drawing the Soviet Union into a Vietnam-like quagmire, in which the Soviets would ultimately be humiliated (they were).

After the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan, Bin Laden was marginalized. But when he saw American troops standing on Saudi soil, he decided to launch his own Jihad against the United States. He felt all Americans were infidels (non-believers) who were defiling Saudi Arabia's holy soil (Islam was born in the Arabian peninsula). Bin Laden began putting together the Al Qaida organization. His first base of pperations was the Sudan, where Muslims and Christians were fighting each other. But eventually Al Qaida established its headquarters in Afghanistan, where Bin Laden allied himself with Mullah Mohammed Omar and the Taliban.

Bin Laden soon found an opportunity to strike at the United States. Somalia, another nation which had fallen into civil war, suffered from a terrible famine in 1992. Thousands of Somalis died, and many thousands more were dying. As more people became aware of the situation there, President Bush (who had lost the 1992 election to Bill Clinton) came under increasing pressure to intervene in Somalia. Bush eventually sent American troops in to provide security for relief organizations. He then turned the leaership of America over to Bill Clinton.

Unlike Bush, Clinton had no wartime experience to guide him. Whereas Bush had been a leader of great resolve and integrity, Clinton insisted on handing the relief operation over to the United Nations. He took a timid role and refused to provide American field commanders with the resources they needed. When Somali warlords began interfering with the relief operation, the United Nations issued warrants for their arrests. The United States sent troops into Mogadishu to take warlord Mohammed Aidid into custody. Clinton refused to provide tanks to the expeditionary force.

We have since learned that Bin Laden may have induced Aidid to challenge American power and prestige. In the ensuing battle, about 100 Americans were wounded, and several were killed. About 500 Somalis were killed and as many as 1500 (including many civilians whom the Somali fighters used as human shields) Somalis were wounded.

The Somalis opened hostilities by shooting down an American helicopter. The American troops rushed to help the crew of the downed helicopter. Aidid's forces surrounded the Americans and fought a running battle with them. Another running battle erupted when a relief column was ambushed. Eventually, the two American groups united and the American forces returned to their base.

In every technical way, the battle was a clear-cut American victory. But when international news media showed dead American soldiers being dishonored by the Somalis, President Clinton withdraw American support for the relief operation and instead of acknowledging the technical victory he allowed the news media to misportray it as a defeat. In subsequent military operations, Clinton refrained from committing American ground troops to combat as much as possible, and subsequently delayed effective American intervention in the Balkan War, where thousands of ethnic Croats and Bosnian Muslims were slaughtered by Serb militia in the former Yugoslavia.

Al Qaida began to move openly against the United States, orchestrating attacks on the World Trade Center, U.S. Embassies, and the U.S.S. Cole. As Clinton's timid military strategies were documented throughout the world, Islamic extremists came to believe that the United States was weak and lacked the will and resolve to fight a prolonged conflict.

The situation in Iraq, where Saddam Hussein continually interfered with United Nations efforts to police his weapons of mass destruction program, deteriorated to the point where the United Nations withdrew its inspectors. President Clinton ordered occasional cruise missile strikes against Al Qaida and/or Iraqi targets in retaliation for various activities, but the United States was portrayed as ineffective against Hussein. Clinton's policies humliated the United States time and again and as a consequence of his lack of resolve thousands of Muslims perished in Somalia and Bosnia. Once again, the United States looked like it was no friend to Muslims.

On September 11, 2001, Al Qaida launched their most successful and penetrating attack against the United States to date. They hijacked four airplanes, sent two of them crashing into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and another on a failed strike in Washington (possibly intended for the White House or Congress). President George W. Bush, son of the previous President Bush, ordered Afghanistan to turn Bin Laden over to the United States or face consequences.

As has become abundantly clear since then, the Taliban were complicit in the attacks on the United States, and Mohammed Omar steadfastly refused to betray Bin Laden. The United States launched an attack on Afghanistan, but because a minority of Afghans were still in arms against the Taliban, the United States and a world-wide coalition of supporting nations threw their support behind the anti-Taliban forces.

Up to this point, almost everyone agrees that the United States was acting with impunity in striking against Afghanistan. But where President Bush's detractors have begun rewriting history is with the subsequent actions against Iraq.

The news media very thoroughly covered the growing concerns expressed by the Bush Administration over Saddam Hussein and Iraq. In a world where Al Qaida had succeeded in harming more Americans on American soil than any foreign power since the 19th century, there was a growing fear that Al Qaida might somehow acquire the means to use a nuclear weapon against the United States. Iraq had steadfastly refused to comply with United Nations demands to prove it was no longer pursuing weapons of mass destruction.

It has since become abundantly clear that Hussein was posturing bravely for the cameras, hoping to generate and maintain sympathy for his cause in the Arab and Islamic world. He was still portraying himself a strong man and hero of Arab causes. There is no question about his intent to deceive the world and keep everyone guessing about whether he was still pursuing weapons of mass destruction.

The only question is whether the Bush Administration orchestrated a false trail of clues that led the United Nations to believe Iraq was still seeking to develop and deploy the weapons of mass destruction. The news media has never yet found any evidence of direction from the White House with respect to the forming or organizing of intelligence. That is, while today many people falsely claim that the Bush Administration lied to the American people and the world, no one has produced any evidence to show that this is so.

What the news media have uncovered is a trail of low-level errors of judgement and deception (including the falsified paper alleging that Iraq had acquired or was seeking weapons-grade plutonium -- but this paper was produced by British operatives, not American operatives), as well as failures in communication similar to the failures which led to the FBI's ignoring clear warning signs about the impending September 11 attacks.

Film-maker Michael Moore produced "Fahrenheit 9/11", an obviously politically motivated shockumentary intended to instill in Americans a distrust of the Bush administration. Moore's film uses half-truths and falsehoods to imply that the Bush Adminisration intentionally misled the American people.

Given the dark history of recent American presidents' credibility (Richard Nixon resigned in shame because of the Watergate scandal, Ronald Reagan barely escaped being tied to the Iran-Contra scandal, and Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky), Americans are understandably suspicious of the integrity of their elected leaders.

It didn't help matters that George W. Bush only narrowly won his first election to the Presidency by a small number of controversial ballots in the state of Florida, whose election results were recounted and recounted and challenged by former Vice President Al Gore all the way to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court refused to overturn the election results, and Bush became the first President to enter the White House with a majority of Electoral Votes but somewhat less than a simple majority of the popular vote.

Many dissatisfied Americans therefore are predisposed to believe the worst of the Bush Administration simply because they never wanted a Bush Administration to begin with. And as antiwar sentiment grows, people will be more disposed to believe any silly nonsense that is directed at Bush to discredit him.

The truth is that no American President is in a position to dictate the details of intelligence reports. If President Bush had really misled the American people, he could only have done so with the knowing complicity of numerous high-level people, including many career bureaucrats and military personnel. The monumental and bi-partisan cooperation required to pull off such a deception would have to be justified to dozens, perhaps hundreds of people -- many of whom have not come under global criticism (such as former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who served as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the first President Bush during the First Persian Gulf War).

Colin Powell related in more than one interview, after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, that he advised President Bush, "If we go in there, we'll own it."

The Bush Administration can be faulted for lack of foresight and planning. They can be faulted for being too optimistic about the consequences of invading Iraq. They can be faulted for being too pessimistic about the odds of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction (of course, they could have been faulted even worse if the intelligence had been right and we did nothing).

There is plenty of reason to criticize the Bush Administration. But the plain and simply truth is that Colin Powell was right. We took on an obligation that we have to fulfill, not because leaving Iraq now would humiliate us, but because leaving Iraq before the job is finished would tell the world that the United States will never do anything right.

The Bush Administration has made the case that if we leave before Iraqis can defend their country, the insurgency will grow in strength. The anti-war protestors say this is turning into another Vietnam.

Folks, look at history. The only way this can turn into another Vietnam is if we leave before the job is done. In truth, there was never really any hope of defeating North Vietnam because, as former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was told when he was briefed on the war for the first time, we had no plan for winning. The United States went into Vietnam without any goals, without any exit strategy, and without any idea of why we were there.

Except that we had been asked to help defend South Vietnam against North Vietnam.

Where Iraq is concerned, we're there because we made the mess to begin with. We built up Saddam Hussein, and we alienated the Arab/Muslim community, and we have shown the world that we're not above creating and supporting petty tyrants who slaughter their own people.

We are shamefully paying a price in blood for the politics of a 160 years of American imperialism. I've never liked that expression but that is really one of the few honest criticisms ever levelled at our governments. Democrats and Republicans alike have advocated this policy.

If you have to blame someone for the fact that we're embroiled in the Middle East at all, blame Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But let me first see you get along without your car, without public transportation, and without heating oil.

If you have to blame someone for the 54,000 deaths we suffered in Vietnam (and the many thousands more seriously wounded men and women, and all the other premature deaths among veterans since then), then blame John F. Kennedy.

If you have to blame someone for the fact that we made Saddam Hussein into the monster we became so afraid of, blame Ronald Reagan.

Roosevelt, Kennedy, Reagan. They were three of our most popular presidents ever. All three of them made some good decisions and some bad decisions. Roosevelt misled the American people on many issues. So did Kennedy. So did Reagan.

George W. Bush inherited the world his predecessors made. He may not be the best man for the job, but he is the only man we have in the chair. And, quite frankly, he doesn't have to be perfect. All he has to do is get the job done.

That is the only way we'll avoid another Vietnam.