Letters to the Editor

‘Blatant distortions’

Your article “Naysayers tight-lipped since success of Iraq vote,” (Page 1, Thursday) has an obvious subtext — that those of us who are critics of President Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq should shut up because of the Iraqi elections.

By the same logic, critics of the Vietnam War should have stopped their protests after the September 1967 South Vietnamese election took place despite threats of Viet Cong attacks on polling places. The reported 83 percent turnout in that election was even higher than the interim Iraqi regime’s estimate of 60 percent voter participation — a number, incidentally, that The Washington Times is embracing as uncritically as the paper once accepted the Bush administration’s assertions about Saddam Hussein’s supposed arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

Voter turnout in the Iraqi election doesn’t confer legitimacy on the war, just as turnout in South Vietnam didn’t justify President Lyndon Johnson’s escalation of the war in Vietnam — after all, in neither instance did the ballot ask voters their opinion on whether their country should have been bombed and occupied by a foreign army.

Presidents Johnson and Bush both relied on blatant distortions and lies to rally Americans to their wars. That was wrong in the mid-1960s, and it is equally wrong now. The Vietnamese election in 1967 didn’t erase all of Johnson’s miscalculations and inept wartime leadership, nor did it bring back to life all the American and Vietnamese lives lost because of those mistakes.

The Iraqi election won’t wipe the slate clean in those regards for Mr. Bush, either — he still deserves blame for his failure to plan adequately for the aftermath of Saddam’s overthrow, as well as for the shameful abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and the scorched-earth destruction of Fallujah.

An election with impressive voter turnout didn’t stop Mr. Johnson’s Vietnam policy from disastrous failure. Sadly, our self-confident president seems to have learned nothing from Johnson’s example, and thus still runs the risk of repeating it.

PATRICK J. KIGER

Takoma Park

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