Neil Abercrombie: “The parallel, and I am not one to draw analogies to Vietnam because I think most of those kinds of comparisons tend to…”

“The parallel, and I am not one to draw analogies to Vietnam because I think most of those kinds of comparisons tend to be inexact and then you end up in useless kinds of arguments as to exactitude, but the parallels are there. You may recall the rather infamous phrase associated with our pacification policy in Vietnam. We had to destroy the village in order to save it. Now in order to stabilize Iraq, we have to take barbed wire and surround whole villages with it. So I think the question here is, at this stage, what is to be done? How are we to regard the war on terror and what the relationship of the attack on Baghdad and the subsequent war which followed it, how is that to be handled? How is that to be addressed by the United States? We are told, and again these cliches and bromides come fast and furious, that we should not cut and run. I am going to have to presume, I guess, that I know what cutting and running means. It means that you stop doing what you are doing and you leave. I do not know whether anybody noticed it or not, I certainly noticed, about November 15, that is precisely what Mr. Bush and Mr. Bremer concluded, that the United States was going to cut and run. That is what we are doing right now.”