Football and Viet Nam, Terrorism and Truth

I handed a hard copy of a football analogy, (see "Let's Quit When the Going Gets Rough" posted below), to a colleague the other day. He returned the paper to me with a beautifully hand written note. I included here his comments and my response. I'm afraid our arguments date us, but as "Layton Lancer" said, (see comments under "Thomas Cahill - History for Sale" posted below), we must learn from history. Sometimes we learn our history by living it.

My colleague's comment:

"I HAVE A BETTER IDEA. DO WHAT WE DID IN VIETNAM; KEEP PLAYING, GETTING DEEPER & DEEPER IN THE HOLE. PLAY ANOTHER QUARTER, & OVERTIME AND WHEN YOU SEE YOU'LL NEVER CATCH UP ON THE SCORE, CALL THE GAME OFF. THEN GO UP TO THE SCOREBOARD & CHANGE THE SCORE TO SHOW THAT YOU WON THE GAME AND GIVE YOURSELF & TEAM A VICTORY PARADE. IT WORKED ONCE; WHY NOT AGAIN?
BUSHLEAGUER HASN'T LEARNED A THING FROM HISTORY.

My response:

As a master of all things literary, you know, better than I, that any analogy can be stretched too thin - and yet let me push this one just a little farther. You are right, we must learn from history, and the history of VietNam is most appropriate to consider. Back to the football metaphor: in VietNam, we pulled the "first string," handicapped our team for political reasons, drove our fans from the stands and replaced them with an angry mob screaming for our defeat, and then left the field before the clock ran out.

Now for history. Communism is a system built on a lie, a demonstrated economic farce, that could and can only be maintained by totalitarian terrorism. It has been responsible for more violent deaths in the twentieth century than any other factor. Murders in the name of Marx dwarf the evils of Nazism. Check out The Black Book of Communism published by Harvard University Press in 1999. In the blighted nations (including VietNam) where Communism still hangs on, all civil and human liberties are denied and the power of the party is maintained by mass murder. Because America lost heart on that terrible battle front, a million plus Vietnamese were murdered in red reeducation camps and two million plus people died on the killing field of Cambodia. Ask the tens of thousands who fled Communism by boat if that war was useless, ask the people of Thailand if they feel our heros died for "a nothing." The march of Communism was stopped by the blood of our heroes - and the wisdom of Ronald Reagan.

Back to analogy. Thank goodness that our team played out the rest of that "Cold War Season." Let's hope we learned the lesson of history, that the only way to "stay in the game" is to do ones best till the clock runs out. When the Islamic terrorists snuff out the flame of the West; when freedom, pluralism, and justice are replaced by religious fanaticism and the darkness of hate; when reason and logic give way to ignorance, superstition, and fear; let it be because they were the better team, not because we walked off the field when the going got tough.