Iraq: The Domino Theory is Back

As the Vietnam war was being lost, diehards clung to the Domino Theory: If Saigon fell, the rest of Southeast Asia would topple to Communism like a row of dominoes standing on end.

Now, as the President tries to sell his surge into Iraq, its few supporters, led by Senator Lindsey Graham, are all over the political talk shows warning about chaos in the Middle East if we fail to keep pouring American blood and treasure into Baghdad.

The Domino Theory was wrong then, as it is now, a scare story concocted to prop up a failed policy.

Chaos in the Middle East? How can we withdraw and let that stable region descend into religious and tribal slaughter? Isn’t it worth however many young American lives it takes to avoid such a disaster?

Lindsey Graham sticks in my craw. With his Southern-fried logic, he built a career on the House Judiciary Committee by insisting the Republic would fall because Bill Clinton unzipped in the Oval Office.

Now he is just as earnest in arguing that we are in danger if we don’t keep following the lead of that moral exemplar, George W. Bush.