Tom Hayden Advocates U.S. Surrender
By John Perazzo
Discover The Networks –Moonbat Central
August 17, 2005

In an L.A. Times editorial, Tom Hayden has called for what amounts to an American surrender in the Iraq War. Deeming the conflict ill-advised, unjustified, and immoral, Hayden exhorts President Bush to “immediately announce goals for ending the occupation and bringing all our troops home — in months, not years, beginning with an initial gesture by the end of this year.” In short, he suggests that America telegraph its intention to leave Iraq’s fate in the hands of whichever terrorist faction can best assert its power — thereby effectively handing the reins of government to the leaders of the vilest ideological movement anywhere on present-day planet earth. “[T]the Iraq war,” explains Hayden, “is not worth another minute in lost lives, lost honor, lost taxes, lost allies.”

Hayden goes on to propose a number of exit strategies, each one characterized by an apparent absence of understanding that America’s enemy in this war is resolutely committed to nothing short of the extermination of Hayden and all his countrymen – regardless of whatever overtures toward reconciliation Hayden might initiate. Hayden advises the U.S. to begin at the “starting point that is being discussed in peace circles . . . The basis of the plan is a shift from a military model to a conflict-resolution model, then to a peace process that ends in a negotiated political settlement alongside a U.S. withdrawal.” So neat does Hayden make it all sound; one would hardly suspect that another soldier would even have to get his fingernails dirty.

As a “confidence-building measure,” urges Hayden, “Washington should declare that it has no interest in permanent military bases or the control of Iraqi oil.” Is it conceivable that Mr. Hayden somehow failed to hear, over the course of the past three years, the innumerable repetitions of that very assurance by the President and members of his administration? Presumably Hayden believes that one additional enunciation of the mantra would, at long last, sway the opinion of those who have thus far clung to the belief that America’s foreign policy is motivated primarily by a lust for oil and a quest for empire.

Once the American military is out of the picture, Hayden advises, “the U.S. should request that the United Nations, or a body blessed by the U.N., monitor the process of military disengagement and de-escalation, and take the lead in organizing a peaceful reconstruction effort.” Given the U.N.’s pitiable record of impotence in quelling international crises and persuading tyrants to comply with its resolutions, this remarkable statement of Hayden needs no commentary; it speaks for itself.

Finally, says Hayden, “the president should appoint a peace envoy, independent of the occupation authorities, to begin an entirely different mission in Iraq. The envoy should encourage and cooperate in peace talks with Iraqi groups opposed to the occupation, including insurgents, to explore a political settlement.” Somehow Hayden believes that Islamofascist bigots who are committed to the mass murder of infidels would suddenly welcome an opportunity to work for peace. In fact, Hayden cheerfully reports that “[e]ven the militant Shiites led by Muqtada Sadr have shown interest in the political process by collecting a million signatures for American withdrawal.” “A successful peace process,” Hayden instructs us, “will guarantee representation for the Iraqi opposition in a final governing arrangement. It will encourage power-sharing arrangements in economic and energy development as well as governance.” There you have it: The same people whose every waking moment is devoted to plotting acts of terror that would dwarf 9/11 should be invited to take part in the “political process.”

Let us not forget who Tom Hayden is. He has a well-established track record of failing to understand the murderous intentions of some of the most barbaric movements in human history. In the early 1970s he organized an “Indo-China Peace Campaign” (IPC) to lobby Congress to cut off American aid to the regimes in Cambodia and South Vietnam. Assisted by radical Democrats in Congress, Hayden established a caucus in the Capitol, where he lectured and agitated for an end to anti-Communist efforts in South Vietnam and Cambodia. The IPC worked tirelessly to help the North Vietnamese Communists and the Cambodian Khmer Rouge emerge victorious. Hayden and his wife, Jane Fonda, took a camera crew to Hanoi and to the “liberated” regions of South Vietnam to make a propaganda film called Introduction to the Enemy, whose purpose was to persuade viewers that the Communists were going to create an ideal new society, based on justice and equality, once the Americans had departed.  

Hayden and his likeminded supporters gained immense political leverage from President Nixon’s resignation in August 1974. That year’s midterm elections, which were held just three months after the resignation, resulted in catastrophic losses for Republicans and ushered in a new group of Democratic legislators determined to undo the Nixon peace policy and surrender Cambodia and Vietnam to the enemy. They succeeded all to well. The first act of the newly elected Democrat Congress was a vote to cut off funding for the governments of South Vietnam and Cambodia in January 1975. As a result, the Communists overran both Saigon and Phnom Penh within a matter of weeks, and within three years they had slaughtered 2.5 million peasants in Indochina.

A U.S. pullout from Iraq at this point would condemn to a similar fate millions of innocent Iraqis. Tom Hayden has learned absolutely nothing from history. He knows now precisely what he knew back then: America is always to blame.