Bad Analogy: Abandoning Our Friends

Kirk W. Johnson writes Abandoning Our Friends on the New York Times Op-Ed page on Friday, 16 Dec 2011. He starts the article by lauding British commander Guy Carleton for taking care of loyalists at the end of the American Revolution. He then takes President Obama to task for not taking care of Iraqis who had sided with the U.S. during the recent war. Later in the article he takes the U.S. to task for not having taken care of our Vietnamese friends in 1975 at the conclusion of that war.

However, neither analogy makes sense. The new American government had been the enemy of the British and the American loyalists; likewise the new Vietnamese government had been the enemy of the U.S. and its Vietnamese friends. This is not, however, the case in Iraq. While there are factions in Iraq who have been and continue to be hostile to the U.S., and to those Iraqis who were our friends, the U.S. had not been the enemy of the new Iraqi government, and those who make up this government have been allies with the U.S. during the war.

Verdict: this article fails, by bad analogy.