We left many Vietnamese troops and civilians who were our allies without any means of protecting themselves to die at the hands of the Vietcong .
Well, for one thing the 50,000 left behind are not all or just military troops. Some, if not most are advisors, trainers, civilians, negotiators, planners, co-ordinators, teachers, experts, diplomats, liasons, translators, and whatever and whoever is needed to help Iraqi's build a new government for themselves. For another thing, the 50K are under the State Department control, not the DoD, and the State Department gets a fraction of the funding compared to the military. So the notion they are left behind to merely engage the enemy is nonsense. For if there were still an enemy to engage, the combat troops wouldn't have left, let alone leave EARLY. Yes, there it is going to still be violence, but the violence is directed at the Iraqis by Iraqis and it will the Iraqi forces who will have to deal with it. It is estimated that every week, 150 Iraqis are joining the Iraqi forces.
Building a new government with many competing interests doesn't happen over night, so we can not expect instant results. They will have to build a coalition government and that takes time. But it has only been seven months since their last election and it took the Dutch at least nine months to build their coalition government. So be patient, child.
