Lessons

BBC: Bush Compares Iraq to Vietnam

President George W Bush has warned a US withdrawal from Iraq could trigger the kind of upheaval seen in South East Asia after US forces quit Vietnam.

Is this man serious?

When I think of the phrase "Lessons of Vietnam", I have to say that the first thing that comes to mind isn't that we should have stayed there longer.

No - when I think of the Vietnam War, I think of a war begun in a land far away, with an enemy we knew nothing about, for reasons that represented a total lack of understanding of that part of the world and its relationship to us. I think of a war in which the costs were severe and the rewards nonexistant. I think of a war in which we had trouble telling friend from foe. I think of a war in which we floundered for years with no objective and a scattered, ad hoc strategy. I think of a war that sapped the morale and tarnished the international reputation of the United States. I think of a war that went down in history as a military disaster, a governmental error, and a national tragedy.

There are indeed lessons to be learned from Vietnam's place in American history. But President Bush has not learned from our country's past mistakes; he has repeated them.