The Quagmire Question

So today George W. decides at last to invoke the specter of Vietnam for his 1000th excuse for remaining in Iraq. Remember, until now he steadfastly avoided any mention of the Vietnam conflict because he hadn't read that far in the syllabus yet. Now he's got the urge to dredge up that awful war to justify one of his own creation.
As I understand his rationale, we can't condemn the Iraqi people to the collective fate of that era's "boat people" or the Cambodians who died in the now-infamous "killing fields."

Of course, what young Americans can't know is that the fear-mongering elite of the 60's and 70's used the near-certainty of Communism's evil spread to justify the enormous expense in lives and dollars to keep us in an unwinnable war in Southeast Asia. At the time Washington policy-makers were embracing the so-called "Domino Theory," in which a victorious, and therefore emboldened, Communist North Vietnam would spreads its tentacles throughout the region and then, in a natural progession seen only by the enlightened at the Pentagon and the White House, to the western shores of the United States. Gee, does that sound familiar or what?

So Mr. Bush decides to re-visit this time-worn and unjustifiable defensive posture to keep us yoked to his appallingly stupid foreign policy blunder that is the current Iraq war. Actually it isn't much of a war as it is a conflict that parallels precisely the Soviet failure to beat back the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the 80's. Oh, that's right. We schooled the Afghan freedom fighters, including one celebrated leader named Osama bin Laden. But, darn it, we tend to forget that the mighty Soviet war machine was routed by rebels riding horses and camels.

The only bright spot in today's news about Iraq is that--at last--Condoleezza Rice has succeeded in putting career diplomats in positions of power to make the big decisions for the remaining months of the Bush Presidency. Gone are the imbeciles who got us into this mess, people whose only credentials were writing checks and looking the other way while their political golden boy and benefactor proved time and again why on at least one occasion Barbara Bush should have used birth control.