Iraq IS Like Viet Nam

Before we left for China, we noted an op-ed column in the Washington Post by former Bush administration official Peter Rodman making what we called a "delusional Viet Nam analogy" to Iraq: that a hasty troop withdrawal would result in the same kind of chaos that ensued from our withdrawal from Southeast Asia.

Guess the White House was reading Rodman's piece. Trotting out some Right Wing Revisionism on Viet Nam, Bush now embraces the Viet Nam analogy he has so long opposed. The Right now claims--at least Rodman does--that Nixon was "forced" to withdraw from Viet Nam by Congress, right at a point where we were about to turn things around. That then led to a bloodbath after we left.

We won't repeat here what we said about Rodman's reasoning--instead, see what we said before in "Right Wing Blather On Iraq Troop Withdrawal." The fact that Bush has picked up this drivel just shows how isolated he is over there in the White House bubble. It's no surprise--Bush is hardly a student of history, he doesn't read anything serious, he avoided service in Viet Nam and he would do anything--ANYTHING--to rationalize his bungled occupation of Iraq.

Iraq IS like Viet Nam. It's a quagmire. We can't "win" because we don't even know what we're fighting for. And our intervention there has only made things worse.