The Pendragon's Hall

At last! To paraphrase "Dumb and Dumber," just when you think President Bush is completely useless, he gives a speech like yesterday and totally redeems himself. For years, critics of the Iraq War have compared it to Vietnam. For that matter, liberals love comparing wars to Vietnam, forgetting apparently they actually got us stuck there and it was their arch-enemy Nixon who got us out. Bush yesterday turned the tables on these critics, noting that the American withdrawal from Vietnam did not lead to peace and stability but to more slaughter and repression than the area had ever known. Of course, liberals and (I blush to say it) historians are backpedaling furiously, saying, "That's not what we meant." A fictional president in one of Joel Rosenburg's books noted that "The lesson of Vietnam is that one cannot begin a war against the empire of evil without a plan to win it." Bush echoed the sentiment and rightly so. Iraq is not Vietnam, except perhaps for the loud chorus of antiwar loonies, but what most people don't recognize is that even Vietnam didn't have to be Vietnam, except that it was handled all wrong. In Vietnam, we should have learned that leaving before the job is done and selling out our friends in favor of our enemies is no way to conduct a war. It is scary that we haven't learned from Vietnam, but not in the way most people seem to suggest.