The Endless War

"So, for good reason, nobody wants to relieve Vietnam; and Americans need to be reminded that our 'defeat' in Iraq would have the same result, but with even weightier consequences, as radical Islamists with overt global ambitions would be emboldened by victory to widen their campaign."

Radio commentator Cenk Uygur can hardly believe it:

"Maybe Karl Rove was Bush's brain. He leaves the building and all of a sudden the White House is using terrible talking points. The president gave a speech comparing Iraq to Vietnam (an analogy he had directly rejected earlier , saying the comparison he made today would send 'the wrong message to our troops' and 'the wrong message to the enemy.') Iraq is like Vietnam? That's the worst marketing strategy I've ever heard. Why don't they try this one next -- If You Liked Vietnam, You'll Love Iraq.Bush is no student of history, so I don't know if he knows this, but we lost Vietnam. And more importantly, there was no hope of winning. If Bush is trying to say we should have stayed in Vietnam, that dog will not hunt. I guarantee it.

"The jury is in on Vietnam and the two inescapable conclusions are 1) we should have never gone in (like Iraq) 2) we had to leave because we had no chance of winning (like Iraq). The one thing the Bush administration used to be good at is politics. Now, if they have also lost this ability, they're cooked."

Right Wing Nuthouse resident Rick Moran is upset with the NYT account of the president's Wednesday speech:

"In urging Americans to stay the course in Iraq, Mr. Bush is challenging the historical memory that the pullout from Vietnam had few negative repercussions for the United States and its allies. . .

"I had to read that amazing passage about our pullout from Viet Nam having "few negative repercussions for the United States and its allies" several times before I could believe it. Is the Times actually trying to argue that there were no 'negative repercussions' for Thailand or Cambodia, both of them close US allies at the time? And the fact that the collective security group, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, was destroyed by our pullout from Viet Nam didn't have repercussions for the United States itself? Or that our pull out didn't damage our ability to deter the Russians?

"Our mad rush out of Viet Nam certainly emboldened the Soviet Union to meddle in Africa by using their flunkie Castro as a proxy in Angola as well as giving direct aid to groups like the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the El Salvador rebels. To say that our pull out didn't have negative repercussions for the US or many of our allies is insane."

Here's an interesting tidbit from the Bush speech:

"A columnist for The New York Times wrote . . . in 1975, just as Cambodia and Vietnam were falling to the communists: 'It's difficult to imagine,' he said, 'how their lives could be anything but better with the Americans gone.' A headline on that story, date Phnom Penh, summed up the argument: 'Indochina without Americans: For Most a Better Life.' "

The columnist was Pulitzer Prize-winner Sydney Schanberg.

HuffPoster Marty Kaplan gives us the cultural context of Bush's stroll through history: