Failed Lessons

In my earlier entry about Afghanistan and Iraq, I mentioned us not learning the lessons of the Vietnam war, as evidenced by our wayward foreign policy choices. I'll assume most people reading this blog already agreed with that assessment. The President clearly does not-

President Bush said Friday the United States' unsuccessful war in Vietnam three decades ago offered lessons for the American-led struggle in Iraq. "We'll succeed unless we quit," Bush said shortly after arriving in this one-time war capital...

So says the man who spent most of that war laying in a hammock while drunk.

Think Progress reminds us this rhetoric is likely the work of Bush advisor Henry Kissinger.

As I said last month: "Conservative revision on Vietnam has solidified in the past few years. To hear conservatives tell it, the lesson of Vietnam is that we allowed ourselves to lose our will and to prematurely exit the war, leaving South Vietnam to ruin. ... Most intelligent people, however, seemed long ago to understand that the lesson of Vietnam was: that we never should've gotten involved in that war to begin with; that our problem was not that we exited prematurely in '75, but that we stayed too long and didn't cut our losses in '65; and that it is not only not right, but not possible, for the United States to engage in military aggressions in foreign lands to serve domestic political theories (the domino theory fears for Southeast Asia, reinvented as Bush's democracy-reverse-domino theory for the Mideast). That some conservatives do not understand this, and seem unaware of this reality, however noble their intentions may indeed be, is a frightening thought."

On the same day I also linked to a piece in Time magazine by Leslie Gelb (who worked at the Defense Department in Johnson's administration and is currently President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations) entitled "Would Defeat in Iraq Be So Bad?: After Vietnam, the dominoes did not fall. What that tells us about this war", in which she laid out the case for how we can limit the fallout of our inevitable departure. And it is inevitable. Those like the President waiting for anything even resembling 'victory' are delusional and are simply buying time for themselves politically.

Sen. McCain, who supports an escalation of hostilities, said in a speech this week that "As troubling as it is, I can ask a young marine to go back to Iraq. What I cannot do is ask him to return to Iraq, to risk life and limb, so that we might delay our defeat for a few months or a year. That is more to ask than patriotism requires." Of course, this is an unintentionally ironic statement, because what Sen. McCain won't admit (least of all to himself) is that this is exactly what we are asking of our troops.

As Glenn Greenwald noted, people like the President and Sen. McCain never realistically address whether we are winning or losing (or can even win at all) because they simply insist "on our divine entitlement to magical victory". Following up on his statement about the lessons of Vietnam as he sees them, the President also said in Hanoi today that "We tend to want there to be instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is going to take a while". Perhaps the President has forgotten that it was his administration that expected 'instant success' (I seem to remember discussions of a cakewalk and a war that "could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.") This new bleak assessment of success over "a long period of time" is after-the-fact rhetoric intended to buy time while he waits for that magical victory he believes he is entitled to, whether it is coming or not.

Finally, today also comes news that the White House "is preparing its largest spending request yet for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan... [with] $127 billion to $160 billion in requests from the armed services for the 2007 fiscal year... on top of $70 billion already approved for 2007." When all is said and done, the financial cost (if, fortunately, not the human cost) for the Iraq war would top, you guessed it, the one in Vietnam.

Not coincidentally, approval for the President and his war is at a new low.

UPDATE: Speaker-to-be Pelosi says working to end this war will be a priority of Democrats.

[PS- Here's a headline that speaks volumes of the President's standing in the world:
Vietnamese greet Bush with indifference (AP)]