:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 8.23.2007 ::

:: The V-word ::

This is a war for credibility
Commentary by Martin Woollacott
Guardian UK
His motives are suspect but in certain crucial respects Bush is right to compare Iraq to Vietnam.

So, Bush has finally used the V-word. He has drawn the parallel he has in the past refused to draw between Iraq and Vietnam. His avoidance of it had two obvious causes, personal and political: a bystander in the first war and the instigator of the second, he did not want to remind Americans that he was a man who sent others to fight but had never fought himself. And he has not wanted, until now, to suggest that the US faces a disaster in Iraq as big as that represented by defeat in Vietnam.

Why has he invoked Vietnam in this way? Desperation is one answer. Bush paints the spectacle of national humiliation, tragic results for allies and friends, and the emboldening of America's enemies in order to strengthen his weak hold on the allegiance and attention of the American people. Alibi is another: if the war is to be lost, he wants to be on the record that he warned of the consequences if defeatists had their way. That way, Republicans could return to power at some future point claiming that the decline in American influence in the world, to which Iraq will almost certainly lead, came about because Democrats ran out on the war.

Belief is a third answer. The political school to which Bush and his key advisers on Iraq belong believe the Vietnam war was lost because America did not persevere, not because the war was unwinnable. The rift between them and those in their generation who came to see the Vietnam war as a terrible mistake or even as an act of imperialist folly has persisted through the years. This is the longstanding argument that shaped the minds of those who took the decision to invade Iraq.

But what of the parallel itself?

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 12:48:00 PM [+] ::
...