Skipper

Oh dear, it seems that much of what has been said regarding George Bush's intellect and learning has been reinforced by his comparison of Iraq with Vietnam. The first point is that George does not seem to have worked out that the USA lost that one; would he have advised Churchill to order his Expeditionary Force, waiting on Dunkirk's beaches to keep on fighting rather than return home? Moreover, to argue 'staying the course' because pulling out of Vietnam produced so much chaos in its wake, seems quixotic to say the least. Much of that chaos had only come about because of the Vietnam war, as The New York Times points out:

Vietnam led to catastrophic consequences in the region, especially in Cambodia,” said David C. Hendrickson, a specialist on the history of American foreign policy at Colorado College in Colorado Springs.

“But there are a couple of further points that need weighing,” he added. “One is that the Khmer Rouge would never have come to power in the absence of the war in Vietnam — this dark force arose out of the circumstances of the war, was in a deep sense created by the war. The same thing has happened in the Middle East today. Foreign occupation of Iraq has created far more terrorists than it has deterred.”

A better example of not leaving before stability has been achieved would, perhaps be the British and India in 1947 when over a million died in religious conflict following too rapid an exit. But Bush seems to have decided that if the Iraq War is to be written on his gravestone, he might as well go down fighting, or at least the young men in his military forces might.

Most now predict that in a week or so General Petraeus will submit a positive report on the 'surge' campaign whereby thousands of extra troops were sent in to quell the Baghdad militias. I'm sure I'm not the only one who reckons the Surge will only delay the inevitable of a humiliating US exit from Iraq. In that respect Iraq will indeed resemble Vietnam as in the famous picture above of US personnel being helicoptered off a roof in Saigon.