The Ramble: Disaster is the new missionOriginally written on August 24:
On Tuesday, when speaking to a VFW group, George Bush assured the assembled, and presumably memory-addled, veterans that we would not pull out of Iraq because millions suffered when we pulled out of Vietnam and he won’t repeat that mistake.
In other words, even though we have been chastised for years that we shouldn’t compare Iraq to Vietnam. Vietnam was a disaster. Vietnam was a quagmire. Vietnam was a unique mess, and to compare the war in Iraq to the Vietnam War is unfair and unpatriotic. Until today.
Today, we can compare the Iraq war to Vietnam, but not because (as most people have concluded) Iraq is, in fact a quagmire and a disaster, but because apparently WE NEEDED MORE VIETNAM.
As my officemate pointed out, this is probably not a conclusion he would have come to if he had actually had to serve in Vietnam. Then again, with a recent calculation showing that Bush spent over 1/4 of his presidency on vacation, he hasn’t exactly served in Iraq either.
