Hagel Haggle

Very few pieces on Chuck Hagel fail to mention how well he served his country in Vietnam. While this means he deserves our respect, I don't necessarily see how it makes him any sort of expert on Iraq.

Hagel recently compared the Iraq war to Vietnam. Now in the abstract, any war can be like Vietnam--people get killed and you can get bogged down. But in almost every particular, Iraq has been and continues to be different. The politics inside the country are different, the people of the country are different, the politics surrounding the situation is different, our armed forces are different, the approach to the war was different, the successes (and failures) within the war are different, the enemy army is different, the enemy's support is different, the (very clear) exit strategy is different, etc., etc.

A number of our politicians served in Vietnam. For this we should honor them. Perhaps, however, some were so effected by this time in their life that they have trouble seeing beyond it. It used to be the generals who were always fighting the last war, but now it's the politicians and the pundits. It's time to move on. Iraq, good or bad, is not Vietnam.

Columbus Guy says: Due respect, but you don't get the Vietnam analogy. It is precisely the same policy as sexual harassment laws and indeed, even the court system: They are all policies devoid of substance that are available only to one of two primary competing ideologies, the one that is shared by the Manhattan Media. "Vietnam" means nothing more than "We want our guy in, and your guy out." (I'll give you, in the Vietnam case, there must be an army involved.)