If Bush can lay claim to one virtue, he can boldly state that he is consistent… maybe pathological is a better word. You could set your watch by the hypocrisy that comes out of this administration. A couple years ago, Bush would have balked at the comparison of Iraq to Vietnam, most conservatives would have denied it as well. Now the comparison is the flagship for his new change in political rhetoric.
No exit strategy.
To do so in his words would entail a agonizing legacy of millions of disrupted and destroyed lives akin to fleeing Saigon in the 70’s. The plan is to keep 165,000 troops activated in the Middle East until April next year the earliest. Britain conversely, has voiced its plan for an early exit strategy, leaving the US in an untenable position come the end of this year.
If the history of Iraq War 2 has taught us anything, it’s that our continued presence in the theater has both strengthened and emboldened anti-US sentiment and Al Queda forces, giving them the opportunity to train against a direct enemy and recruit from the shattered civilian population. Continuing on this path of indeterminant occupation can only lead to a logical conclusion, a well-trained, fully-manned terrorist army, ready to attack the US as soon as its attention is diverted from the current crisis.
If Bush wants to equate Iraq to Vietnam, he has to take the analogy as a complete ideologue and accept the fact that the war was a failure and our presence there no longer serves any purpose, nor will it 50, 100, 200 years into the future.
