I have read a bit of the commentary on Bush’s bizarre Iraq-Vietnam comparison speech.  It strikes me as bizarre because opening up this line of comparison can only work against Bush’s desire to stay in Iraq.  He is equating Iraq with defeat – since, after all, Vietnam was a defeat for the US (I know, we never lost a military battle, etc.  But, just as in Iraq, that is irrelevant to the all important Clausewitzian political context).  He brought Japan (a win) and Korea (a draw) into the conversation, but in all cases the differences just overwhelm the similarities.  Iraq is not Japan, which had an intact and functioning government and bureaucracy – indeed, an extraordinarily effective bureaucracy – in 1945.  Iraq is not Korea, which, like Japan, was not riven by ethnic differences in 1953.  Yes, it was quite literally divided ideologically, but that was a political-military outcome; it was not rooted in culture and religion.  Iraq is not Vietnam, which had a famously strong and unified national identity, something Iraq obviously lacks.  It might even be true that there is no more Iraq.

     If the actual historical comparisons are so weak, why is Bush bothering to invoke them?  I found this comment by a reader of Andrew Sullivan’s to be helpful:

That’s what Bush was doing yesterday. Building an alibi. Blame the
detractors for the negative externalities of my war and then get off
the hook for blowing it.

     This is not about effective strategy or tactics.  It is not about what is really going on in Iraq.  It is all about trying to salvage some shred of political dignity for those responsible for starting and failing at an unnecessary war.  I don’t have my Sun Tzu here with me just now but I am sure he would be appalled.  Just like Confucius he would expect, at the very least, that a leader be truthful to himself and to those he rules.  Neither has been the case, ever, with Bush.

      Bush lost the war.