Removing the Rose-Colored Glasses

The election that looms just two weeks from today is increasingly being seen as a referendum on the war in Iraq, and by extension, on Smirk. Despite the Grand Old Perverts' attempt to prevent the election from being nationalized, nearly every pol worth their salt has run away screaming from the administration, and quite a few are facing tough questions about how they're going to handle Iraq, among other issues (like, oh, say, the economy, health care, stagnant wages, the environment, and other weighty topics...). It certainly doesn't help that the army announced earlier this month that it looks like we'll have troops there until, oh, 2010 at the earliest. Anyone want to bet that a lot of soldiers, especially National Guardsmen, are going to be thrilled about that prospect?

It's gotten bad enough that in the face of the increasing bloodshed, our dear Smirk has finally started to take off his rose-colored glasses. In an interview with George Stephanopoulos, he admitted that there could be a basis, perhaps, for a comparison between Vietnam and Iraq.

No kidding.

While I'd agree that there's a lot of differences between the two (for one thing, Vietnam was a civil war-- unless there's a humanitarian reason to do so (a good example would be Rwanda, which was a tragic failure on the part of the rest of the world, not just the U.S.), staying out of another country's internal problems is the best move.), there's definitely the major similarity of a powerful country poking its nose where it's not wanted. There's also the similarity of not understanding the nation or people well enough to read the political, cultural, and social situation.

But if you really want to try to compare Iraq and Vietnam, I'd skip doing a surface comparison, and instead look at the words and thoughts of some of those who were intimately involved in Southeast Asia. There's a lot to be learned just from listening to the people living in a country that is being ravaged.

A timely example is the obituary of Pham Xuan An, a Vietnamese journalist who was also a Viet Cong spy. He died recently at 79. At the end of his obituary in the Los Angeles Times were the following two paragraphs:

In 2001, An was asked what the biggest mistake was the United States had made during the war. He replied: "Look, some of the influential Americans I dealt with were beautiful people. They were very smart. They weren't ignorant about Vietnam. But being smart and making the right decisions are different things.

"The big mistake the Americans made was not understanding the Vietnamese history, culture, mentality. They were so sure military strength would win the war, they never bothered to learn who they were fighting."

Déjà vu, anyone?