IRAQ IS JUST LIKE VIETNAM,

IRAQ IS JUST LIKE VIETNAM, writes Ramesh Ponnuru:

Except that we’ve captured Ho Chi Minh, we’ve taken Hanoi, there’s no draft, and the boat people have mostly come back. Not all of the comparisons are, however, to our advantage: It took nine years for the Democrats to be willing to cut off funding for the military then. It took seven months this time.

I recently read The New Dealers’ War by Thomas Fleming, who is surprisingly negative about how FDR’s administration handled World War II. But at no point that I can remember in Fleming’s book, other than possibly a fear of nerve gas, did FDR’s men try to compare the second great war to the first. Nor do I recall many of President Clinton’s military efforts being compared with Vietnam.

As Alvin Toffler wrote in War and Anti-War, the American military’s tactics were radically changed after the debacle of Vietnam. Maybe Senators Kennedy and Kerry and the rest of the left never got the memo.