The Themocrats' Vietnam Syndrome

They just can't forget their Vietnam experience, man:

Vietnamization" once meant arming, training and supporting an ally so that it could defend itself and thus relieve Americans of the burden. But to the Democrats and the Chernobyl Republicans who are trying to Vietnamize Iraq, Vietnam is not a nation but an outcome. To succeed in Vietnamizing Iraq, they must treat the nation's uncertainty like uranium ore, refining it in stages into politically fissionable material. First, they must catalyze the nation's uncertainty into doubt, and then refine public doubts about the war into conviction that America should not fight it, and that the Iraqis must be left to their own devices. Sen. Joe Biden -- who rarely has an unexpressed thought -- has shed a dim light on the Democrats' strategy.

On Meet the Press yesterday, Biden said that the 79-19 Senate vote two weeks ago for John Warner's three-part antiwar resolution was a "vote of no confidence" in Bush's prosecution of the war. In response to Tim Russert's questions, Biden's Republican pal Warner didn't even manage a decent harrumph. The Senate resolution -- even with so many Republicans supporting it -- wasn't a vote of no confidence. But it was a message to America that a strong Senate majority was unhappy with Mr. Bush's conduct of the war. It was a long step toward achieving Vietnamization of Iraq by destroying public support for the war.

Biden perhaps revealed too much. He linked his desire for a Vietnam-like timetable for withdrawal from Iraq to the timetable for 2008 presidential aspirants, including himself. On Meet the Press, having said we have only a six-month window of opportunity to get it right in Iraq, Biden later said that his presidential ambitions depend on his ability to raise money in those same six months. If Biden and his ilk can Vietnamize Iraq in six months, they believe they can regain the White House. And the only way they can do either is to destroy America's will to win, just as they did in the Vietnam War. The old protest drums are pounding out the old messages: we can't win, we got into this because we were lied to, and our enemy is no worse than our ally.

Americans are not quite so stupid as to trust these clowns again when it comes to war. We prefer to win.