The Vietnam narrative wars (which I touched on yesterday) continue.

It's even harder to understand why Bush raised a comparison between Iraq and Vietnam.

I'm not sure it's the comparison she doesn't understand, nor is it the raising of the comparison. I think what she really objects to is not the comparison itself, but the fact that it was raised by Bush, and the fact that it does not agree with hers.

In April of 2004, Trudy Rubin warned (in a column titled "U.S. still can steer clear of Iraq quagmire") that:

Iraq is not Vietnam.

Not yet.

A couple of years later, Rubin again invoked Vietnam, this time warning Iraq could be worse:

"Iraq is not Vietnam; it could be an even bigger disaster."

In a column titled "Iraq vs. Vietnam," she also said that "the complex Iraqi situation makes the Vietnam war look simple."

Repeatedly, she invoked Vietnam not as a simple comparison, but by way of contrast to the Iraq War, which shares in common with Vietnam the fact that it's a quagmire. Except, in another respect, Iraq is worse:

Iraq is more complicated quagmire than Vietnam.

But today, she pretends shock over the fact that Bush dared to touch the "V" word. Especially when he really should have used the "Q" word!

It's even harder to understand why Bush raised a comparison between Iraq and Vietnam. Needless to say, he never used the word quagmire. His point was that our withdrawal from Vietnam caused immense suffering for the Vietnamese people, as would a withdrawal from Iraq. That's true. I've argued that one reason to stay longer in Iraq is our moral obligation to the Iraqi people.

But given the current suffering of Iraqis - and the desperate flight already of two million Iraqis who have left the country - this argument isn't sufficient to sway the debate.

So why would the president raise the specter of a war that haunted Americans for more than a generation? He seemed to imply - though one wonders why he didn't say it - that we could have won the Vietnam War had we stayed longer. Such a claim is popular with part of his conservative base.

Hanoi's leaders watched closely and anxiously as strikes by American B-52 Stratofortress bombers failed to materialize.

Thieu still believed the promise made by President Richard Nixon to reintroduce American air power to the conflict if any serious violations of the agreement took place. It was also assumed that U.S. financial and military aid would continue to be forthcoming at previous levels.

On 1 July 1973, however, the U.S. Congress passed legislation that all but prohibited any direct or indirect U.S. combat activities over or in Laos, Cambodia, and both Vietnams. On 7 November the legislative branch overrode Nixon's veto of the War Powers Act. During 1972-1973, South Vietnam had received $2.2 billion in U.S. assistance. In 1973-1974, that figure was slashed to $965 million, a more than 50 percent reduction.[11] The American president's growing political difficulties (especially the Watergate scandal) and the increasing antagonism between the legislative and executive branches over Vietnam policies, did little to dampen South Vietnamese expectations. Some among the Saigon leadership were more realistic in their appraisal. According to Vietnamese Air Force General Dong Van Khuyen: "Our leaders continued to believe in U.S. air intervention even after the U.S. Congress had expressly forbidden it...They deluded themselves."[12] The shock of reduced aid was compounded on 9 August, when Richard Nixon, the guarantor of South Vietnamese independence, was forced to resign from office.

What I cannot understand for the life of me is the notion that the U.S. military was "beaten" and could not have engaged in what would have been a relatively simple show of force.

Nevertheless, the idea that U.S. military was defeated in Vietnam is a very persistent myth, if not the dominant narrative. Back to Trudy Rubin:

But it [the "we could have won the Vietnam War had we stayed longer" meme imparted to Bush] is impossible to prove and highly dubious. And it goes to the heart of Bush's problem: He has yet to give a coherent argument for how we can stabilize Iraq by staying on.

The Vietnam analogy highlights this problem in ways I doubt Bush intended. Late in the day in South Vietnam, the U.S. military began to implement a counterinsurgency strategy that was having some success. But a weak South Vietnamese government was unable to capitalize on the gains.

puts words in Bush's mouth,

makes him look cowardly for not uttering the words she put in his mouth,

and

puts words in the mouth of the "conservative base."

The loss came later, by act of Congress.

Who owns that narrative?