President Bush is set to give what must be a monster speech tonight. I am counting on it to mark a positive and pivotal turning point in public opinion. Furthermore, the Wall Street Journal has this great piece today arguing that the Vietnam metaphor - incessantly perpetuated by the media - is actually appropriate when discussing the Iraq War. While the liberals use it to imply we have been defeated in Iraq - just as we were in Vietnam - the article argues that the lessons of Vietnam should remind conservatives that total victory in Iraq is attainable and critical to American national security: “Rather the Vietnam metaphor is apt today because the U.S. is in a war it can win and is winning, if only those inside the Beltway would stop preferring defeat to victory and disgrace to honor. ”
This may be the best part: ” As in Vietnam, the stakes in Iraq today are much larger than simply allowing millions of people in one country to descend into chaos and oppression. We fought it out for a decade in the jungles of Southeast Asia, losing more than 50,000 American lives, because we knew that handing communist insurgents one country made it more likely that they would soon grow hungry for another. Do we think it is now any different with Islamic insurgents just because there is no longer a Soviet Union out there ready to back them? If the U.S. walks away from this war and leaves it to Europe to hold back Islamic extremists, we might as well just accept right now that the terrorists will topple more of our skyscrapers–or worse. ”

We are indeed faced with Vietnam-like circumstances in Iraq. The question is, will we make the same mistake again and cut and run when the going gets tough? By staying tough in Iraq, perhaps we can redeem our nation for its failures in Vietnam and destroy the defeatist, “blame America first” syndrome that the Vietnam war tragically begetted.