Learning from Vietnam

Olbermann: Lessons from the Vietnam War

Keith Olbermann responds to Bush's comparison between Vietnam and Iraq

Excerpts:

Asked if there were lessons about Iraq to be found in our experience in Vietnam, Mr. Bush said that there were, and he immediately proved he had no clue what they were.

"One lesson is,” he said, "that we tend to want there to be instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is going to take a while."

"We’ll succeed," the president concluded, "unless we quit."

If that’s the lesson about Iraq that Mr. Bush sees in Vietnam, then he needs a tutor.

Or we need somebody else making the decisions about Iraq.

Mr. Bush, there are a dozen central, essential lessons to be derived from our nightmare in Vietnam, but "we’ll succeed unless we quit," is not one of them. [...]

And, in particular, the one over-arching lesson about Iraq that should’ve been written everywhere he looked in Vietnam went unseen.

"We’ll succeed unless we quit"?

Mr. Bush, we did quit in Vietnam! [...]

Finally, in Vietnam, we learned the lesson. We stopped endlessly squandering lives and treasure and the focus of a nation on an impossible and irrelevant dream, but you are still doing exactly that, tonight, in Iraq.

And these lessons from Vietnam, Mr. Bush, these priceless, transparent lessons, writ large as if across the very sky, are still a mystery to you.

"We’ll succeed unless we quit."

No, sir.

We will succeed against terrorism, for our country’s needs, toward binding up the nation’s wounds when you quit, quit the monumental lie that is our presence in Iraq. [...]