Unfortunate Analogy

Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, who was in charge of training the Iraqi military in 2003 and 2004 was asked about Bush's recent speech to veterans comparing the war in Iraq with the war in Viet Nam.

"It's a very unfortunate trip back into history," says Eaton. "It reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Vietnam war was about. Our enemy there was the North Vietnamese Army and their proxy forces, the Viet Cong.

The issue in Iraq is a religious-based civil war with al-Qaeda thrown in there to complicate the affair."

Eaton calls Bush's analogy "unfortunate," citing "untidy parallels" between the behaviors of senior civilian leadership in Vietnam and Iraq.

[...]

"My father's name is engraved on the Vietnam War Memorial -- killed in action after missing in action for 38 years. I thought it was a bad idea to start going down this link to Vietnam during this speech. It did not serve the country well, it does not serve the American fighting man and woman in Iraq well, and it certainly doesn't serve veterans well."

In that same speech, Bush also compared the war with the events of Pearl Harbor and our entry into WWII, to which Jon Stewart remarked on the Daily Show that if there truly were a comparison there, after the Japanese attacked, the U.S. would have invaded China.

However, I think Bush may have been closer in that analogy, considering the evidence and stories about the government knowing in advance of the attack and not preventing it. I don't think that's what he was aiming at, though.