Politico Tuesday

The coming weeks will be politically charged as Congress returns to session this week and General Petraeus's progress report on the troop surge in Iraq is due next week. The posturing has already begun on both sides.

Gene Robinson has a really good take on President Bush's statement last week comparing Iraq and Vietnam.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/03/AR2007090300802.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Bush, Rove, Dick Cheney and the other principal architects of the Iraq war never served in Vietnam -- in fact, they went to great lengths to put distance between themselves and the military adventure they now describe as both necessary and noble. At the moment, though, I'm less concerned about their hypocrisy than their distortion of history.

To say the United States should not have withdrawn its forces from Vietnam is to say that there was something those forces could have done -- something beyond napalm, carpet-bombing, destroying villages in order to save them -- that would have led to some kind of "victory." Of course, Bush and the others don't say what that special something might have been, because they don't know. They're seeing nothing but a historical mirage.

Terry McCarthy on Charlie Rose

This is by far the best interview I have seen in a while. If you have some time (20 mins) and are interested in getting an unbiased take on what is really going on in Iraq -- politically with the Maliki government, how the American troop surge is working in some areas, Iran's involvement in aiding Iraqi insurgents, and the impacts the war has in the Middle East -- check out Charlie Rose's interview of Terry McCarthy, who is the ABC News correspondent in Baghdad.

Highly recommended.

http://www.charlierose.com/guests/terry-mccarthy

Iraq and Vietnam

Tremendous read in the Washington Post today about the parallels between Iraq and Vietnam. I think it is sobering that we didn't learn this lesson from our history.

What's the lesson to be learned? Modesty. Before initiating a war of choice -- and Vietnam and Iraq both qualify -- define the goal with honesty and precision, then analyze what means will be needed to achieve it. Be certain you really understand the society you propose to transform. And never gamble that the political solution to such an adventure will somehow materialize after the military operation has begun. Without a plausible political plan and strong local support at the outset, military operations alone are unlikely to produce success.

"Trapped by Hubris, Again"