The President's History Lesson

In his talk before the VFW (http://www.msnbc/com/id/20387818/), Mr. Bush compared his Iraqi adventure with the occupation of Japan after World War II, the defense of South Korea in 1950, and the Vietnam War. Each analogy fails.
The Japanese comparison is an insult to the Iraqis, since the Americans entered Japan in 1945 as conquerors, not self-styled liberators. The Korean comparison is irrelevant, since the Americans are not defending Iraq from any foreign army. The Vietnam/Cambodia comparison is hysterical, since the U.S. decision to contest the Viet Minh takeover of the entire country after the French left turned the country into a Cold War battlefield and probably made the inevitable Communist purges angrier and bloodier than they might have been otherwise.
Senator Reid was little better in his response to the speech. The Majority Leader spoke as if no President had ever misled the country toward war before, having forgotten, apparently, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident and the entire domino-theory rationale for the Vietnam war. Despite that, Reid was right to call people's attention to the speech so they could see for themselves that Bush still believes the same bunk he was preaching four long years ago.