Peter Beinart in Time magazine 1-29 edition re: the fear of Iran taking over Iraq:
"Americans worried during the Vietnam War that if we left, Hanoi would become a puppet of its wartime patron, Bejing. Instead, four years after the U.S. evacuated Saigon, Vietnam and China were at war. When American troops on your doorstep it's easy to make common cause."
In the New Yorker 1-22 reviewing Bush's announcement of escalation:
"In a sincere tone of voice, the President also announced a door-to-door campaign "to gain the trust of the Baghdad residents."
and later
"This was the advice given by McGeorge Bundy to Lyndon Johnson in a memo dated Feburary 7, 1965, concerning an escalation plan for Vietnam that Bundy thought might have as little as twenty-five-per-cent change of success:
"Even if it fails, the policy will be worth it. At a minimum it will damp down the charge that we did not do all that we could have done, and this charge will be important in many countries, including our own.""
This advice coming almost ten years before the end of the Vietnam War. Don't tell me there is a chance we will still be fighting in Iraq in ten years.
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