Jim is exactly right.

I thought that "despair" line was pretty close to despicable -- a cheap, manipulative spin on what really is nationwide awareness of the failure of present policy.

Abizaid can't tell us anything different he would do that means anything, because it is extremely clear that as long as we are there, there will be an insurgency trying to eject us from their country. They actually think they are patriots. They just don't "understand", as Bush likes to say, do they?

Which brings me to the other thing that bothered me about yesterday's hearing: the assumption that we are still talking about MILITARY policy as the exit strategy, following the war-long Bush tradition of pretending that the State Department and diplomacy do not exist, as though this were World War II again and the policy was unconditional surrender, thus no diplomacy is required in ending the war. The sooner we get away from that craziness and realize that now it's ALL about diplomacy, the more likely it is we can end it and get out.

Months ago I was saying that we should threaten to leave if the parties wouldn't settle on agreeable terms. Two months ago there seemed to be a clear opportunity for such a settlement, when on a Friday Prime Minister al-Maliki announced a pending deal with all the significant Sunni parties, provided only we agree to a two-year withdrawal timetable, which nobody could argue with if the deal was that the violence would end.

But by Monday al-Maliki said that timetables were not useful (using language that Rumsfeld used). Why was the deal killed? I think all the evidence points to the desire of the neocons to remain in Iraq long term NO MATTER WHAT, even if sabotaging peace was the price. That is why we built 14 permanent bases there, that is why we began threatening Syria about bogus WMDs shortly after the invasion, and that is why Rumsfeld has been talking about long-term occupation for years.

Unthinkable? Look, folks, this whole war was based on lies, which is not only impeachable but criminal. These people are determined fanatics. The cost means nothing to them. The goal, cheerfully acknowledged by the neocons, is worldwide American hemegmony, benign but uncompromising and fearless in the use of force. Manifest Destiny for the whole world. What's a few thousand American lives or a few hundred thousand ragheads, or a trillion or two lousy dollars, compared to that?

It's a no-brainer.

In a perverse way, I am glad Alfred E. Bushman indirectly insulted his Vietnamese hosts, repudiated the election results and once again embraced endless war. (I have said since the apparent neocon sabotage of the Iraq peace settlement two months ago that the neocon plan is to tolerate endless war as an excuse for our endless occupation.) He's right -- it's time to talk about Vietnam in the context of Iraq.

The Vietnam analogy is being heard more and more often, and along with it, the right-wing assumption that it was a winnable war which was lost only because the American people lacked spine.

We just cannot allow the rightwingers once again to define the assumptions for the debate, and if it takes ripping open the Vietnam scar and tearing into each other to keep the record straight, let's get it on now. It could have considerable impact on how decisions are made about Iraq, at least in Congress.

There aren't many left who remember the history that counts. France lost its colonial war in Indochina against the patriots there. The result was the Geneva Treaty of 1954. Cambodia and Laos were cut loose, but Vietnam was temporarily divided, pending an election in 1956 to determine whether there would be reunification under one Vietnamese government or two separate countries.

Cardinal Spellman was heavily involved in the politicking because of the large Catholic minority in the country, and the church was very loathe to see communism take over the entire country. So was John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower's Secretary of State, an extreme anti-communist, and a host of other American interests. By then we had inherited France's place as Caucasian Bully and String-Puller in the region. So we saw to it that the government of the south would repudiate the election.

We fought the Vietnam war in order to defend our ideology in direct opposition to the democratic choice of the people. It's impossible to know who would have won that election, but we didn't take the chance, evidently because we feared our side would lose. It was shameful.

(We have done that many times before and since. We did it in Iran in 1953, which is why they regard us as the Great Satan, which has led directly to their nuclear threat. Of course, Castro didn't help matters by actually going communist, which just confirmed us in our policy of assassinating any leader who started talking about minimum wage and progressive income tax.)

So I'm not about to sit still while the old Vietnam war hawks throw out grenades at the people who got us out of that war before we slaughtered another couple million people.

So if the nation has to learn the lesson of Vietnam twice, let's start teaching it with a vengeance.