I smell a rat

In 2004, as Iraq was mutating from desert to quicksand, George W. Bush flatly rejected the Vietnam analogy. Yesterday he went over the top to seize it, to claim it as his own.

He argued before the Veterans of Foreign Wars that ending our ill-conceived and dreadfully executed occupation would amount to "pull[ing] the rug out from under" our troops -- as, presumably, we did in Vietnam -- and urged "today’s generation of Americans [to] resist the deceptive allure of retreat." Taking yet more historical license, he said "Then, as now, people argued that the real problem was America’s presence, and that if we would just withdraw, the killing would end.... The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be."

The New York Times reported that "Mr. Bush’s speech was interrupted frequently by cheers from the crowd and by occasional standing ovations." Yes, and odds are, next week the cheers and ovations from the American Legion crowd will be even greater, as this vulgar hysteria feeds on itself.

The pundits are stumped. What could Bush be thinking? Why this Vietnam-analogy argument, now? Why the 180? What's the sense of it all? More...