Dean on Iraq

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean told a Texas radio show that "The idea that we are going to win this war [in Iraq] is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong."

Dean is a medical doctor by background. He did not serve in the military (because of a back problem), and has, in my quick research, apparently no expertise in national security, military strategy, counterinsurgency, Middle Eastern history, or anything else relevant to making educated statements about the war in Iraq. According to him, "The idea that we are going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong."

More galling still is how he compares Iraq to Vietnam. "The South Vietnamese couldn't manage to support their own country." The historical amnesia behind his statement is just sad. In fact the South Vietnamese successfully beat back the North Vietnamese all-out-offensive of 1972 without the aid of a single American ground soldier. Like in Afghanistan thirty years later, local ground forces added to American air power held the day. With time, they would have been weaned off American air power too. The strategy of Vietnamization was working, just as the strategy of Iraqification will work.

"I do not believe in making the same mistake twice. And America appears to have made the same mistake twice," Dean says. South Vietnam lost because we cut off aid and air power after the Paris Accords in 1973. It is not Republicans I hear calling to repeat that mistake.