ARTICLE: 'Bush Compares Iraq to Vietnam: He Says Pullout Would Be Disastrous,' By Michael A. Fletcher, Washington Post, August 23, 2007; Page A01

To me, this is Bush subordinating U.S. foreign policy to that of Israel and the House of Saud re: Iran, based on an overwrought read of Tehran's perceived "rise." We have this tendency to overestimate state-based enemies and underestimate stateless ones--time and time again. No way to run a war on terror... I just see it as another misdirection on our part to hang what Sunni-Shia violence inevitably results from our inevitable pullback/drawdown on some perceived "loss of (strategic) face" by America. This is an odd and inappropriate resurrection of Cold War thinking. Tell me, which great power takes "advantage" here? If Iran's your Hitlerian rationale, then God bless you for swallowing that one hook, line and sinker, because now you fulfill the fantasy of every anti-Semite who contends U.S. foreign policy is a tool of Tel Aviv ("You go, Big Devil!"). Having broached such nonsense, I'll tell you that these signs of unyielding commitment (which once again confirm this administration's lack of strategic imagination) seem more a sop to the Saudis, in that classic sort of we-can-have-our-cake (anti-American jihadism to occupy our unredeemables and make us look like strong Muslims)-and-eat-it-too (while engaging in proxy war vis-a-vis those f--king Persians in Iraq). I just don't understand why Bush overtrumps the Iran threat (zero nuclear warheads to Israel's 200) when he should be effectively turning Iran's meddling in Iraq to our advantage by saying to the Saudis: "Look, I'd love to stay in Iraq in full force for as long as I can, but my public won't let me. I know you--just like me--don't want to negotiate with Tehran over Iraq, so I need you to pick up the slack in what will inevitably be a bloodbath in southern Iraq as we pullback. But since you value your co-religionists so much on this one, it's only right that you guys put your treasure and your blood where your mouth is." After the Saudis calm down, then we talk to them about how they're going to help us on Israel and the Fatah-run West Bank, letting them transfer their anti-Iranian fear into something useful for us and we're off to the races on Sarah Kass's scenario there. That regional pressure on Iran, plus pulling the Saudis in line, gets us where we want to be for a regional security dialogue on Iraq as well. THAT would be Bush prepping the strategic battlespace to our advantage. This sort of unblinkingly brave talk about Vietnam-like endgames--in contrast--makes us look the strategic fools. Good God! Must everything be a rerun of Vietnam with these Boomers? We have got to get past this navel-gazing need to define "victory" in Iraq. It is strategically infantile to maintain a requirement that serves no purpose but to enhance our national self-esteem. The Big Bang isn't about getting credit. It's about getting what we want. Bush just seems like he's in over his head at this point, saying what he thinks he's supposed to say because his administration's run bone dry on strategic thought. Meanwhile, the board's in better play right now than it's been for months, thanks to Hamas. If only we could get our heads out of our asses and see the light right now, we'd be running this whole regional security dynamic to ground and Bush could go out a winner instead of a whiner.