Hey, who left all this garbage on the steps of Congress?

Showing he completely lacks a sense of irony or historical perspective, President Bush gave a speech today in which he compared Iraq to Vietnam. I know what you're thinking - finally, he admits it! But no, surprisingly, he didn't take the "quagmire we should never have gotten into" approach.

"Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left," Bush told members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, at their convention in Kansas City, Missouri.

We got into the Vietnam War because we were afraid of the domino effect of Communism. Except that the Communists were already active in Laos long before we got seriously invested in Vietnam. Also, what were we planning on doing? Fighting wars in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia simultaneously? The whole enterprise was an absolute lost cause right from the start, to say nothing of the fact that we got into it because of red panic and the need, which continues to this day, to play World Police.

We left because the war was supremely unpopular. And why? Because (a) we weren't making progress; (b) stories of war crimes like My Lai were coming out and turning people against the military; (c) we spent 15 years in Vietnam and lost 47,000+ lives (and ruined thousands more), and for what? We couldn't win and Vietnam still went to the Communists. How many more years and lives did we need to spend? Does Bush legitimately think we ever could have won? I know he wasn't there - much too busy not flying planes over here - but this just displays a level of cluelessness that... well, no, no level of cluelessness from Bush surprises me at this point.

"Whatever your position in that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens, whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps' and 'killing fields,' " the president said.

A lot of innocent citizens were killed by Agent Orange, too. Also, the "killing fields" were in Cambodia. Perhaps Bush wishes we'd gotten involved in a difficult, possibly unwinnable war there too.

Look: there's no denying that a lot of what went on in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in the years following the Vietnam War was pretty unspeakable. But a lot of what the U.S. did during the war itself is pretty unspeakable too. And there's two points I would offer up on this front:

(1) It is highly, highly debatable - if not, based on actual results, an outright lie - that continued American involvement in the Vietnam War would have prevented the things that Bush references. To prevent the killing fields, we would have to have started a war with Cambodia, either abandoning Vietnam anyway or drafting millions more troops. Does this sound like it would have been a good idea to anybody? How long does Bush want the Vietnam War to have lasted? Into the 1980s?

(2) It is pretty convenient that we were willing to bomb the shit out of poor countries without nuclear technology and yet we leave China alone. Considering the millions of people killed by the Communists there - even if the bulk of those weren't as intentional as in Cambodia - and the human rights abuses alleged to this day, you'd think we wouldn't want to get in bed with them. Wait, what's that? They're one of our largest trade partners? Huh.

But House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said more Democrats are "bucking their party leaders" in acknowledging progress in Iraq.

"Many rank-and-file Democrats have seen this progress firsthand and are now acknowledging the successes of a strategy they've repeatedly opposed," Boehner said in a statement. "But Democratic leaders, deeply invested in losing the war, would rather move the goalposts and claim that a precipitous withdrawal is the right approach despite the overwhelming evidence of significant progress."

It's convenient that the only Democrats supposedly acknowledging the successes of the surge are the ones who we aren't likely to hear from. But let's assume Boehner is right on that point. Can the Republicans please stop saying that Democrats want to lose the war? This isn't just disingenuous, it's a lie. John Boehner and everyone who has parroted this talking point for months, if not years, is a liar. Democrats don't want to lose - they just don't think winning is possible. And they're right. Because it isn't.

Very quickly: explain to me the stated goal of the Iraq war.

Was it to rid Iraq of WMDs? Well, seeing as how there weren't any in the first place, I guess we can claim to have accomplished that.

Was it to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein's oppressive rule? We did that, although it's so far arguable whether the complete power vacuum left, and the unsolved and unsolvable conflict between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims, is really a whole lot better. But let's say that it is. We've done that. So why are we still there?

Was it to rid Iraq of terrorism? That certainly wasn't the stated goal, but let's give the administration the benefit of the doubt and say okay, that was the goal as it evolved. So now that's the goal.

Now hear this: if winning a war is defined as meeting your goal, and our goal is to completely rid Iraq of terrorism... WE ARE NEVER GOING TO WIN THIS WAR. It is functionally impossible. Terrorists aren't beholden to a population. They aren't going to surrender based on a reduction in their numbers. This is the critical point that the war hawks have never understood: we aren't fighting another country this time. This isn't an enemy that borders contain. And that's why drawing comparisons to Vietnam, or Korea, or World Fucking War II, all of which Bush did in his speech, is totally specious. Sure, it sounds great to say, "Hey, no one thought we could make Japan a democracy! But we did, dammit! And that means we can do the same anywhere!" Because yeah, I would totally compare Iraq and Japan. Are you even listening to yourself? I'm not saying Iraq can't turn into a futuristic, technological paradise through the sheer force of Bush's conviction, but... well, no, I guess I am saying that. 'Tain't happenin'. It's a ridiculous suggestion anyway - the fact that Japan and South Korea are free and prosperous nations does not mean that any nation we want to fix up can be fixed up. Also, Japan and South Korea never had to deal with the kind of internal religious struggles that are going to continue to cripple Iraq, nor with the kind of terrorism that has become such an established force in that region that it will probably never be stamped out entirely. It's an idiotic comparison, made by an idiot, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing. And oh hey, looks like commanders on the ground are starting to believe that democracy in Iraq is looking less feasible. Good to know we've been so successful.

The old adage is that those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. Bush and those who think like him have taken this one step further and one step worse - they don't ignore history, they just use it in all the wrong ways. Bush has taken a war that we probably should never have been involved in to begin with and couldn't win, and used it to argue that unwinnable wars can magically become winnable if you just dedicate endless time and resources. And a million monkeys with typewriters will eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare, but I'm not going to sit around watching them try.