by Stanley I. Kutler

The Iraq war's proponents have refused to draw lessons from our failed intervention in Vietnam's civil war. One is obvious: Vietnam teaches us of the limits of American power. The recent suicide bombing in the "Green Zone" offers a striking parallel to the Viet Cong attack on the American Embassy in Saigon as part of the Tet offensive in 1968. Then we watched in fascination--even horror--as sappers invaded the very territory of the embassy, inflicting casualties and widespread damage. General Westmoreland insisted Tet had failed miserably, and with 500,000 additional troops (/q.v./, "surge") we would defeat the "enemy." Lyndon Johnson and his "Wise Men" finally realized the inequitable price for such "victories," and Johnson began the search to end the war. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger took seven more years, and over 25,000 more American deaths, to see the light of peace at the end of the tunnel. History still is a way of learning.