What was so wrong with what Howard Dean said??

[No Exit]

I just saw a clip of him. He said (paraphrasing), "they say stay in, yeah, we heard this during Vietnam--'just another year', they kept saying. And then 25,000 more dead. And it wasn't winnable, and we didn't win, etc."

HE'S F**KING RIGHT, for God's sake!!!!

Who here is in Dean's age range? I'm betting most of you are younger than he, and I am younger, too, but unlike some of you, I was alive during the latter part of Vietnam.

I was a child, but since Vietnam pervaded our culture, I heard a lot about it. Bits and pieces: "Catch 22", a book I didn't really find all that funny, b/c I was a child; M*A*S*H the movie, which was technically about Korea but was really a commentary about Vietnam in many ways; the music--I could go on and on about that; Norman Mailer; long-haired people in huge crowds in protest;Kent state; "Make love, not war"; "Mad" magazine's handy dandy guide for avoiding being drafted ("Avoid the draft! Wear pink underwear!"); trying to recognize the names of places as they showed them on TV on the news, on little maps: the best I did was to know the names of Saigon and Hanoi and the dreaded Mekong delta; a nightmare of my draft-age brother's military funeral (he didn't die in the war, I just dreamed he died in it)...

I remember it.

Howard Dean is right. This is Vietnam; everyone knows this in their heart, if they are old enough to remember Vietnam. Howard Dean is right.

And still, still... the subtext is never, never mentioned: we aren't staying in Iraq to "not let down the Iraqi people"; we aren't staying in Iraq to "nurse a new democratic government". WE ARE IN IRAQ BECAUSE IF WE LEFT RIGHT NOW, SOMEBODY'S PROFITS WOULD TAKE A HUGE HIT. That is the ONLY true reason certain people in power are arguing against leaving.

Chris Matthews, the savvy and astute political commentator, expressed the two sides as: those who want us to get out, and those who want us to have a democracy in Iraq.

Chris Matthews and his ilk are out of touch with the PEOPLE of America. Down here among the PEOPLE, the division is between those of us who want us the fuck out of there, period, and those who want us to stay in b/c they think staying in will somehow save face for their leader, George W. Bush.