RIP VAN BUSH

If Rip Van Winkle fell asleep in 1965 and awoke today, 40 years later, he might think the Vietnam War was still raging. He would hear about a war in a very weak distant country that posed no threat to the US. He would hear military leaders talking about enemy body counts and how the latest US offensive has broken the back of the insurgency. He would hear political leaders saying we cannot cut and run and that America must keep word regardless of casualties and cost.

Rip Van Winkle may be fiction, but President Bush is not. And though he was a college history major, he may as well have been asleep these past forty years for all he learned from our Vietnam experience.

Originally published Chicago Tribune, May 21, 2005