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Is Vietnam the Next Iraq?

That's the premise of this piece over on OpinionJournal:

There's been a lot of talk since Sept. 11 about how President Bush's war-lovin' ways have galvanized terrorists, recruiting jihadis to the ranks. What's increasingly evident, however, is that the character suffering the real blowback is Osama bin Laden, who, as it turns out, jolted the U.S. into a global recruiting drive for democrats. Faced with an unprecedented attack on American shores, Mr. Bush smashed the mold for Middle-East policy, and with the invasion of Iraq lit a beacon for freedom-lovers in a part of the world that until quite recently was widely seen as having none.

As it turns out, there are many. Already, Mr. Bush has been answered by the breathtaking election turnout in Iraq, the uprising in Lebanon, the tremors in Syria and Iran, the stirrings in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. But the effects hardly stop with the Middle East. In many places, people trapped under tyrannies are now watching. Ballots cast in Baghdad echo way east of Suez.

So it happens that a message reached me last weekend from within one of the world's most repressive states: Vietnam.

That's pretty far east. But the really telling passage was this one:

Dr. Que does not have access to the daily diet of news that feeds the free world. But given the feats of modern technology to spread information, he knows enough about what is now happening in the Middle East so that he wished to share his views on how America's intervention in Iraq is like the war in Vietnam, and how it isn't. The similarity, he says, "is the same fighting spirit for freedom." The difference, he adds, is that in the fight for freedom, the side America is on "will triumph this time."

Why?

"The world is changing," says Dr. Que. "There are more opportunities than ever."

The world is changing indeed.

A nod to Instapundit for pointing out this article, and suggesting that someone print up a "Vietnam: The Next Iraq" bumper sticker.

[UPDATE- Will Franklin adds]:
WILLisms.com has commented in the past on the comparisons (or lack thereof) between Iraq and Vietnam here, including this classy picture:

Freedom is on the march. Maybe Vietnam can join Iraq in the family of free nations in liberty's century? Wouldn't that just be amazingly ironic, given the left's pathological obsession with framing Iraq as George Bush's Vietnam?

Posted by · 9 March 2005 12:31 PM

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