Lexington

摘要

The most graphic measure of the Iraq war's gravity is the body count, which has taken a sharp move upwards in recent weeks. But there is also a rhetorical barometer-the "Vietnam count"-and it too has made a sharp move upwards, with Ted Kennedy dubbing Iraq "Bush's Vietnam", Newsweek splashing "The Vietnam Factor" on its cover, and George Bush, in a rare press conference, dismissing the comparison as unhelpful. And this is before you factor in all the references to Vietnam, both overt and subliminal, in Lieutenant John Kerry's campaign. There are all sorts of obvious dangers in comparing any modern venture to a long-ago war. The United States is no longer engaged in a struggle with the Soviet Union; the American army no longer resorts to the draft; and so on. The platoon of journalists who routinely liken every American military operation to Vietnam has suffered from serial embarrassments in the past decade, first in the Gulf, then in the Balkans and Afghanistan. The cherubic baritone of the quagmire choir, the New York Times's R.W. Apple, has been mute this time.