April 7, 2004 - While this is not directly related to flushing our society down the toilet, I want to say a few quick things about Ted Kennedy saying that Iraq is Bush's Vietnam. Ted Kennedy. Yes. I seem to recall he has some answers to some questions from an incident back in July, 1969. Maybe his memory from that night was flushed down the toilet. I can't see why anyone puts any credibility in anything he says.

Anyway, a quick math lesson. Almost 59,000 U.S. troops died in Vietnam. (The total deaths for all sides is estimated to be around 2,000,000). Let's say Vietnam lasted for twelve years (1963-1975) because the actual start is frequently debated. So, twelve years is 4,383 days. 59,000 / 4383 = 13.46. An average of about 14 died per day - ~100 per week - over twelve years. The heart of the conflict was closer to seven years so you can see that we must have had some bloody days and weeks. Michael Herr, in his novel Dispatches, makes reference to a time during the war when there was a week where the U.S. only had 80 casualties and that was seen has a good sign and that things were getting better. Just or unjust, Iraq is no Vietnam. I'll admit it's disheartening to read about soldiers being killed in combat but we must also take the times into perspective. During Vietnam there was no 24-hour cable news and no World Wide Web so I think the bad news from Iraq is sometimes overblown and spread sometimes as it's happening. Vietnam was so controversial that it did not need the Web to spread dissent and the bad news, which was often bad, wasn't disseminated as it happened.

Perhaps this whole War on Terror is a better Vietnam analogy. It will surely outlast Bush's term, whether it's four years, eight years, or somewhere in between.

Another thing I'd like to ask Teddy, since he assigned ownership of Iraq to Bush, is who, then, 'owns' Vietnam? Eisenhower? JFK? LBJ? Nixon? How about the French?

This is not meant to trivialize the deaths of soldiers (and civilians) but rather to put it in perspective. This War on Terror doesn't belong to Bush and Vietnam did not belong to Johnson. Both wars belong to all of us. For those who thought Vietnam lasted too long just remember that this War on Terror started more than twenty years ago with the Hostages being taken in Iran and the first major victory of terrorism was the Marine barracks being blown up in Lebanon in 1983. Some may even say that it began with the Munich Olympics in 1972. Like Vietnam, the actual beginning of the War of Terror can be debated and, like Vietnam, we are all in it together.