"One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps,' and 'killing fields,'" Bush said

After years of willfully neglecting this comparison, Bush finally offers it to the American people unsolicited. But how can he talk of the possible cost of American withdrawal without also mentioning the sunk cost of American intervention?

The consensus seems to be that only a politician stupid enough to start an unnecessary war could ever be resolute enough to finish it, so Bush has a reluctant backing even among democrats, who don't seem willing to put up much resistence to the surge.

Only democrat candidate Mike Gravel (not to mention Kucinich) has taken a stand on this issue, stating unequivocally since '71 that American troops in Vietnam 'died in vain'. In the youtube debates, he was confronted on this issue by a vietnam vet, and held his ground, while virtually every other candidates danced around the question. Many were willing to state that US soldiers were dying unnecessarily, but were unwilling to make the equivalent statement that they were 'dying in vain'. That's pathetic. Gravel was powerful in his respond that the only thing more tragic than American soldiers dying in vain, was the idea of more American soldiers dying in vain. Hence a pullout, and a return to the politics of reality.

Mike Gravel is the only one with the guts to stand up to the national consensus, which is so hopelessly skewed by blind patriotism that it refuses to see reason.

We need a new leader with the freshness to reverse current policies without looking like a hypocrit, but also with enough street cred in the deep south, where politics and other critical mental functions are distort by the heat.