Iraq is just like Viet Nam, right? The DailyKos is quoting stories about voter turn-out in Viet Nam in 1967 and drawing parallels. Not to mention Ted Kenedy's recent rant. Not so says Christopher Hitchens (with references to Monty Python.

I suppose it's obvious that I was not a supporter of the Vietnam War. Indeed, the principles of the antiwar movement of that epoch still mean a good deal to me. That's why I retch every time I hear these principles recycled, by narrow minds or in a shallow manner, in order to pass off third-rate excuses for Baathism or jihadism. But one must also be capable of being offended objectively. The Vietnam/Iraq babble is, from any point of view, a busted flush. It's no good. It's a stiff. It's passed on. It has ceased to be. It's joined the choir invisible. It's turned up its toes. It's gone. It's an ex-analogy.

Over at TechCentralStation, Pejman Yousefzadeh has a few words for Ted Kenedy's call for an immediate pullout.

Make no mistake: Reconstruction would fail if Senator Kennedy's words were transformed into policy. A withdrawal of as many as 12,000 troops "at once" would give Iraqi citizens increased reason to fear for their lives. If we take it as a given that American troops are indeed overstretched -- as many Democrats and others have claimed that they are -- how much more burdened will they be if Senator Kennedy's call for an immediate partial withdrawal gains respectability and becomes influential? How much easier would it be for the terrorist insurgency in Iraq -- headed by a high profile member of al Qaeda -- to undermine the creation and success of any democratic Iraqi government if the insurgents see American manpower as depleted as Senator Kennedy would want? How much easier would it be for the insurgency to plan future terror operations aimed at either making Iraq ungovernable or turning it into the same kind of terrorist base camp that Afghanistan was in the Taliban era if the terrorists could count on all American troops leaving Iraq by a date certain and knowing that after that date, no serious military force would be present in the country to counter the depredations of the insurgency? And how seriously would the Arab world -- or the international community in general -- take America's commitment to a new Iraq if we "dramatically" reduced our embassy in Iraq, and publicly showed that we have no confidence whatsoever in the future of the country, or, for that matter, in the future of the Middle East as a whole?

Frank Gaffney, Jr also questions a pullout:

The problem is, exit to where? The truth is, whether we like it or not, the United States cannot exit the global war being waged against us by Islamofascist terrorists and their allies, any more than we can stop the world and get off it. In fact, were America actually to heed the siren’s call – issued by Sen. Kennedy before Sunday’s remarkable election in Iraq made doing so, at least for the moment, unimaginable – and retreat from the Iraqi front in that war, it would simply assure that we will be fighting these enemies far closer to home and, indeed, in all likelihood here.