Via Delusions of Grandeur I've discovered a post on the blog Political Friends, which I quote in part:

Giving our enemies “aid and comfort” is treason. Democrats and Republicans in Congress need to realize that their words are being reported in the Middle East. Our enemies our praying to Allah for an end to the Iraqi War similar to the end of the Vietnam War. We didn’t loose in Vietnam, we beat ourselves.

OK, so let's make this a hypothetical question. Suppose that when the Soviet Union still existed and was fighting in Afghanistan, a Soviet citizen had made the argument that the war could not be won, and that the troops would have to be brought home. He might of course have died suddenly, but suppose he was given a show trial instead. Surely he would be accused of giving 'aid and comfort' to the enemy. It may even be that the enemies of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan would have trumpeted his words gleefully. The fact would have remained, from a military perspective the Soviet Union would have been better off following his advice. It may even be the Mujadeen would have been worse off, since the Afghans fell to fighting amoung themselves soon after the enemy left.

If you study the 'Lessons Learned' of Vietnam, a study done by our military after losing the war, you'll discover they don't blame it on Dan Rather or the media. One of the many differences between us and the defunct Soviet Union is that protesters could never have fought so openly against the war without being accused of treason. There are some who think the Soviet Union was stronger than us in that regard, but I say, 'Why do they always blame America first?'. We're still around.

As Andy D. points out in a later post, these messages have many recipients. It seems the government of Iraq is more willing to negotiate with the Sunni's now that they know we won't back them eternally without regard to what they do. For this reason among others, I hope we can do better than withdraw from Iraq - leaving a breeding ground of the most educated and technologically advanced potential nuke building terrorists in the world. But if the American people and their representatives are not prepared for an occupation of similar length to our troop presence in Japan and Germany, it is because George W. Bush continually told people things would be easier and quicker than they could reasonably have been expected to be.

Petraeus and Gates have both said that to succeed in Iraq will will have to negotiate with people we have reason not to like. Here it is the right that is in opposition. It seems there are indeed many terrorists who fear Bush more than the Democrats - but how far do we respect their judgement? Bush represents the sort of threat they can understand.

If Andy D. responds to this, I hope he'll do it in a new post, since the original one is now deep in his archives.