I wrote about Chuck Hagels’ Vietnam comparison several days ago at Polipundit and the post generated quite a few comments, including some calling me a chickenhawk. (Those are some of my favorites.) Last night, Kerry Westerwick made some excellent points on the subject that I had not considered.

Drudge’s shouting reads “GOP Senator Says Iraq Looking Like Vietnam.” Turns out it was only Chuck Hagel looking for personal relevance. Is anybody else weary of the easy moral equivalences being tossed about, willy-nilly, like so much dandelion fluff? If it isn’t Hitler and the Nazis, it’s the Gulag, or Pol Pot, or Viet Nam. Like the villagers who harbored the boy who cried wolf, we have become immune to the superlative.

What’s that you said? Atrocity? Just like Stalin or the Khmer Rouge? Yawn. Heard it and don’t believe it anymore.

The trouble is we have become dependent on the dramatic, the emotional, and the sensational – and we have built up a dangerous tolerance for the stuff. It isn’t good for us, this steady diet of hellfire proclamations. It isn’t generative, it produces nothing except momentary self-gratification.

Unless the sky is really falling – and I mean in massive, flaming chunks – keep it to yourselves, senators. We don’t need stained by your mess.

Oh, and P.S. – one of the reasons Viet Nam was such a stunning failure was because our president allowed congress – not the military – to plan the war fighting strategy. Are we doomed to repeat history? Good heavens, I hope not.

It is a shame that so many have forgotten what Westerwick reminds us of in her P.S.

UPDATE: Joe Scarborough is on fire tonight. He is angry at Chuck Hagel for his Vietnam and related remarks and accused him of selling out the troops to gain favor from those in the MSM. He put Hagel in the same camp as Ted Kennedy and even made the comment that even Hillary Clinton did not make such statements. Joe is talking more and more like a candidate. The Scarborough Country transcript should be posted here sometime tomorrow. UPDATE: The Political Teen has the video of Joe Scarborough.

UPDATE II: Lyflines found an interesting quote from a Senator in 1998 including advice that Chuck Hagel would do well to heed:

Congress must be very careful in what we say and what we do as we proceed along a very dangerous path. We must be careful not to weaken or neuter the President in front of the world. The world is very dangerous and unpredictable. Congress must not micromanage foreign policy. I have been as outspoken as any Senator on this floor about the concerns and the differences I have with this administration on foreign policy. It is the responsibility of the Senate to question that, to probe that. But we have to understand that whatever we say and do has consequences, reverberations, ramifications. America must speak to the world with some sense and some semblance of unity. We cannot allow our foreign policy to unravel before the eyes of the world during a very dangerous time. The world needs American leadership, consistency, presence and engagement. Without it, without American leadership, the world becomes an even more dangerous place.

- Senator Chuck Hagel

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