The Seattle Times has an article about the specter of Vietnam hanging over the war in Iraq. We may be blase’ about throwing comparisons out between the two wars, but the utter failure in Iraq is becoming an inescapable fact.

One of the reasons for Vietnam was the domino theory, that if we let Vietnam fall to communism it would spread around the region like dominos toppling. In Iraq the hope is that if we toppled a corrupt regime and put in democracy, the other regimes in the area would fall like dominos.

We eventually got out of Vietnam. We didn’t make it topple-proof from communism. But communism in most of the world fell apart anyway. So why are we in Iraq?Domino theory already failed.

I know the idea of an immediate pull out raises questions (at least in the minds of those of us who feel responsible for the current level of carnage) of responsibility to the Iraqi people. Does the Pottery Barn rule stay in effect when we break more with every attempt to fix the problem?