The smog of war By Tom Engelhardt
Take off your hat. Taps is playing. Almost four decades late, the Vietnam War and its post-war spawn, the Vietnam Syndrome, are finally heading for their American grave. It may qualify as the longest attempted burial in history. Last words - both eulogies and curses - have been offered too many times to mention, and yet no American administration found the silver bullet that would put that war away for keeps.
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A titleholder for pure, long-term futility
That was then. This is now and, though the frustration must seem familiar, Washington has gotten itself into a situation on the Eurasian mainland so vexing and perplexing that Vietnam has finally been left in the dust. In fact, if you hadn't noticed - and weirdly enough no one has - that former war finally seems to have all but vanished.
If you care to pick a moment when it first headed for the exits, when we all should have registered something new in American consciousness, it would undoubtedly have been mid-2010 when the media decided that the Afghan war, then eight-and-a-half years old, had superseded Vietnam as "the longest war" in US history. Today, that claim has become commonplace, even though it remains historically dubious (which may be why it's significant).
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The "lessons of Vietnam", fruitlessly discussed for five decades, taught Washington so little that it remains trapped in a hopeless war on the Eurasian mainland, continues to pursue a military-first policy globally that might even surprise American leaders of the Vietnam era, has turned the planet into a "free fire zone", and considers military power its major asset, a first not a last resort, and the Pentagon the appropriate place to burn its national treasure.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ND20Df02.html