Opinion (Leslie H. Gelb & Richard K. Betts): We're fighting not to lose

Iraq is not Vietnam, yet history seems intent on harnessing them together. Three years ago this seemed an unlikely pairing; surely President Bush would not take the United States down the same trail as Lyndon B. Johnson. Yet even though Iraq's story is far from complete, each day raises the odds that the U.S. fate in Iraq could eventually be the same as it was in Vietnam -- defeat.

The differences are clear. The policy consensus over the Vietnam War ran deeper and lasted longer than on the Iraq conflict. While Johnson and his advisers slogged deeper into Vietnam with realistic pessimism, Bush and his colleagues plunged ahead in Iraq with reckless optimism. And in Vietnam, U.S. leaders made most of their mistakes with their eyes wide open, while it is impossible to fathom exactly what the Bush team thought it was doing after the fall of Baghdad.

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