There can be no doubt that there's something phenomenally wrong with the Left, when they seem to be obsessed with the only war the United States could ever be said to have lost. Their fascination with America's moment of disillusionment, defeat, and disgrace -- despite the fact that we actually won, militarily speaking -- has discolored their political stance for over thirty years. Any time there's an American in uniform with a gun anywhere in the world, it seems as though Democrats just cannot wait to begin asking the inevitable question, "Is it Vietnam yet?"

Within days of our attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Left was already rushing to compare it to Vietnam. "It's been nearly two months since the September 11 mass-slaughters, and the U.S. response more and more resembles that period when America was beginning its long slide into Vietnam," wrote Bernard Weiner, a professor of government and international politics at Western Washington University and San Diego State University. Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan, fell just two days after that anniversary. (So much for Vietnam.) On 1 April 2003, he wrote about Iraq -- only two weeks after the fight began -- using nearly identical words: "Is it just me or is there a smell of Vietnam in the desert air?" Baghdad fell just over a week later. (Answer: it was just you.) The every-war-is-Vietnam meme has spread throughout the Left like a malevolent virus, until every minor setback facing our troops anywhere in the world is almost gleefully hailed as "the new Vietnam," though most of our armed forces weren't even born when Vietnam ended.

Why the fascination with Vietnam? Simple: it's the only war the LEFT ever won. And they did it -- intentionally or not -- by propping up our enemy and demoralising our own troops with vehemently anti-American rhetoric. In his book Telltale Hearts: The Origins and Impact of the Vietnam Anti-War Movement, Adam Garfinkle of the Foreign Policy Research Institute detailed how the anti-war protesters actually prolonged the Vietnam War. Their strident and visible attacks on American resolve both damaged the morale of American troops and spurred the North Vietnamese to fight on. In his 1985 memoir about the war, North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap credited protest groups -- like John Kerry's Vietnam Veterans Against the War -- for helping him achieve victory, according to Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North (Ret.). Now, the Left is doing it again.

Once again, the spectre of Vietnam is being raised -- and the memory those who fought and died there is being ruthlessly exploited -- by those who want to ignore America's successes in Iraq and see us fail, all in the name of political gain. Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Ma) stated that "Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam, and this country needs a new president." It's no coincidence that it's an election year, and that Kennedy is John Kerry's biggest supporter. Given the fact that Kennedy's brother JFK sent 15,000 troops into Vietnam to preserve democracy in 1961, it's surprising that he would use such a comparison as an insult. Senator Robert Byrd (D-WVa), quavered, "Surely I am not the only one who hears echoes of Vietnam in this development." What's most disturbing to me, however, is the fact that Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the small but violent group of Iranian-backed anti-American religious fanatics attacking Coalition troops in Baghdad, made a statement which eerily echoed those of Senators Kennedy and Byrd, and on the same day.

"I call upon the American people to stand beside their brethren, the Iraqi people, who are suffering an injustice by your rulers and the occupying army, to help them in the transfer of power to honest Iraqis," al-Sadr said in a statement from his office in the southern city of Najaf. "Otherwise, Iraq will be another Vietnam for America and the occupiers."

Meanwhile, John Kerry attacked President Bush for shutting down al-Sadr's revolution-inciting newspaper Hawza, calling it "a legitimate voice in Iraq" (before taking back the word "legitimate"). Kerry then went on to say of al-Sadr, "he has clearly taken on a far more radical tone in recent days and aligned himself with both Hamas and Hezbollah, which is a sort of terrorist alignment." Sort of?

When the Democrats and Islamo-fascist terrorists are singing from the same hymn book, and the Democratic candidate for President can't even recognise terrorist groups as terrorists, how can anyone help but wonder who's really on America's side?