Because we're smarter and that's all you need to know

This post by Billmon about how Iraq is devolving into Vietnam at lightning speed got me to thinking. Particularly this part:

In a sense, it's a triumph for conservatism. In just a year, the Bush administration has managed to repeated almost every mistake the Johnson White House and Pentagon made in Vietnam, thus providing some empirical support for the argument that Big Government is inherently disfunctional.

First of all, that's just funny. But it got me to thinking--why exactly did BushCo think that they could succeed where others have failed? I mean, the list of reasons that Vietnam was a bad idea and we couldn't win are as long as my arm, but the basic reasons are the exact same ones as why Iraq is a bad idea. It's a substitute for fighting the real enemy, in part because the real enemy is too hard to fight. It's injecting ourselves in a situation that's been brewing for a long time. We have no real objectives or game plan to point to. The government lied to the public to get into the situation in the first place. Etc., etc.
So why do they think they can succeed? Well, because it's a tenet of faith in the Republican party that we actually could have won Vietnam if Johnson wasn't such a pussy. We lost because Democrats are pussies and that's all you need to know. We couldn't lose this war because we had Real Men in charge.
That Democrats are pussies and Republicans are real men is a tenet of faith is easy to demonstrate. Any random comment by Ann Coulter will do. It's why it seemed like a good strategy to force the issue of comparing Bush and Kerry's war records. It's the same strategy as bringing Jesus into the conversation. Reason flies out the windom and now you're arguing about faith.