Dubya’s Vietnam/Iraq comparison was obviously intended as a way of avoiding discussion of an exit strategy – but of course it is an exit strategy, Karl Rove’s last gift to his boss (Dick Cheney) in the manner which defined the Cheney-Rove era. Defend your weak spots by attacking as audaciously, as ridiculously as possible.

Your opponent’s a war hero with three purple hearts, your candidate’s a draft dodger? Attack the opponent’s military record? Your enemies flogging you with a Vietnam comparison? Wade into the heart of it.

It isn’t actually meant as a defence of the war per se, but as something so stunning that it makes what was received wisdom – Vietnam was a quagmire which drained the US to no useful purpose and cost millions of lives (millions plural when agent orange and crop disruption deaths are factored in) – into a debating point, and forces people using the Vietnam comparison to clarify that they have a fundamentally different view of what the conflict was.

The Khmer Rouge comparison is interesting, because of its utter obscenity – the place was a neutral and peaceful country until US bombers tore the guts out of it. Weirdly, part of Bush’s speech was a springboard off an article written by Peter Rodman and William Shawcross arguing that the US should stay the bloody course in Iraq. Much was made of the fact that Shawcross wrote Sideshow, an excoriating view of how the Nixon-Kissinger policy made the Khmer Rouge’s victory possible.

The systematic misconstruction of his position – that the US should stay in Iraq despite what it did in Indochina – is symptomatic of the deliberate wildcat strategy of this rhetorical smoke grenade.

So let’s say it loud and proud – the victory of the North Vietnamese army and the Vietcong was a great day for that country and the world, and had it come earlier – the subsequent political killings notwithstanding – millions would have survived or had less blighted lives, and the country would have begun the transition to full modernity and a degree of liberalisation all the quicker.

The US persistence in Iraq and its inevitable defeat is also good – two defeats at the hands of third world countries in thirty years will put the tap on US global power projection once and for all. Once is bad luck. Two is a series and thus indicative of a basic process.

Should they leave now it would be better for the Iraqi people, for US soldiers and many others. But by all means stay and waste blood and treasure if you wish. Who could not but agree that the policy has myriad benefits?