In the All Things Come to He Who Waits Department, George Bush is doing his first tour in Vietnam this week, about forty years after his generation was called to serve.

The Commies who had to be stopped, lest they topple democracies all across Southeast Asia, are now a Capitalist's dream team.

With its economic growth rate of 8.4 percent, second only to China's, Vietnam is one of the world's fastest-growing markets for U.S. goods, and proposed trade agreements are sizzling on the congressional skillet like sausage patties.

While incurious George does not like comparisons made between Iraq and Vietnam, surely this trip to a country that cost us dearly in life, limb and international luster must make him think about the current Big Muddy. Okay, at least someone in his retinue.

Our venture in Vietnam dragged on long after the writing was on the wall (Is it intentional that the Vietnam Memorial is so suited to that phrase?), killing 58,000 Americans and two million Vietnamese, and leaving a war-weary country in ruin. Today Vietnam is a gleaming success story with excellent schools and health care systems, and being courted by big business and big governments. And by the way, they're still Commies.

It's too simple to say that because we walked away from Vietnam and everything got better that we can do the same in Iraq and count on the same results. It's apples and oranges. Or, rice paddies and oil fields. And there's the inflamed boil of religious fanaticism in Iraq and the Mideast that was missing in Vietnam, thanks, in part, to the effective religious suppression of the Commies.

Even so, as Swaggerman struts in oblivion through the prosperous streets of Ho Chi Minh City, on land soaked with the blood of his unlucky brothers, let's hope that the comparison is not lost on the newly elected Congress back home.

We voted you in to sort it out -- rice, oranges, oil and apples -- and to end it, now. Enough posturing for position, get going.

Susan Lenfestey (soolen@aol.com) lives in Minneapolis, and writes at the Clotheslineblog.com

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