Kissinger Finally Leaves Vietnam

President Bush finally arrived in Vietnam last week and around the same time Henry Kissinger finally left.

According to news reports, Kissinger, the former Nixon and Ford secretary of state, told the BBC that victory in Iraq is not going to happen.

If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible.

It is a new tune for the old foreign policy vet. According to Bob Woodward's latest, State of Denial, Kissinger was a prominent stay-the-course adviser for Bush:

"Vietnam like a stone around [Kissinger's] neck and the prism through which he saw the world," Woodward writes. (p407)

And: "Kissinger sensed wobbliness everywhere on Iraq, and he increasingly saw it through the Vietnam prism. For Kissinger, the overriding lesson of Vietnam was to stick it out." (p408)

And: "For Kissinger, Iraq was the Vietnam sequel." (p409)

Is it now time for peace with honor?