I am struck once again by the incomparable hold VIETNAM has over some people. They don’t seem to realize how the use of this inapt example demonstrates their inability to grasp the nature of new and different conflicts. When I was in college, El Salvador was Vietnam. When I was in Washington, Kuwait was Vietnam. Afghanistan was briefly Vietnam when we hadn’t won the war after a week. It’s Warholian: in the future, all conflicts will be Vietnam for 15 minutes.

Vietnam was an anomaly. Vietnam was perhaps the least typical war we’ve ever fought, but somehow it’s become the Gold Standard for wars – because, one suspects, it became inextricably bound up with Nixon, that black hole of human perfidy, and it coincided with the golden glory years of so many old boomers who now clog the arteries of the media and academe. A gross overgeneralization, I know. But it’s a fatal conceit. If you’re always fighting the last war you’ll lose the next one. Even worse: Vietnam was several wars ago.

So now we’re fighting Iranian-backed forces in their backyard. This is not a new war. It began the day the “students” swarmed the US Embassy in Tehran. And Senator Kerry worries that a military response to these thugs will inflame the Muslim world against us? If so, that speaks volumes about the Muslim world he seems to know so much about – by his logic they prefer death and defeat to comity and cooperation.

If that’s truly the case, then it’s best we face it now.