Another Vietnam?

I was born after the fall of Saigon. So I have no personal experiences about what went on in Vietnam.

I have seen most episodes of a documentary about Vietnam that was filmed in 1980. So they were able to interview the major players involved. In short, they emphasize that troops would be dropped into an area, fight off the VC, and once secure, leave it for another area. The VC would then move back into the area.

I came across this article aimed to help Democrats come up with a way to have an Iraqi policy that's different than the white house, but be a realistic policy. His description of the current state of affairs in Iraq sums up what I've thought for a while now:

We are playing whack-a-mole, moving troops from one hot area to another and losing the gains we've made each time we do so. This lowers the chance that we can stop the hard-liners. It shrinks the chance that Iraq's unity government can survive and that its security forces thrive.

He address the issues about our dependance on foreign oil, reconstruction costs that produced so little of what was promised, and paying companies like Haliburton. But I see this one talking point as problematic:

And we must put Iraq into the context of a broader regional strategy. It will not be possible to stabilize that country without revising our policy toward Iran. Nor can we halt the destabilization of the Mideast region without a new effort to rejuvenate negotiations over a Palestinian state.

The region is so complex with different ethnic factions that cannot get along. A country like Iran will not accept any sort of aid or advise. I think a broader regional strategy is a good idea, but how to accomplish it seems a concept we cannot easily figure out. Personally, I'm for just nuking the entire region and anyone that wants it after that can have it.