Specter of vietnam

This chapter discusses the problem of an exit strategy during the final days of the George W. Bush administration and how these issues echo the U.S. policy on Vietnam of many years before. It goes further, however, to analyze how the Obama administration approached future conflict in its initial years. On the one hand, the Bush administration's official storyline had revived the familiar paranoia of having victory turned over to the enemies. On the other, the exit strategy for withdrawal also raised widespread doubt about what was achievable in Iraq and Afghanistan and what the comprehensive results of the Iraq War turned out to be. The classic double bind thus wrote itself into every discussion of the “post-Iraq” era of U.S. foreign policy.