The president's father, after building up Hussein as an international ogre, called the U.S. military off when the Iraqi despot's days seemed numbered. This outcome fed voters' sense of a Bush failure. Since then, the Republican presidential victory in 2000 has not only restored a Bush to the White House but has also brought back the GOP war-management teams of 1974-75 (the end of fighting in Vietnam) and 1990-91 (the Gulf War). Their hunger for revenge must be almost palpable.

This is dynastic-type policymaking never before seen in the United States. True, our sixth president, John Quincy Adams, became president like his father. But that was 24 years later, and his father, who belonged to a different party, left no unfinished war as a legacy.

The return of defense secretaries and White House chiefs of staff from previous wartime periods is just as unprecedented. It suggests a rare combination of unrequited frustrations and motivations. Consider: In spring 1975, when the war in Vietnam ended with the fall of South Vietnam to the communists and Cambodians seized the U.S. merchant ship Mayaguez, Donald H. Rumsfeld, now Defense secretary, was the White House chief of staff and Dick Cheney, now vice president, was his deputy.

Former President Bush recalled Southeast Asian embarrassments in 1991, when he pledged that the Gulf War "will not be another Vietnam." Cheney was around then, too, as secretary of Defense. When the U.S. appeared victorious, Bush exclaimed that, "We've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all."