The first President Bush was exultant after driving Saddam Hussein’s forces out of Kuwait in 1991. “By God,” he exclaimed, “we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.”

He was half right. America had clearly overcome its fear of using military force to fight evil. But now, the second President Bush has spawned the Iraq syndrome. And a growing number of experts believe this new paradigm will have a greater impact on American interests and policies than Vietnam ever did.

As former Secretary of Defense William Cohen told The Washington Post: “In terms of the consequences of failure, the stakes are much bigger than Vietnam.” Added Erin Simpson, a counterinsurgency expert at Harvard: “I think the hangover from this war will be at least as bad as Vietnam and (I) wouldn’t be surprised by a growing movement toward retrenchment and isolation.”

The phrase “Iraq syndrome” is not new. Lawrence Freedman, a professor of war studies at King’s College in London, wrote a piece for the Post more than two years ago, saying that Bush’s legacy would be blighted by the idea, which he defined as the “nagging and sometimes paralyzing belief that any large-scale U.S. military intervention abroad is doomed to practical failure and moral iniquity.”