Almost anyone old enough to remember the Fall of Saigon in 1975 is having unpleasant feelings as news of the partial (for the moment) evacuation of the US Embassy in Baghdad spreads.  Tim Arango and Michael R. Gordon write in the New York Times:

The American Embassy in Baghdad plans to evacuate a substantial number of its personnel this week in the face of a militant advance that rapidly swept from the north toward the capital, the State Department announced on Sunday.

The embassy, a beige fortress on the banks of the Tigris River within the heavily-secured Green Zone, where Iraqi government buildings are also located, has the largest staff of any United States Embassy.

The exact number of people being evacuated was not clear Sunday. The embassy would remain open, a person familiar with the planning said, and much of its staff of about 5,500 would stay in Baghdad. The American government is expected to call the move a relocation, suggesting that it is a temporary precaution, the person said.

Many staff members who are leaving will be flown to Amman, Jordan, where they will continue their work at the embassy there. Others will be shifted from Baghdad to consulates here in Erbil, in the northern Kurdish region, and in Basra, in the south, which are not now under threat by the militants.

Is anyone comforted by the words of Sate Department spokeswoman (and former Obama campaign staffer) Jen Psaki (via AP)?

"Overall, a substantial majority of the U.S. Embassy presence in Iraq will remain in place and the embassy will be fully equipped to carry out its national security mission."

The photograph below by Hubert van Es became the iconic image of America’s defeat in the Vietnam War, a political failure that resulted in allies being abandoned, millions slaughtered by our enemy, and American power held up to ridicule around the world.

Our humiliation in Iraq, unless things chage drastically, will be even deeper, because our president now is feckless. Michael Ramirez of Investor’s Business Daily captures the irony perfectly.

One big difference: The Vietnamese Communist Party had no interest in exporting its fight with us to our homeland. ISIS, on the other hand:

 The leader of Isis Abu bakhar Al baghdadi was in U. S. Custody in Iraq for four years. When he was released in 2009, his parting words to U. S.:

Troops, I'll see you in New York.