Kevin Drum brings up an interesting point when discussing modern conservative praise of Harry Truman :

At the time, as even a quick skim of a history book will tell you, conservatives tarred Truman as the next best thing to a ravening Bolshevik. Joe McCarthy labelled both Truman and George Marshall as communist dupes, Richard Nixon led the charge against a State Department that Truman had allegedly stocked with pinko symps, conservatives were apoplectic over his firing of Douglas MacArthur, and he was accused both of losing China and failing to nuke the Soviet Union when we had the chance. (Yes, nuking the Reds really was a policy choice advocated by a number of conservatives at the time. Containment, now hailed as an example of tough-minded anti-communism, was considered by some conservatives at the time to be the worst kind of weak-kneed appeasement.)

Here’s my question for the hawks out there : Why was containment a good idea during the Cold War but a bad idea with Iraq? Was it just because we might not have won a direct conflict with the U.S.S.R. the way we seem to have won (so far) in Iraq?