Christmas brings to mind many wonderful memories for most of us. But history has bequeathed to some of us a most awful little two-word phrase blackening those memories like a stain. That phrase is "Christmas bombing."

From Dec. 18 until Dec. 30 in 1972, the United States conducted a campaign of intensive aerial bombing, using massive B-52s, over North Vietnam. In the approximately 4,000 sorties flown in what was termed Operation Linebacker II, American pilots concentrated on the major cities of Hanoi and Haiphong. The missions executed so-called area bombing, never precise or pinpoint. Their goal: To kill as many civilians as possible.

Now, when the U.S. is finding itself in a similar situation in Iraq as it was then in Vietnam -- searching for a way to extricate itself from its own misguided policies -- it may be time (this being Christmas after all) to look ahead to an era when peace will return, one way or another, to Iraq. As it was in Vietnam, the withdrawal of American and allied forces is surely a prerequisite of the establishment of peace in Iraq. Iraqis, like the Vietnamese more than 30 years ago, cannot create a peaceful order under the boot of the American occupier.