Bush's Vietnam analogy strikes nerve!

[finebydesign]

Posted: 8/23/07 at 4:32pm

War analogy strikes nerve in Vietnam

By BEN STOCKING, Associated Press Writer2 hours, 45 minutes ago

President Bush touched a nerve among Vietnamese when he invoked the Vietnam War in a speech warning that death and chaos will envelop Iraq if U.S. troops leave too quickly.

People in Vietnam, where opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq is strong, said Thursday that Bush drew the wrong conclusions from the long, bloody Southeast Asian conflict.

"Doesn't he realize that if the U.S. had stayed in Vietnam longer, they would have killed more people?" said Vu Huy Trieu of Hanoi, a veteran of the communist forces that fought American troops in Vietnam. "Nobody regrets that the Vietnam War wasn't prolonged except Bush."

He said U.S. troops could never have prevailed here. "Does he think the U.S. could have won if they had stayed longer? No way," Trieu said.

Vietnam's official government spokesman offered a more measured response when asked at a regular media briefing to comment on Bush's speech to American veterans Wednesday.

"With regard to the American war in Vietnam, everyone knows that we fought to defend our country and that this was a righteous war of the Vietnamese people," Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung said. "And we all know that the war caused tremendous suffering and losses to the Vietnamese people."

Dung said Vietnam hopes that the Iraq conflict will be resolved "very soon, in an orderly way, and that the Iraqi people will do their best to rebuild their country."

Although Vietnam opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Dung stressed that ties between Hanoi and Washington have been growing closer since the former foes normalized relations in 1995, two decades after the war's end.

In his remarks to U.S. veterans, Bush said a hasty retreat from Iraq would lead to terrible violence.

"One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps' and 'killing fields,'" Bush said.

Many people in Vietnam said Bush's comparison was ill-considered.

The only way to restore order in Iraq is for the United States to leave, said Trinh Xuan Thang, a university student.

"Bush sent troops to invade Iraq and created all the problems there," Thang said.

If the U.S. withdrew, he said, the violence might escalate in the short term but the situation would eventually stabilize.

"Let the Iraqis determine their fate by themselves," Thang said. "They don't need American troops there."

Ton Nu Thi Ninh, former chairwoman of the National Assembly's committee on foreign affairs, said Bush was unwise to stir up sensitive memories of the Vietnam War.

"The price we, the Vietnamese people on both sides, paid during the war was due to the fact that the Americans went into Vietnam in the first place," Ninh said.

[HDThoreau2]

Posted: 8/23/07 at 8:50pm

Wow. Thats a pretty long cut and paste, but its liberal, so it is no problem.

Yeah, Bush pissed off the libs this week. Ain't it great?!

To think, the nerve of that man...throwing the vietnam war back in their face. It set you all in a tizzy.

[AnnaK<3LMIP]

Posted: 8/23/07 at 11:04pm

They're recapping it on The Daily Show right now..

..oy. It really didn't go over well.

You almost feel sorry for him. But then you don't.

Updated On: 8/23/07 at 11:04 PM

Posted: 8/23/07 at 11:17pm

That's all you get out of Bush's speech HD? That it "pissed off the liberals"? The President of the United States compares our ongoing conflict to the greateast military disaster in US history- a war that has become a world wide synonym for pointless intervention and quagmire- and it seems as if he might be HOPING that Iraq goes that well-- and all you get is that it "Pissed off the liberals"? Good God you are as clueless as he.

[JudasIscariot]

Posted: 8/23/07 at 11:19pm

Who cares what the Vietnamese think?

[AnnaK<3LMIP]

Posted: 8/23/07 at 11:20pm

Hm.

Seriously?

[HDThoreau2]

Posted: 8/24/07 at 5:01am

Yeah, he pissed off the liberal media and all of the NUTroots people.

He put it back at them. The liberals have repeatedly used the comparison, and he reminded them that the dems and liberals caused us to lose that war too.

That's why they are mad.

[HDThoreau2]

Posted: 8/24/07 at 5:32am

According to the New York Post...

Bush then daringly contrasted these experiences with the aftereffects of the U.S. defeat in Vietnam. He quoted the notorious headline on Sydney Schanberg's 1975 piece about the region following the collapse of South Vietnam: "Indochina Without Americans: For Most, a Better Life."

In the four years that followed that New York Times piece, more than 3 million Indochinese would die as a result of genocidal actions taken by the tyrannies that came to dominate them in the absence of the United States: "One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam," Bush said, "is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps' and 'killing fields.' "

Win in Iraq, as we did in Japan, or hold the line, as we did in South Korea, and there is hope for the future in Iraq and the Middle East. If we lose, we not only embolden al Qaeda and others, but will consign hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to their graves.

This is a bold argument, and it is already under attack for being "delusional" by those who believe there can be no end but disaster in Iraq. Bush argues that recent history teaches us something different, and there is nothing remotely delusional about his account of recent history.

Perhaps the real delusion here is to be found in the hearts and minds of those commentators who can't bear to imagine that there might have been a different ending to the war in Vietnam than the national disgrace they helped engender.