[NYTr] Bush Invokes Vietnam in Defense of Iraq War to Vets' Group

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Deutsch Presse via Monsters & Critics - Aug 22, 2007
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/middleeast/news/article_1346395.php/Bush_warns_of_Iraq_withdrawal_by_comparing_conflict_to_Vietnam

Bush warns of Iraq withdrawal by comparing conflict to Vietnam

Washington - US President George W Bush on Wednesday warned that a
premature pullout of troops from Iraq could result in human suffering
like that following the American withdrawal from the Vietnam War.

'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.

Bush was addressing a veterans group in Kansas City, Missouri in an
attempt to win back public support for the unpopular war in Iraq and
cast the conflict as an ideological struggle similar to the fight
against totalitarianism during and after World War II.

Bush has been under intense pressure from the public and the
Democratic-controlled Congress to begin withdrawing US forces from
Iraq. Wednesday's speech and a second one scheduled for Tuesday come a
month ahead of a crucial report by the US ambassador in Iraq, Ryan
Crocker, and his top commander, General David Petraeus, on the
political and military progress in Iraq.

A poor assessment will galvanize the Democrats' effort to force a
withdrawal and likely push more of Bush's Republicans toward calling
for an end of the US role in the Iraqi conflict. Bush, however, has
remained steadfast in his determination to prevail in Iraq.

'We fight for the possibility that decent men and women across the
broader Middle East can realize their destiny and raise up societies
based on freedom and justice and personal dignity,' Bush said. 'As long
as I am commander in chief, we will fight to win.'

'Prevailing in this struggle is essential to the future of our nation,'
he added.

Bush highlighted the US role in rebuilding Japan after the Second World
War despite scepticism from critics who said the country was not fit
for democracy, and the US will to defend South Korea from the communist
invasion from the North.

He discussed the repression that followed once North Vietnam overran
South Vietnam after the US pullout in 1975 and the plight of Cambodians
under the Khmer Rouge. 

© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur


                             ***

The Washington Post - Aug 22, 2007  1:16 pm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/08/22/BL2007082201461.html

The Analogy Quagmire

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com

President Bush boldly entered risky rhetorical territory this morning,
likening the war in Iraq to Vietnam.

It's an analogy Bush typically avoids, given how strongly Vietnam is
associated in the national consciousness with the concept of quagmire
-- and with its lesson about the limits of American military power.

But Bush today tried to turn the Vietnam analogy on its head, arguing
that the U.S. withdrawal led to disaster there and emboldened American
enemies around the globe. He even went so far as to argue that
present-day terrorists like Osama bin Laden are inspired by the turning
of American public opinion against the war in Vietnam.

The White House was so proud of this speech that Bush's new counselor,
Ed Gillespie, took the unusual step of releasing extensive excerpts
last night. Among them:

"Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got
into the Vietnam War and how we left. Whatever your position in that
debate, 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.'

"There was another price to our withdrawal from Vietnam, and we can
hear it in the words of the enemy we face in today's struggle --
al-Qaeda. In an interview with a Pakistani paper after the 9/11
attacks, Bin Laden declared that 'the American people had risen against
their government's war in Vietnam. They must do the same
today.' . . . . Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from
Vietnam carried no price to American credibility -- but the terrorists
see things differently."

Bush's speech was a big hit at the Veterans of Foreign Wars National
Convention in Kansas City. But it's hard to imagine that it will go
over nearly as well with a wider audience -- not to mention with
historians.

That's because the obvious lesson of Vietnam is not that leaving a
quagmire leads to disaster, but that staying only makes things worse.
(And oh yes: that we shouldn't get into them in the first place.)

The previews of today's speech allowed reporters and bloggers to get a
head start on putting Bush's remarks in context.

James Gerstenzang and Maura Reynolds write in the Los Angeles Times:
"Historian Robert Dallek, who has written about the comparisons of Iraq
to Vietnam, accused Bush of twisting history. 'It just boggles my mind,
the distortions I feel are perpetrated here by the president,' he said
in a telephone interview.

"'We were in Vietnam for 10 years. We dropped more bombs on Vietnam
than we did in all of World War II in every theater. We lost 58,700
American lives, the second-greatest loss of lives in a foreign
conflict. And we couldn't work our will,' he said.

"'What is Bush suggesting? That we didn't fight hard enough, stay long
enough? That's nonsense. It's a distortion,' he continued. 'We've been
in Iraq longer than we fought in World War II. It's a disaster, and
this is a political attempt to lay the blame for the disaster on his
opponents. But the disaster is the consequence of going in, not getting
out.'"

Gerstenzang and Reynolds also spoke to Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr.
(D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who
"criticized Bush's speech, saying the president 'continues to play the
American people for fools.'

"'The only relevant analogy of Vietnam to Iraq is this: In Iraq, just
as we did in Vietnam, we are clinging to a central government that does
not and will not enjoy the support of the people,' he said."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid issued a statement: "President Bush's
attempt to compare the war in Iraq to past military conflicts in East
Asia ignores the fundamental difference between the two. Our nation was
misled by the Bush Administration in an effort to gain support for the
invasion of Iraq under false pretenses, leading to one of the worst
foreign policy blunders in our history. While the President continues
to stay-the-course with his failed strategy in Iraq, paid for by the
taxpayers, American lives are being lost and there is still no
political solution within the Iraqi government. It is time to change
direction in Iraq, and Congress will again work to do so in the fall."

David Jackson and Matt Kelley write in USA Today: "Vietnam historian
Stanley Karnow said Bush is reaching for historical analogies that
don't track. 'Vietnam was not a bunch of sectarian groups fighting each
other,' as in Iraq, Karnow said. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge toppled a
U.S.-backed government.

"'Does he think we should have stayed in Vietnam?' Karnow asked."

Talking Points memo blogger Josh Marshall asks: "[I]sn't this quite
possibly the worst argument for his Iraq policy? . . .

"[V]irtually none of the predicted negative repercussions of our
departure from Vietnam ever came to pass.

"Asia didn't go Communist. Our Asian allies didn't abandon us. Rather,
the Vietnamese began to fall out with her Communist allies. With the
Cold War over, in strategic terms at least, it's almost hard to
remember what the whole fight was about. If anything, the clearest
lesson of Vietnam would seem to be that there can be a vast hue and cry
about the catastrophic effects of disengagement from a failed policy
and it can turn out that none of them are true."

After one of the few other times Bush used a Vietnam analogy -- during
his official visit to Vietnam last November -- Robert Scheer wrote in
The Nation: "The lesson of Vietnam is not to keep pouring lives and
treasure down a dark and poisonous well, but to patiently use a
pragmatic mix of diplomacy and trade with even our ideological
competitors.

"The United States dropped more bombs on tiny Vietnam than it unloaded
on all of Europe in World War II, only hardening Vietnamese nationalist
resolve. Hundreds of thousands of troops, massive defoliation of the
countryside, 'free fire zones,' South Vietnamese allies, bombing the
harbors . . . none of it worked. Yet, never admitting that our
blundering military presence fueled the native nationalist militancy we
supposedly sought to eradicate, three US Presidents -- two of them
Democrats -- lied themselves into believing victory was around some
mythical corner.

"While difficult for inveterate hawks to admit, the victory for
normalcy in Vietnam, celebrated by Bush last week, came about not
despite the US withdrawal but because of it." What Else Bush Said

Listening to Bush today, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the war in
Iraq is entirely a battle against al-Qaeda. But you'd be wrong.

Bush spoke extensively of the ideological struggle against al-Qaeda,
comparing it to the enemies that this country has faced down in the
past. From a White House " Fact Sheet" released this morning: "Today,
The Violent Islamic Extremists Who Fight Us In Iraq Are As Certain Of
Their Cause As The Nazis, Imperial Japanese, And Soviet Communists Were
Of Theirs -- And They Are Destined For The Same Fate."

But ideally the media coverage of the speech will remind the public
that the group called Al Qaeda in Iraq is only one of large number of
players on the Iraqi battlefield, that its affinity with its namesake
organization does not appear to extend much beyond a desire to end the
U.S. occupation -- and that it wouldn't even exist had Bush not invaded
in the first place.

As seven soldiers wrote in a New York Times op-ed on Sunday: "What
soldiers call the 'battle space' remains the same . . . It is crowded
with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al
Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This
situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and
Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been
trained and armed at United States taxpayers' expense."

Bush also ratcheted up his rhetorical attack on the critics of the war,
going so far as to speak on behalf of the American troops in Iraq:
"They have a question: Will their elected leaders in Washington pull
the rug out from under them just as they are gaining momentum and
changing the dynamic on the ground in Iraq?" he asked.

Is Bush right? Do the grunts see withdrawal as pulling the rug out from
under them -- or as giving them a ride home? Maliki Watch

It can be hard to keep up with this White House. Just as I was filing
yesterday's column about the White House's desperate efforts to prop up
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki (despite the growing realization
that his government is a failure), Bush was backpedaling on Maliki.
Sort of. And then in today's speech, he was front-pedaling again.

Bush's remarks to reporters in Canada yesterday were widely interpreted
as a backing away from Maliki.

Michael A. Fletcher and Megan Greenwell writes in The Washington Post:
"President Bush pointedly declined Tuesday to offer a public
endorsement of embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki,
expressing his disappointment at the lack of political progress in Iraq
and saying that widespread popular frustration could lead Iraqis to
replace their government."

Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Jim Rutenberg write in the New York Times that
"it was a striking attempt by the White House to distance itself from
the Maliki government before September, when the president's troop
buildup faces an intense review on Capitol Hill. . . .

"Mr. Bush is already facing skepticism within his own party over the
troop buildup, and will almost certainly confront repeated attempts by
Democrats to force an end to the war. So he seems to be laying the
groundwork for a new message, one that says, 'We're doing our job in
Iraq; don't blame us if the Iraqis aren't doing theirs.' . . .

"Experts say Mr. Bush does not appear to be trying to force Mr. Maliki
out, if only because there is no obvious alternative. Rather, they say,
the president's remarks are aimed at a domestic audience. Back in
January, Mr. Bush sold the troop buildup to the country as a plan that
would tamp down violence and create 'political breathing space' to
allow the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds to create a unity government.

"Now Mr. Bush is admitting publicly what anyone who follows events in
Iraq can plainly see: that plan is not altogether working."

All this reportage about Bush distancing himself from Maliki came
despite the fact that, as The Post's Fletcher wrote in a pool report,
White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe stopped by the press cabin on Air
Force One yesterday afternoon "to emphasize that Bush's comments
earlier in [Canada] were not to be taken as backing away from the iraqi
pm."

This morning, Gerstenzang of the Los Angeles Times wrote to his
colleagues that Johndroe complained about the coverage, saying "that
despite WH efforts to make that support clear on Tuesday, 'that did not
come through.'

"What was misreported? 'Bush backs away from Maliki; Bush is cool
toward Maliki,' Johndroe said.

"Does Bush still feel Maliki is 'the right guy?' 'Yes,' Johndroe said,
adding that Maliki is the PM, chosen by Iraqis. 'That makes him the
person we will deal with.'"

And in this morning's speech, Bush called Maliki "a good guy -- good
man with a difficult job," and said "I support him." Bottoms Up?

>From Bush's remarks in Canada yesterday: "There are two types of
political reconciliation that can take place in a new democracy: One is
from the top down, and one is from the bottom up. Clearly, the Iraqi
government has got to do more through its parliament to help heal the
wounds of years -- having lived years under a tyrant. . . .

"There's bottom-up reconciliation taking place. It's noticeable and
tangible and real, where people at the grass-roots level are sick and
tired of the violence, sick and tired of the radicalism, and they want
-- and they want a better life. And they're beginning to reject the
extremists that have the desire to have a safe haven, for example, from
which to launch further attacks on America. In other words, there's a
process taking place. And the fundamental question is, will the
government respond to the demands of the people? And if the government
doesn't demand -- respond to the demands of the people, they will
replace the government. That's up to the Iraqis to make that decision,
not American politicians."

Someone, by the way, should ask the White House for some "noticeable
and tangible and real" examples of "bottom-up reconciliation." Maliki's
View

Qassim Abdul-Zahra writes for the Associated Press: "Iraq's prime
minister lashed out Wednesday at U.S. criticism, saying no one has the
right to impose timetables on his elected government and that his
country 'can find friends elsewhere.'

"Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki blamed the U.S. presidential campaign
for the recent tough words about his government, from President Bush
and from other U.S. politicians." Reality Check

Tina Susman and James Gerstenzang write in the Los Angeles Times:
"Despite the addition since February of 28,500 U.S. troops, mainly in
Baghdad, and what [Ambassador Ryan] Crocker said was an overall decline
in sectarian violence, the Shiite-led government has done little either
on the legislative or social level to bring the Shiite majority and
Sunni Arab minority together. None of the laws that the White House
considers key to ending sectarian violence has been enacted. Basic
services such as water and electricity are spotty at best. The
country's educated middle class is fleeing or being killed off.

"Since April, Maliki's government has been beset by walkouts and
boycotts by various political blocs, some of which accuse his
administration of being driven by sectarian interests. The most
crippling walkout has involved Sunni lawmakers, whose absence means
that one of Iraq's major population groups is unrepresented.

"Without strong U.S. backing, Maliki would be hard-pressed to hold his
15-month-old government together in the face of opposition from
lawmakers and from a public worn down by violence and other hardships
that have followed the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003."

Journalist Nir Rosen tells Amy Goodman of Democracy Now that all the
arguing over Maliki is irrelevant.

"AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of [Democratic] Senator [Carl] Levin
calling for the Maliki and the whole government to disband?

"NIR ROSEN: Well, it's stupid for several reasons. First of all, the
Iraqi government doesn't matter. It has no power. And it doesn't matter
who you put in there. He's not going to have any power. . . . These
days, you have a collection of city states: Mosul, Basra, Baghdad,
Kirkuk, Irbil, Sulaymaniyah. Each one is virtually independent, and
they have their own warlords and their own militias. And what happens
in Baghdad makes no difference. So that's the first point.

"Second of all, who can he put in instead? What does he think he's
going to put in? Allawi or some secular candidate? There was a
democratic election, and the majority of Iraqis selected the sectarian
Shiite group Dawa, Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution, the Sadr
Movement. These are movements that are popular among the majority of
Shias, who are the majority of Iraq. So it doesn't matter who you put
in there. And people in the Green Zone have never had any power.
Americans, whether in the government or journalists, have been focused
on the Green Zone from the beginning of the war, and it's never really
mattered. It's been who has power on the street, the various different
militias, depending on where you are -- Sunni, Shia, tribal, religious,
criminal. So it just reflects the same misunderstanding of Iraqi
politics. The government doesn't do anything, doesn't provide any
services, whether security, electricity, health or otherwise. Various
militias control various ministries, and they use it as their fiefdoms.
Ministries attack other ministries."

The Democrats

Jonathan Weisman and Anne E. Kornblut write in The Washington Post:
"Democratic leaders in Congress had planned to use August recess to
raise the heat on Republicans to break with President Bush on the Iraq
war. Instead, Democrats have been forced to recalibrate their own
message in the face of recent positive signs on the security front,
increasingly focusing their criticisms on what those military gains
have not achieved: reconciliation among Iraq's diverse political
factions.

"And now the Democrats, along with wavering Republicans, will face an
advertising blitz from Bush supporters determined to remain on offense.
A new pressure group, Freedom's Watch, will unveil a month-long, $15
million television, radio and grass-roots campaign today designed to
shore up support for Bush's policies. . . .

"'For people who believe in peace through strength, the cavalry is
coming,' said Ari Fleischer, a former Bush White House press secretary
who is helping to head Freedom's Watch. . . .

"GOP leaders have latched on to positive comments from Democrats --
often out of context -- to portray the congressional majority as
splintering. Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Calif.), an Armed Services
Committee member who is close to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.),
said many of her colleagues learned a hard lesson from the Republican
campaign.

"'I don't know of anybody who isn't desperately supportive of the
military,' she said. 'People want to say positive things. But it's
difficult to say positive things in this environment and not have some
snarky apologist for the White House turn it into some clipped
phraseology that looks like support for the president's
policies.'" [...]


                             ***

The New York Times - Aug 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/22/washington/22cnd-policy.html

Bush Warns of Carnage if U.S. Leaves Iraq

By JIM RUTENBERG and DAVID STOUT

KANSAS CITY, Mo., Aug. 22 — With a tough battle with Congress over the
future of the war expected to come in September, President Bush offered
a rousing defense of his Iraq policy today, declaring that he envisions
an American victory there and asserting that a hasty withdrawal by the
United States would unleash a bloodbath reminiscent of the Vietnam War
era.

Mr. Bush accused the Congress of planning to “pull the rug out from
under” American troops. He said the American pullout from Vietnam more
than 32 years ago was to blame for millions of deaths in Cambodia and
Vietnam, and for putting a dent in American credibility that lasts to
this day.

“Then, as now, people argued that the real problem was America’s
presence, and that if we would just withdraw, the killing would end,”
Mr. Bush told an audience at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention
here today. “The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions
would be.”

Mr. Bush’s speech was interrupted frequently by cheers from the crowd
and by occasional standing ovations.

“The question now before us comes down to this,” he said. “Will today’s
generation of Americans resist the deceptive allure of retreat, and do
in the Middle East what veterans in this room did in Asia?”

With his comments, Mr. Bushtried something that few leading politicians
of either party have tried in a generation: Reopening the national
argument over the Vietnam War, a conflict that ended more than three
decades ago but has remained an emotional national touchstone.

And he was giving rare political voice to the views of those who — like
many in the hall today — believe that the American pullout from Vietnam
was a mistake, and who reject the popular view among Baby Boomers that
America should never have sent troops there in the first place.

Mr. Bush’s speech today is part of a new White House effort to draw a
second — or, in some cases, third, fourth or fifth — look from a
skeptical public at the his argument that the United States should not
withdraw from Iraq now.

Perhaps unsurprisingly — and as the White House probably expected — his
comments prompted an immediate and bitter debate.

“The president is drawing the wrong lesson from history,” said Senator
Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, whose brother John F. Kennedy
oversaw some of the early American troop escalations in Vietnam as
president. “America lost the war in Vietnam,” Senator Kennedy said,
“because our troops were trapped in a distant country we did not
understand, supporting a government that lacked sufficient legitimacy
with its people.”

Mr. Bush’s comments came as he and Congressional Democrats — and even
some Republicans — are preparing for an autumn of debate over the
future of the conflict. Though a number of politicians are saying now
that they see signs of military progress resulting from the stepped-up
troop levels Mr. Bush ordered this year, an even greater number are
saying that the Iraqi government is failing to take advantage of that
progress to do the work necessary to bring political reconciliation.

On a day when Mr. Bush had hoped to be driving his own message about
the war while Congress was on vacation, the president’s aides spent the
morning disputing assessments that he was losing faith in the Iraqi
prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

On Tuesday, the United States ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, said
in Baghdad that American support for the Maliki government was not
written on a “blank check,” and Mr. Bush responded to a reporter’s
question about Mr. Maliki with comments that were seen as less than
strongly supportive.

Today, to beat back that perception, Mr. Bush told the audience at the
veterans’ convention that the prime minister was “a good guy, good man
with a difficult job.”

Apparently addressing a call by Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of
Michigan, for the Iraqi parliament to replace Mr. Maliki — a call
echoed in softer and more diplomatic tones by Senator John W. Warner,
Republican of Virginia — Mr. Bush said today: “It’s not up to the
politicians in Washington, D.C., to say whether he will remain in his
position. That is up to the Iraqi people, who now live in a democracy
and not a dictatorship.”

At a news conference in Syria today, Mr. Maliki reacted angrily to the
calls by American politicians for the Parliament to replace him,
calling the demands “discourteous” — a particularly strong insult in a
culture where pride and personal relationships are paramount. He said,
as he has before, that no one outside Iraq had any right to impose
timetables or benchmarks on the Iraqi government, and that if Americans
withdrew their support, his government could find another patron less
to their liking, such as Syria or Iran.

Mr. Bush, in his speech to the veterans, urged Americans to remember
that the American military not only helped to defeat Nazi Germany and
Imperial Japan but also helped to install democracies there, and that
America’s sacrifices on the Korean Peninsula have helped preserve a
prosperous, democratic South Korea that exists in stark contrast to the
militarily powerful but impoverished North.

His cited examples of occasions in the past when politicians of both
parties, news columnists and editorial writers — including those at The
New York Times and The Washington Post — predicted that major American
policy initiatives would fail, only to be proven wrong.

“In the aftermath of Japan’s surrender, many thought it naïve to help
the Japanese transform themselves into a democracy,” he said. “Then, as
now, the critics argued that some people were simply not fit for
freedom.”

He even cited examples of fellow Republicans whose predictions were not
borne out.

“From the left, I. F. Stone wrote a book suggesting that the South
Koreans were the real aggressors and that we had entered the war on a
false pretext,” he said. “From the right, Republicans vacillated.
Initially, the leader of the Republican Party in the Senate endorsed
Harry Truman’s action, saying, ‘I welcome the indication of a more
definite policy’ — he went on to say, ‘I strongly hope that having
adopted it, the President may maintain it intact,’ then later said, ‘It
was a mistake originally to go into Korea because it meant a land war.’
”

In the passage of the speech that has drawn the sharpest reaction since
the advance text of the speech was released, Mr. Bush said that a quick
pullout of American forces from Iraq could lead to the kind of carnage
there that drenched Southeast Asia three decades ago.

“In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule, in which hundreds
of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation and torture and
execution,” Mr. Bush said. “In Vietnam, former allies of the United
States, and government workers, and intellectuals, and businessmen,
were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousands perished.
Hundreds of thousands more fled the country on rickety boats, many of
them going to their graves in the South China Sea.”

Mr. Bush acknowledged the long debate over whether the United States
military should ever have been in Vietnam in the first place: “Whatever
your position is on that debate, 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.’ ”

For the most part, the speech was received well by the veterans in the
Kansas City convention hall. “We know we never should have left
Vietnam,” said Don Riegel, 71, who served with the United States Air
Force in Germany during the cold war.

“Amen,” said a friend, Bob McKay, 63, who served in the Army during the
Vietnam War. “That’s what I fear most: We’re going to pull another
Vietnam.”

But a group of former military men from Massachusetts sitting in the
hallway after the speech was far less hawkish. “I don’t think we belong
over there,” said Anthony Cellucci, 82, a retired sergeant who served
in the Army Air Force during World War II. “You fight a war, you fight
it and get it over with.”

[Jim Rutenberg reported from Kansas City, Mo., and David Stout reported
from Washington.]

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company