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Bush vs. The 'Nam

After years of avoiding or dismissing comparisons to Vietnam, George W. Bush has recently made the comparison himself.  This strikes me as a terrible mistake, albiet one committed by people who get paid a hell of a lot more than I do. 

Bush's Vietnam Speech

The invocation of Graham Greene is particularly hillarious, given that Greene's pre-Vietnam war book The Quiet American prophetic about what even America's best intentions would mean for Vietnam -- unmitigated disaster.  Like a leper who has lost his bell.

This doesn't come entirely out of a vacuum.  He made the comparison rather more briefly after he made a trip to Vietnam last year.

Bush's Lessons of Vietnam:  "We'll succeed, unless we quit."
Keith Olberman comments on Bush's "Lessons of Vietnam"

Early in the Iraq War, there was some disagreement over when it was too early to call it a 'quagmire' -- the term that was used to eloquently capture the disastrous war in Vietnam.  Dick Cheney himself called it in 1994, in an interview that has been quoted here and there, but the actual video of which has recently surfaced and made the rounds on the Internet:

Cheney uses the 'Q' Word
Daily Show's Commentary on the Resurfaced Video - Even Dick Don't Know Dick

It appears that Bush learned his lessons from the Bizzarro Vietnam, the one he did go to in an alternate universe. 

In Bizzarro World, the Khmer Rouge massacres were caused by the U.S. leaving Vietnam, not by the America's callous manipulation of regional politics as leverage against Vietnam. 

In Bizzarro World, the president knew the situation was winnable, though he didn't say so in hundreds of tapes from recorders not hidden all over the White House.  The only question was how to pull out in the most embarrassing way possible.

In Bizzarro World, what the Vietnamese wanted was to be dominated by a foreign power, and the whole Sino-Vietnamese war broke out because China refused to return to their 1000 year domination, and Vietnam was not prepared to commit the hundreds of thousands of 18-year-olds it produced every year to the cause of independence. 

In Bizzarro World, comparisons to Vietnam are favorable to Bush, who not only fought bravely in the war, but has been carefully touting the war in Iraq as "another Vietnam" to gain public approval.

That's my mini-rant.  Here are some other comments Bush's Vietnam rhetoric has engendered:

David Gergen, Former Adviser to Four Presidents: "How did you get us in Another Quagmire?"
Major General Paul Eaton on Bush's Vietnam Analogy
David Schuster calls Bullshit on Bush's Vietnam Analogy

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 08/27/07 05:56 | link | comments |