Bush adopts "Vietraq" comparison

Outrageous (6.00 / 2)

One thing I find particularly outrageous about all this is that the killing fields in Cambodia were the indirect result of the U.S.-sponsored coup in Cambodia that installed Lon Nol. What stopped the Khmer Rouge was not some humanitarian effort from the U.S., but an invasion by the Vietnamese.

Further, the war itself killed over a million Vietnamese. Had we not meddled with the Geneva Peace Accords, there would be no Agent Orange polluting Vietnam.

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by: KBusch @ Wed Aug 22, 2007 at 14:32:31 PM CDT

Who will set the story straight? (0.00 / 0)

Back in 1971 John Kerry woke Americans up with the straight scoop.  He spoke about the atrocities committed by the typical American soldier and the corruption of the government and the military.  Today all are quiet.  The expected political candidates for 2008 have backed down from a dignified retreat to just cutting the number of soldiers in the war zone.  They talk, too, of various forms of conscription. 

Too many people are making too much money from this war. 

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by: Pat Progressive @ Wed Aug 22, 2007 at 18:50:50 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

The price of withdrawal (5.80 / 5)

They say the worst part of a knife wound is when the knife is removed. However, to call attention to the knife's withdrawal while ignoring the stabbing defies all logic.

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by: JimC @ Wed Aug 22, 2007 at 14:39:43 PM CDT

That is an excellent analogy (0.00 / 0)

I do plan to plagarize it.

Nevertheless, the knife is in, and we must set about the removing, while minimizing the damage.

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by: CentralMassDad @ Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 08:42:19 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Metaphor (0.00 / 0)

Forgive me, Sister Mary.

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by: CentralMassDad @ Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 08:42:51 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

This guy is a maroon (6.00 / 1)

It is as if he is coming to after a week long bender only to find that he is holding a tiger by the tail.  Iraq, Osama, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the deficit, energy prices, the markets . . . They are all issues that favor the Democrats.  If only someone like Bill Clinton was running.  This slate of candidates underwhelms me.

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by: RegularJoe @ Wed Aug 22, 2007 at 16:46:50 PM CDT

ride that tiger... (6.00 / 1)

It is as if he is coming to after a week long bender only to find that he is holding a tiger by the tail.

Exactly!  You reminded my of JFK's inaugural address in which we were warned...

"To those new States whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom?and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside."  -- JFK Inaugural Address.

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--Stephen Colbert

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by: petr @ Wed Aug 22, 2007 at 20:25:03 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Vietnam Speech (5.00 / 1)

Extraordinary speech from a man who spent his time in a hidee-hole in Alabama or Texas somewhere. Now wasn't that nice? Why did we have a carnage at the end? Because of the absurdity of the beginning.It was a war of occupation by 1970 when I was there and wars of occupation usually end as bloodbaths when the occupiers leave. The Romans had no better luck than we have. This man is an absurdity and it is frustrating that newspapers even print his nonsense. Say 'goodbye' and I'll read that.

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by: Jasper @ Wed Aug 22, 2007 at 19:28:50 PM CDT

Chomsky? (0.00 / 0)

I believe Chomsky argues somewhere that the Vietnamese education camps were actually milder than the reprisals that befell Europe after World War II. Often, the practice is to slaughter one's mortal enemies.

However, I am uncertain about this and I know that a recent film has appeared on the education camps. Perhaps someone knows more about this.

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by: KBusch @ Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 00:43:31 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

All Things Considered (0.00 / 0)

Had a segment on Iraq analogies this afternoon that was quite interesting... particularly the comparison with the Philippines.

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by: Tim Little @ Wed Aug 22, 2007 at 20:33:55 PM CDT

And similar... (0.00 / 0)

On Morning Edition this morning.

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by: Tim Little @ Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 08:27:37 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

More analogy (0.00 / 0)

In my view Vietnam was an unavoidable tragedy. Revisionist historians who say that JFK would have acted any differently are wrong, the truth is at that point in time there was a broad bi-partisan consensus regarding foreign policy during the Cold War which lumped all communists together and supported an open ended policy to contain an ideology. Similarly the war on terrorism is just as vague, and fighting against an idea never leads to victory.

That said Vietnam actually had far more strategic relevance than Iraq did, now hear me out on this, the Domino Theory at least in South Asia was in fact correct in the sense that communism would spread from one nation to the next, what was different between the theory and practice was the catalyst. Communism was not the catalyst rather the totaltarian regimes that the US backed all over were the catalyst that made communism such an inviting alternative, not to mention US support of imperialist France, etc. The initial American intervention in Vietnam made perfect strategic sense at the time and was more than anything else a massive tactical failure, yet I would argue that the Iraq war has never made any strategic sense at all and therefore was never winnable from a tactical perspective.

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by: jconway @ Wed Aug 22, 2007 at 22:08:04 PM CDT

Not exactly (0.00 / 0)

In my view Vietnam was an unavoidable tragedy

That may be your view but your history is a little off.  US involvement in Vietnam began not with JFK, but with Eisenhower.  Shortly after the 1954 rather resounding defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu, the Eisenhower administration stepped in and negotiated a "two state solution," with promises of an election in about 1956 to re-establish a single state.  Eisenhower reneged on that promise, and that was what then led to the 2d Indochina war.  It was Eisenhower who sent in what were jokingly referred to as "advisors" to help support SVietnam.

What made the Vietnam War America's war was not the JFK administration's sending in more "advisors," but its support for the 1963 coup that toppled the SVietnam regime and put in its own puppets--er--people to head the new regime.  The former regime was corrupt and should have been removed, but it should have been removed in a manner so that the country Vietnam could have been re-unified.  That didn't happen.  And that is what made the war America's.

Several more observations.  One, interpolating between what I have read and what I observed on the news at the time, it is likely that the Vietnam war was more a religious war than a political one.  Illustration: you didn't see reports of Catholic priests in the South immolating themselves in protest, did you?  But there were more than a few reports of Buddhist monks immolating themselves in protest against the SVietnam regime.  This is speculation only, but I would be willing to bet that the French colonial regime, and the continuation of it in SVietnam was heavily weighted toward favoring Christians against the Buddhists.

Two, Cambodia (Laos, too) were reasonably stable countries until the Americans extended the war into those countries.  The domino theory was a nice propaganda tool for consumption by the US masses, but that's all it was: a propaganda tool.  It made no sense otherwise.

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by: raj @ Wed Aug 22, 2007 at 23:16:03 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Buddhists (5.50 / 2)

The Republic of South Vietnam occasionally suppressed Buddhists and Buddhist monks were famously pacifist during much of the war. However, the Viet Cong and the N. Vietnamese government were not Buddhist. I doubt too that the expression of Catholicism was religious so much as cultural, as an emphasis of the elite's ties to the French colonial past.

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by: KBusch @ Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 00:40:52 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Domino theory not confirmed (0.00 / 0)

I don't think any dominoes fell as a result of the collapse of the Republic of South Vietnam in 1972.

Laos had a communist government before the U.S. intervention. Thailand, no change. Singapore and Burma, no change. Cambodia, as I wrote above, had contending factions surely but it was U.S. destabilization that pushed it the wrong direction. The invasion of fanatically communist Cambodia by merely communist Vietnam stopped the auto-genocide. Maybe that was a falling domino, but it's the kind of falling domino Sudan could certainly use.

You are right that there was broad bipartisan consensus on the Vietnam intervention, but there were anti-war voices even in the early sixties. (My mom, for example!) McCloskey and a few old school isolationists aside, the Republicans were hawks. So most of the contention was entirely within the Democratic Party.

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You are right that U.S. foreign did acquire bad tastes in foreign regimes. I suspect that the CIA-directed coup in Iran taught the national security folks some very bad lessons, that lead to the harmful monkeying with the South Vietnamese government and consequently a deeper involvement.

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It's interesting to suggest that the Vietnamese intervention had more strategic logic than the Iraqi invasion. I don't think that's true but you raise some points that are interesting to reflect on. Thank you.

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by: KBusch @ Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 00:35:55 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

A few observations (0.00 / 0)

SVietnam was essentially gone by 1972, but its fate was sealed when the Democrats refused further funding of SVietnam a few years later.  (More on this theme below.)  It was in 1975 that SVietnam finally fell.

You are correct about Vietnam and Cambodia, but I will merely point out that the reason that Vietnam invaded Cambodia and installed a "substitute" regime, is probably the fact that the then-current regime in Cambodia was destabilizing the entire region, which is bad for business.  Much as Sudan in Dafur, and, for that matter, Mugabe in Zimbabwe.  Why the South Africans have done nothing to get rid of Mugabe is a mystery to me.  Regarding Sudan, from what I have read, the African Union has tried to mount a rescue mission there, to no effect.

Regarding Iran, it may be that the 1953 CIA action (at British behest) against the democratically elected Mossadegh regime there emboldened the Eisenhower administration in regards Vietnam, but I doubt it.  BTW there were reports years ago that the "student" takeover of the US embassy in Teheran in 1979 was in part a reaction to the 1953 coup.

Let's get back to the theme, and a timeline.  The problem for the Democrats began in 1948.  That was the year in which the Republicans (trying to excuse themselves for their resistance to going to war in WWII), issued a report suggesting that FDR had ceded eastern Europe to the Soviets and the behest of Alger Hiss, then a low-ranking official in the government.  That was, of course, absurd.  Shortly thereafter came the fall of China to the Communists (irrespective of the fact that the then current Kuomintang regime was horribly corrupt).  Shortly thereafter came the debacle in Korea, started on Truman's watch.  And shortly thereafter came McCarthy, waving his sheets of paper supposedly showing all the commies in the US State Department.

Democrats have been playing catch-up ever since.  And the way to play catch-up is to play "holier-than-thou."  And that's what they did.  Until, during the VietnamKrieg, upper middle class Americans found their sons being drafted to go into that mess.  When it was middle- and lower class Americans, they didn't care.  It was probably the draft lottery that finally turned the tide: your economic class didn't matter, the only thing that mattered was your birthday.  And that is why there is no draft today.  Yet.

Going back to the theme/timeline.  I monitor conservative/right-wing web sites every once in a while.  What you will oftentimes find is that the commenters there make a reference to what in German is called the Dolchstosslegende, the stab in the back legend.  That is the excuse that the German military used to blame their loss in WWI on the Social Democrats.  The sorry grain of truth is, that the Social Democrats, in 1916, wanted to stop funding for the war; it was a waste of money.  Sue for peace, and let's get on with our lives.  General von Ludendorff, after he had lost the war, blamed the Social Democrats for the loss, irrespective of his nonsensical and incompetent pursuit of the war.

Fast forward to 1974 (or so).  What the right wingnuts want to do is to accuse the Democrats for cutting funding for SVietnam.  And that is what caused the collapse of the SVietnam regime. The Dolchstosslegende again. 

The Republicans have so cowed the Democrats that they are using the Dolchstosslegende against them in regards the Iraq Krieg.  And the Democrats are still falling for it.  When will they ever learn?  Obviously, never.

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by: raj @ Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 01:57:03 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Useful history (0.00 / 0)

My take on the Truman era, the Dolchstosslegende, and Iran is similar. The only place I'd differ is after 1974. The Right's take on Vietnam was never that it lacked funding. They felt our approach was insufficiently murderous.  We hear a lot of complaints about how the military was held in check by political types. It's as if the goal of the war were simply murder and had we murdered another million Vietnamese there would be peace.

On Iran, it is interesting to note that Iran threw the British out completely, the British asked the Truman Administration to intervene, they refused, and it was the Eisenhower Administration that gave the CIA the green light to overthrow Iranian democracy.

I doubt South Africa regards itself to be the regional enforcer.

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by: KBusch @ Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 11:04:09 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

JFK (0.00 / 0)

In the 1950s, it was of vital importance that Western Europe believe-- and that the USSR believe-- that the USA would regard a Soviet invasion of Western Europe to be tantamount to an invasion of North America, and respond accordingly.  If the Europeans did not believe us, they would be less inclined to rely on American support for their security, and we would have had a re-militarized Europe not dissimilar from that of July, 1914, which did not work out all that well.  If the Soviets did not believe us, then they might have been far more inclined to employ their huge advantage in conventional arms to invade Europe, with cataclysmic consequences.

The single most important facet of American foreign policy at the time was therefore to maintain a CREDIBLE threat of retaliation in the event of a Soviet strike in Europe.

JFK made the mistake--under pressure from those who regarded the entire globe to be vital-- of putting American credibility on the line in Southeast Asia.  The general importance placed on absolute credibility at the ime justified an awful lot of the "good money after bad" decision-making-- withdrawal would undermine credibility.  Then, once the ball was rolling, you had a reluctance to tell all the Gold Star mothers "oops! We never should have done this!" Which then led to Kerry's famous quote.

Bush replicated this mistake by (i) diving the entire world into cops and robbers, and (ii) embarking on a policy that required all robbers to be treated as if "vital."  In this sense, post 9/11 hyseria mirrored the red scares of the 1950s.  The issue of maintaining credibility has been replaced with the issue of "not looking weak, because it just encourages terrorists."  Both seem to require the commitment of force at a level that is not based in reality.

In reality, American strategic interests in the region-- Gulf Oil supplies-- were well-protected by the "no fly zone."  That would have meant leaving Saddam in place, even if he continued to torture and gas his own population, and focusing energies on containing and destroying the terrorist network in Afghanistan.

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by: CentralMassDad @ Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 13:50:44 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

I'm sorry, but this is highly dubious... (0.00 / 0)

In the 1950s, it was of vital importance that Western Europe believe-- and that the USSR believe-- that the USA would regard a Soviet invasion of Western Europe to be tantamount to an invasion of North America...

Reference: the Marshall Plan (1947 et seq; there's a lot of history there which we haven't gone into) and the Berlin Airlift (1948 and so forth).  The idea that there was a fear in West Europe that the Americans were going to abandon them is--how shall I put it?--nonsense.

This

Bush replicated this mistake by (i) diving the entire world into cops and robbers, is largely correct. 

But you have to understand the Manichaen mentality of much of the American electorate.  There is good, and there is evil.  Americans like to believe that they are of necessity good, of course, and they believe that others are of necessity evil, of course.  It's not true, of course, and therein lies the rub.

I hate to use the term, but, what is the Republicans' Endloesung--their final goal?  (OK, Endziel)  What do they want to accomplish?  Do they actually know what they want to accomplish?  I sincerely doubt it.  They certainly haven't articulated it.

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by: raj @ Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 17:05:54 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

I'll have to disagree (0.00 / 0)

The entire nuclear balance hung on the credible willingness of the US to absorb nucelar warheads over NYC and Washington in order to defend Munich, Hamburg, Paris and Rotterdam.

At the time, we were just a few years removed from a cataclsmic European war, the first few years of which the Americans judiciously decided to sit out.  The USA didn't exactly leap to the defense of France in 1940, so why should France have been expected to trust us to leap to their defense in the face of Soviet, rather than Nazi, agression?  Marshall Plan money was nice, but so was Lend-Lease money.  Money doesn't have the same emotional impact as a cloud of B-17s droning overhead en route to the Ruhr Valley, or Higgins Boats filled with American youth hitting the Normandy shoreline.

  Convincing Western Europe that the US would be in a third European War from Day 1 was a major-- maybe THE major-- challenge in the early Cold War.  After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was clear to everyone that the scale of a new European war would dwarf even that of 1939-45. How many millions of American civilian casulaties would we be willing to suffer in order to defend those who, a mere decade previously, were the worst bad guys ever?

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by: CentralMassDad @ Fri Aug 24, 2007 at 09:04:31 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

I Could Not Believe It. (6.00 / 1)

Bush actually admitting that there are similariites between the Iraq war and the Vietnam war even though he got the comparison wrong.  I happen to be in the middle of reading a book about the Vietnam war that was published in 1981- The Ten Thousand Day War Vietnam: 1945-1975, by Michael Maclear.  (It was the basis for a t.v. show with the same name.)  I was just saying to a friend of mine the other night that the book describes a number of situations that are similar to what has happened, or is happening, in the Iraq war. For example, according to the book, so many people warned against going into Vietnam and then against staying in Vietnam and we went and we stayed anyway.  Sound familiar? 

The most surprising thing I have learned so far is that Ho Chi Minh and his army actually helped the U.S. fight the Japanese at the end of WWII.  Then when he declared independence for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on Sept. 2, 1945, he borrowed these words from the U.S. Declaration of Independence,

All men are created equal.  They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Soon after, the French returned and the long, sad war began. 

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by: TheOpenSociety @ Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 00:04:04 AM CDT

it's consistent (0.00 / 0)

He and his people have done well going after the strength of their opponents.

Ask McCain, Kerry and the diplomacy eggsperts.

They've had the guts/insanity to do it. They've shown tremendous discipline to the message.

And people have bought into it.

They are the Wal-Mart of Presidential administrations.

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I am noternie.

More than a full year's worth of blogginess at  Someday I Will.

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by: noternie @ Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 09:17:21 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Re: Vietnam (0.00 / 0)

I would first say that the US had successfully routed the VC by 1970 essentially ending the insurgency in SV, we did this by finally agreeing to land reforms that ended peasent support for the VC and really cracking down on the abuses and excesses of the undemocratic SV regime. After that in 1972 US airpower and the SVA successfully repelled the Norths invasion, and then the Paris talks eliminated the US air power allowing the North to regroup and invade again in 1975, without US airpower they succeeded.

The only parallel here is that the US is in a similar position in the sense that the "Iraqi Government" depends on the US for its survival and as soon as the US leaves the Malaki government will topple and collapse into the various sectarian factions, and from the looks of it taht might happen before we leave. While there are very interesting analogies between the two wars they are in fact completely different wars.

The Iraq War is far more similar to the Bosnian conflict than the US effort in Vietnam, with the US essentially referring the conflict like the UN did. Its a three sided sectarian war much like Bosnia, and not an insurgency vs government civil war as it was once portrayed, and what essentially the Vietnam War was.

So they way to "win" the war is basically to allow one side to successfully ethnically cleanse Bagdhad and then use the cease fire lines as the new borders for a federated Iraq. The only reason Kurdistan is stable is because there are too few Shiites and Sunnis to fight the Kurds in the North.

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by: jconway @ Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 13:06:52 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Minor nit to a more interesting comment (0.00 / 0)

The Kurds are not a religious group. They are an ethnic group. It might be more accurate to say "because there are too few Arabs to fight the Kurds in the North."

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by: KBusch @ Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 16:47:41 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Point taken (0.00 / 0)

The main point of seperation would be ethnic rather than religious, though there are a lot of Kurds that are not Muslim creating a religious difference as well.

In either case this only continues to show that the conflict is more analogous to Bosnia than Iraq since there are clear ethnic and religious divisions keeping the groups apart. They are not a united front against a corrupt regime backed by a major power like the VC were. Arguably the insurgency initially was like this and ironically Cheney was right when he said it was "in its last throes" but in the sense that it started targeting other Iraqis and had expanded into a sectarian civil war, not in the sense that it had been defeated.

Vietnam was never a sectarian civil war which is why its not productive to compare it with Iraq, Iraq will have far more reprecussions for the region and the world than Vietnam did. The only reason Vietnam still seems worse is that more Americans died, and one could argue were we fighting this war with Vietnam era technology our casualties would exceed that of the Vietnam war.

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by: jconway @ Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 18:28:51 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

You raise an interesting issue, but... (0.00 / 0)

The Kurds are not a religious group. They are an ethnic group. It might be more accurate to say "because there are too few Arabs to fight the Kurds in the North."

"Arab" is not an ethnic group, it is a language.  There are many ethnic groups subsumed under the appellation "Arab."

Regarding the Kurdish occupied regions, as far as I can tell there are at least four groups jokeying for power in various regions in northern Iraq.  Two predominantly Kurdish groups, including the PKK and another whose acronym I don't remember.  And the Turkmen in east Kurdistan.  And Kurds and Arabs around Kirkuk(!) the heart of the oil-rich region in northern Iraq.  It isn't quite as simple as you suggest.

Going south a bit, there are two Shi'ite groups volleying for power, including al-Sadr's Mahdi militia and SCHIRI's Badr Corps (the latter being the heart of al-Maliki's power).  It is unlikely that al-Maliki will be in power much longer, but who is going to replace his government?  It is ironic that the Mahdi militia has been less close to the Iranians, than the Badr Corps, but the Americans have been supporting the Iranian-closer Badr Corps over the Mahdhi.  What in hell is that supposed to mean?

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by: raj @ Fri Aug 24, 2007 at 05:21:03 AM CDT

[ Parent ]