I had my Scooby Doo moment for the day when President Bush, speaking in Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi, said there were lessons to be learned from the
divisive Vietnam war:
We
tend to want there to be instant success in the world, and the task in
Iraq is going to take awhile . . .We’ll succeed unless we quit.
What
in God’s name is he talking about? I realize W missed the last
few months of his time with the Air National Guard during the Vietnam
War, but I had not realized, until now, that he completely ignored what
happened in Vietnam. Mr. President. We fought in Vietnam
for more than twelve years. More than two million U.S. soldiers
fought there. Almost 57,000 American soldiers died and several
hundred thousand were wounded. We trained hundreds of thousands
of South Vietnamese troops, we killed almost one million North
Vietnamese and Viet Cong, we dropped more explosives on Vietnam then we
used during World War II, and we defolitated significant portions of
Vietnam’s rain forest.
And what did we achieve in the end? The United States fled the
South Vietnamese capital, Saigon, to escape the invading North
Vietnamese Army. North Vietnam “freed” the South from yankee
imperialists and set about “reeducating” the South Vietnamese.
News flash George. WE LOST!
So,
what lesson are we to draw from all of this? Are you arguing that
if we had stuck it out in Vietnam and spilled the blood of another
50,000 Americans and one million Vietnamese that things would be better
today in Vietnam? Mr. President, that is bullshit.
The
lesson of Vietnam for our policy in Iraq is that we should not waste
the blood or limb of one more American soldier without a clear vision
and plan of what we are trying to achieve. Most of the violence
we face today is from indigenous Iraqis who see us as occupiers.
The insurgents may not agree among themselves what the future of Iraq
should be politically, but they are united in expelling us from the
country.
We shed precious blood and treasure in Vietnam and then we abandoned
the South Vietnamese to the North. Politicians in that day issued
dire warnings that our retreat from Vietnam would lead to the communist
takeover of Southeast Asia. That never happened. Instead,
Vietnam developed on its own, fought a war with China, and is now
adopting capitalism rather than communism as its model for
growth. So much for falling dominoes.
There are several applicable lessons from Vietnam relative to
Iraq. The Vietnamese actually had first rate military units that
could fight on their on. Iraq’s military and police forces are
essentially proxies for sectarian militia groups. Putting our
troops in the midst of a civil war or war of national liberation
without the force structure and size to confront the threat is a futile
expenditure of U.S. lives. You have either forgotten or never
learned that the deaths of 57,000 Americans in Vietnam achieved nothing
other than inflicting sorrow and suffering on their surviving family
members.
At this point in Iraq our focus must be on counterinsurgency and
restoration of electricity, sewer, and potable water for the
population. The United States must shift the perception that we
are a foregin occupier and persuade the Iraqis through action that we
are getting the hell out. Otherwise, if you stay the course,
you’ll wake up in November of 2008 and be faced with 5000 dead
Americans and an Iraq shattered by sectarian strife.
Here’s a suggestion Mr. President. In your reading competition
with Karl Rove, drop the Shakespeare and read some current
history. Stanley Karnow’s, VIETNAM: A HISTORY, is worth your time.
Hey Booman, chin up!
Missed Vietnam? That’s Our Bush!
Completely adddled about American history of the tinme? That’s Our Bush!
Amen.
A distant Hoosier cousin of mine was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. He said he never talked to anyone, not even his son, about it, about his lost friends. Vietnam still hurts.
I had a Vietnamese client, a woman who came to California and raised her children while her husband, an officer in the South Vietnamese army, was transferred from one prison to another. Fifteen years later, he joined her; they were practically strangers, having changed so much. He was happy to get a part-time job at a pet shop cleaning rabbit cages. [BTW, while in North Vietnam in 1980 he saw a fellow prisoner who was American.] Vietnam still hurts.
Bush is too shallow and arrogant to fathom Vietnam. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have disregarded its lessons from the get-go. It’s beyond his ken, too, that Vietnam still hurts.
Everybody look what’s going down.
There was Bush in Vietnam, blabbering about how it was this example of how democracy and capitalism could transform a country, and then he goes off on how its also a lesson on why we have to stay the course. Which we didn’t in Vietnam. So the lesson is, get the hell out.
I’ve tried to resist, but there is finally no reasonable doubt that Bush is literally, clinically, insane. Last I checked, that’s grounds for impeachment. AKA self-defense.
you’re so hitting the nail on the head Mr. Johnson. The lesson from the Vietnam war must be learn from previous mistakes and move on.
Larry, you’re still mired in the “reality-based” conception of the world. I recognize the ‘mythic truth’ that Bush is tapping into, and it’s an old message aimed at his core.
As the story goes: we didn’t lose militarily, but rather, we lost our will. Moreover, it was precisely at the point when we were poised to win, right after Tet, that leftists (Kerry, et al) destroyed our chance to win through protests and other methods. Great powers don’t lose wars, they are ‘stabbed in the back,’ as explained in this Harper’s article:
http://harpers.org/StabbedInTheBack.html
Bush’s ‘reality’ may have empirical problems but its truth is rooted in a conservative world-view, where wars are won by adopting the correct attitude. Discrepancies between the world-view and reality must be rationalized, therefore, theories such as “we lost because politicians tied the general’s hands” work to seal the rift and preserve the world-view by providing a rationalization that leaves the belief intact.
Unlike Cognitive Dissonance, in which the ego is defended, it is the world-view that is threatened by the truth. And that world-view must be defended at all costs. But like Cognitive Dissonance, discrepancies are eliminated by inventing wild theories or creating fantastic stories about previously held beliefs. An example of this would be all the neocons who’ve recently announced that they never actually supported the war!
Therefore; the WMDs had to exist, if they can’t be found, then they must have been moved. If we’re losing the war in Iraq, then it must be because Iran is undercutting us. If they don’t like us, then it’s because they have been brainwashed, and so on and so on.
[An excellent source for futher information on this general topic is the writing of John Jost, many of his papers can be found in the following link]
SYSTEM JUSTIFICATION THEORY, etc. – http://www.psych.nyu.edu/jost/
Doesn’t Bush have to believe that we won in Vietnam, given that his participation in the military was so “helpful” to the armed forces effort there?
(Side note: Consider this. What if Bush had gone to Vietnam? Can you imagine him in charge of a group of men in the manner of, say, John Kerry? Wouldn’t that have likely been a great show of leadership? But I digress.)
This past week I had a new grad student in my office. Came out of Vietnam as a small child on a boat. Lost at least one sibling and one cousin in that frightening journey. The grad student has been a great addition to our country, and I’m very glad she is here. But oh, that “victory” in Vietnam – she certainly doesn’t see it.
George is. He cannot even deliver the lines the puppetmaster has whispered in his ear. It only goes to prove those teachers way back in elementary school that told us anyone can be President. I thought they were kidding and now look what we have.