as BushCo™ continue their attempts to rewrite the history of Vietnam; which has been, and will continue to be, judged as a massive failure; to somehow justify his continuing refusal to acknowledge reality, and accept that the only solution is withdrawal, in his weekly radio address, Max Cleland takes exception, and lays it out for the absurd bs that it is.
transcript of Cleland’s rebuttal/response to the broadcast follows…
Former Sen. Max Cleland, D-Ga.: My fellow Americans, this is Max Cleland, former U.S. senator from Georgia.
This week, President Bush gave a speech comparing the ongoing war in Iraq to the Vietnam War. He used this analogy in his latest plea to the American people for yet more time to continue his war.
I know something about the Vietnam War. I know something about the price that was paid for continuing that war long after it was clear we could not succeed. I know something about years of war failing to produce a stable, secure and democratic country.
I know something about enemy attacks increasing and taking an ever higher toll on our troops. Fifty-eight thousand young Americans were killed in Vietnam; 350,000 were wounded. I was one of them.
There are similarities between the war in Iraq and the war in Vietnam. One of the lessons to be learned from Vietnam is that the commitment of American military strength alone cannot solve another country’s political weakness. This should be a somber warning to us all to responsibly end the war in Iraq and the additional loss of precious American lives.
Congress has required the president to issue a report soon on the state of the war. This assessment gives him yet another opportunity to do the right thing and change course in Iraq.
Unfortunately, it appears he will continue to argue that, if the American people and the U.S. Congress will just be patient, things will work out. He is likely to say that, given more time, victory is just around the corner. He is likely to argue that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
But like political leaders during the Vietnam era, this president has a “credibility gap.” The majority of Americans see a profound difference between President Bush’s optimistic rhetoric and the grim reality which lies beneath. Our history in Vietnam and the facts on the ground in Iraq today prove the American people are right.
How do I know? Because I’ve seen this movie before. I know how it ends. I know that all the P.R. in the world didn’t change the truth on the ground in Vietnam and won’t change the truth on the ground today in Iraq.
What is this truth? The truth is that more than 3,700 Americans have already lost their lives, more than 20,000 have been wounded, and nearly $500 billion in American taxpayer funds have been expended.
The truth is that, despite this enormous sacrifice, we find ourselves mired in a civil war with no end in sight and Iraqis unable or unwilling to make the political decisions necessary to end this conflict.
And the truth is President Bush’s decision to go to war and stay at war has actually encouraged thousands of new recruits for Al Qaida in Iraq and around the world, has made the Middle East and other parts of the globe less safe, has alienated the Muslim world and allowed Al Qaida — the enemy that attacked this nation six years ago — a chance to rebuild and restore its terror network.
These are the facts. But the facts will not stop the president and his fellow Republicans from trying once again to sell the American people a bill of goods on the Iraq war.
The failures in Iraq are not the fault of our troops or their courage in battle. They have done everything asked of them and more. The conflict in Iraq is an Iraqi political problem, not a U.S. military problem.
We can’t continue to sacrifice American lives, deplete our treasury and weaken our national security. We can’t expect our soldiers to continue to risk their lives, especially when the Iraqi leaders themselves show no interest in achieving a peaceful political solution.
President Bush’s report to Congress will attempt to show that his escalation has produced improved security in certain parts of Iraq. But it will ignore the stark truth in Iraq: that his overall strategy to buy time for Iraqis to make the needed political decisions has failed and, just like Vietnam, we are enmeshed now in an open-ended war for which our troops and our country will pay the price for decades to come.
That’s why we must act now. This fall, Democrats in Congress will continue to stand with our troops and with the American people to remember the lessons of history and end the Iraq war.
transcript via faux news
and we all know how it ends.
l’m afraid Max is far more optimistic about the prospects for a change in the d‘s behaviour than l.
lTMF’sA
Sad to say, dada, I have to agree with you on this one.
don’t look for any change.
Bush has been enabled by revisionist historians to make the Vietnam comparison.
didn’t you know that Bush reads or someone reads for him The Weekly Standard; Mark Moyar; Lewis Sorley; James Wilson and others?
The theme of the happy happy warmongers: ‘we did not lose the Vietnam war – we lost the will to win.’
This spin is published in The Sunday Times, UK – (may I remind, a Murdock property.)
Vietnam historians give Bush reason to stay in Iraq
From your link the revisionists argument is:
So we dropped more bombs on Vietnam then we dropped on Germany in WWII. But had we just bombed more in 1975 we would have won. Won forever? For a week a year? 58,000 dead. How many more would have to die to win for two years? How many Vietnamese?
We are inside the looking glass. How can one country be so stupid twice in forty years?
The movie is coming out on DVD in the Sept. report. A few scenes were reshot, but it`s the same poorly written plot. Basically it`s a rerun.
How utterly stupid, that there are some who`ll buy it because of the new shiney packageing, even though it`s being sold by the same huckster that burned them before.
I often think about a statement made by Tommy Franks at the beginning of this war when I try to get my head around the fact that this war is in it’s 5th year already. It was a general response to questions by soldiers as to how long it would be before they could come home once the battles began. His answer was, the road home goes through Baghdad. As if to say, you take that city and you head home. I still can’t decide if it was American hubris and naivete or a collosal lie. Either way it reeks of Westmoreland and the Vietnam experience.
There’s a piece in today’s New York Times Magazine about how junior officers (captains, the ones who actually do the fighting and so have direct experience of what’s going on) are disdainful of the generals running this war, for not having battle experience and for being afraid to speak the truth to their civilian masters: Challenging the Generals (registration required, unfortunately).
Thanks,
I’m registered.
I imagine that this kind of criticism of commanders, military and civilian, is nothing new or unique to this war. But this being the first internet war the criticism seems magnified because so much more of it goes public. From a strictly operational angle I guess this could be seen as not so good a thing for the functionality of the military, but as a means to exert pressure on the command, keep them somewhat in check and as a way to break the government propaganda efforts it’s been invaluable for those who have the courage to speak out to have a resource to do it with.
Should I do my General Abizaid said?