Bush Accused of Twisting History Over Iraq, Asia War Links
Experts say that US President George W. Bush may be misrepresenting history when he drew a parallel between the bloody wars Americans fought in East Asia to the current US “war on terror” to back his case for maintaining US troops in Iraq.
The US leader on Wednesday likened the “terrorists” who wage war in Iraq to the communist forces in Korea and Vietnam and imperial Japanese army, and warned that a hasty Iraq withdrawal would trigger a bloodbath like the one in Southeast Asia after the US defeat and retreat from Vietnam.
Bush spoke ahead of a key September assessment of military strategy, and amid mounting calls from a war-weary public to pull US troops out of Iraq. More than 3,700 US troops have died in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion.
Bush especially argued that the rapid US pullout from Vietnam in 1973 was to blame for millions of deaths in that country and the rise of the murderous Khmer Rouge communist regime in neighboring Cambodia.
A similar catastrophe may befall the Middle East if the 162,000 US troops pull out from the war in Iraq, he warned.
“Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left,” Bush told a group of cheering American war veterans in Kansas City, Missouri.
“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.’”
More than half a million US troops fought for South Vietnam against the communist North during the peak of the war, which left more than 58,000 of them dead before Washington’s humiliating pullout.
“My understanding of the history of the Vietnam war and the lessons of that differs rather dramatically from Mr Bush’s,” Robert Hathaway, an Asian expert at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, told AFP.
Hathaway said that despite the eight-year US military involvement and its heavy casualties in Vietnam, Washington was still unable to create popular support in the south for a government that was widely considered to be corrupt and unpopular.
South Vietnam collapsed in 1975 not because American forces had withdrawn, but because the South Vietnamese and their army simply did not care enough about their government to fight in its defense, he said. The North Vietnamese simply walked almost unopposed into Saigon.
“So one of the lessons, at least for me, is the American tragedy in Vietnam is that military force by an outside power — a power that many people in Vietnam viewed as an occupying force — was not sufficient to create the political conditions for genuinely popular government in South Vietnam nor the political will to fight for that government,” Hathaway said.
“Another lesson of Vietnam is that combination of great power and good intentions is not necessarily sufficient for America to impose its will on others,” he added.
Retired US Brigadier General John Johns, an expert on counter-insurgency who served in Vietnam, said Bush was “cherry-picking” history to support his case for staying the course in Iraq.
“What I learned in Vietnam is that US forces could not conduct a counterinsurgency operation. The longer we stay there, the worse it’s going to get,” he said.
Steven Simon of the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations, echoed the comments.
Bush “emphasized the violence in the wake of American withdrawal from Vietnam. But this happened because the United States left too late, not too early,” he said.
“It was the expansion of the war that opened the door to Pol Pot and the genocide of the Khmer Rouge. The longer you stay the worse it gets,” he said.
About 1.7 million Cambodians died during the Pol Pot-led Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror from 1975 to 1979.
Historian Robert Dallek, who had compared the wars in Iraq and Vietnam, accused Bush of twisting history.
“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 told the Los Angeles Times.
“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,” he said. The disaster in Iraq “is the consequence of going in, not getting out,” he added.
Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse
so he’s wrong yet again, and what… we’re supposed to be surprised?
he’s been wrong at every turn, and this country can no longer afford to have this corrupt regime in power.
dick n bush inc. should be removed from office, sooner than possible, either by impeachment or “other” means.
This LITTLE MAN makes money for corportions. Thus our politicians from both parties follow his lead. The price is being paid by the PEOPLE of Amercia.
You know who we are . . . “We The People” . . .
Please note that this article comes from France now American Media.
I guess the war loked different to the “ne’do well” Junior Bush from behind his Daddy’s coatails in an Alabama Bar.
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canuckchuck August 23rd, 2007 1:01 pm
I guess the war loked different to the “ne’do well” Junior Bush from behind his Daddy’s coatails in an Alabama Bar.
SPOT-ON….CORRECT….
How come Bu$h is all of a sudden an expert on Vietnam History????? This is the same individual who was AWOL from National Guard Service!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Too bad the headline doesn’t read “Bush Twisting History Again in Effort to Justify Continuing Iraqi Holocaust.”
Always remember that “W” now stands for “Worst” as in “Worst president in American history”.
karlof1 (Too bad the headline doesn’t read “Bush Twisting History Again in Effort to Justify Continuing Iraqi Holocaust.”) is correct. But at least this French news notes that some people know Bush is twisting history.
In the phony journalism practiced at the NYT, Bush’s absurd pronouncements get front-and-center treatment, while the objective fact that he is a serial liar who has been wrong about everything is not the story.
Somehow, in U.S corporate journalism, pointing out the objective fact that he avoided military service during the U.S. war in Vietnam would be “partisan”. But plastering his ridiculous blather all over the front page, without context or critical analysis, is “objective”.
He is laying the ground for expanding this criminal violence to Iran within the next 6 months. According to GARETH PORTER, an historian and investigative journalist, specialist in U.S. military and foreign policy, he was the director of the Indo-China resource centre, in an interview with Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman:
“Dick Cheney, we know, is determined to use the excuse of alleged Iranian training camps — that’s camps supposedly in Iran, where Hezbollah is training the troops of Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army — as an excuse to attack Iran, with the hope that the Iranians would then retaliate and make possible then a strategic attack against Iran’s — not only the nuclear fatalities, but against economic and military targets. The aim of the Bush administration is to weaken Iran as a power in the Middle East.”
Regime change is necessary to remove these criminals who are an immanent and real threat to global security. Yes, I’m talking about Bush and Cheney.
I was surprised to find that this analysis was written about today in the Los Angeles Times in a story by James Gerstenzang and Maura Reynolds. Historian Robert Dallek is quoted there as well.
The article has some nice quotes about Viet Nam but doesn’t really say much about the Khmer Rouge. I believe we killed 300,000 Cambodians in the early ’70’s when Nixon expanded bombing to that country without telling Congress; this was revealed during the Watergate hearings. So it seems logical to make a connection between this and the Khmer Rouge, though I’m not an expert in Cambodian history.
It’s also hard to see what role US forces might have had in suppressing the Khmer Rouge, if they had wanted to. But I suppose there’s some time overlap between the Khmer Rouge and the war, and I would be interested to hear about the relationship between the two, if someone knows–
Everything is just another toy train set for this chickenshit mutt. Between Bush and Cheney they have logged -0- combat time. Somehow this serves to qualify them as genuine experts. The prize is the Iraqi oil — the war is about subjugating We the People.
The largest number of deaths that occurred when we pulled out of Vietnam, was a giant USAF C-5A cargo aircraft crashed on takeoff and all 500 plus orphans we were saving from the evil North Vietnamese were killed. After we left Vietnam, the country was united. The bombings and use of Agent Orange ceased. The killing ceased and now look at Vietnam. They may be better off than we are under the rule of our self annointed dictator.
The Khmer Rouge were a very minor factor in Cambodia, until the NIxon/MacNamarra, group began the secret bombings and use of AC-130A, Spectre gunships there.
The Bush Military Junta lied about the threat to the US from Iraq to start the war now they’re lying about why we should stay. The statement by Robert Hathaway; “South Vietnam collapsed in 1975 not because American forces had withdrawn, but because the South Vietnamese and their army simply did not care enough about their government to fight in its defense, he said. The North Vietnamese simply walked almost unopposed into Saigon.” I know this is true because I, as door guuner on a Huey, had to throw the RVN soldiers off of my ship after landing in the L.Z. They did not want to fight anybody much less defend the corrupt Thieu puppet regime. Bush does not understand this or care because he avoided going Viet Nam by first joining the Texas Air Farce then going AWOL. To compare the war in Iraq with Korea, Viet Nam and WWII is ludicrous. The Bush Military Junta was planning to invade Iraq before 9/11 and one of the top reasons was make Bush a war president in order to increase his dictatorial powers. We need to stop these devils.
The 500 children killed in the air crash in Vietnam was the offspring of US servicemen there…not only did we intercourse the country…we did the same to the women as well…Shades of Iraq now…ruin the economy and then buy the women young girls and boys to service our debauched members of military serving there…I see on other sites the going rate for sex in Iraq is $1…oh what a lovely war…and when we do leave(get tossed out)the mixed race children will be once again left behind to fend for themselves…isn’t DE Mock Racism wonderfull
Millions died because we pulled out? Add those that died when we were there and wonder — maybe the total died because we were there in the first place!
citizen a August 23rd, 2007 11:21 am
“so he’s wrong yet again,”
It’s not a question of being wrong. He’s simply lying, again. It’s never been about being wrong. It’s always been about lies. He lies, blatantly and purposefully, every time he opens his arrogant mouth.
He’s not even a good liar like Rummy is RoundAbout. He’s wrong when he lies and wrong when he doesn’t. Well, ___ at least he’s consistant.
Twisted, yes! More like a Republican Guardian Knot! But the tortuous lying and torturous dying only tighten the binds around his life in hellbound hypocritical betrayal of Leviticus 19:11 and the Big Ten.
Good god, how is it possible that this moron who mouths the lies, and badly, that his overpaid, paid by us mind you, speechwriters feed him is cheered on by a fawning pack of old warrior fools with the souvenir buttons in their legionnaire piss cutters. The heartland is still overflowing with a fearful, self deluding, and hateful population that seems oblivious to the anti-social, politically extreme, and vile moral outrages that this predatory pack of elected national officials and their supporting cast of self serving, self promoting, incompetent troop of administrative appointees have been raining upon us all for at least the last seven years, if not more? It frightens me to know that there are still so many.
I keep reading about how Bush went AWOL from the Air National Guard. I thought AWOL is when they eventually return to their post. He never returned. In my court, that’s DESERTION in a time of war! Don’t they execute deserters?
Do you want to do something about this? This will be an eye-catcher. Go out and rent the movie, “Full metal jacket”. Do your computer magic and make a clip show for YOUTUBE. Make a montage with the indifferent, hateful, attitudes of the soldiers, toward the “gooks”; blend that with a few clips of idiot king Bush. But now here’s the kicker. In order for it to get seen by the millions of mind-numb zombies of americans, you need to title it in the bases of all terms. And that movie has it. Remember that classic scene, “Me so horny, me love you long time”. Who knows? You’re internet addicted teenager, might even ask you about the Vietnam war.
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“joelsundseth August 23rd, 2007 3:09 pm
The article has some nice quotes about Viet Nam but doesn’t really say much about the Khmer Rouge. I believe we killed 300,000 Cambodians in the early ’70’s when Nixon expanded bombing to that country without telling Congress; this was revealed during the Watergate hearings. So it seems logical to make a connection between this and the Khmer Rouge, though I’m not an expert in Cambodian history.
It’s also hard to see what role US forces might have had in suppressing the Khmer Rouge, if they had wanted to. But I suppose there’s some time overlap between the Khmer Rouge and the war, and I would be interested to hear about the relationship between the two, if someone knows–”
If you want to find out about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, how they came to power etc. all you have to do is google Pol Pot. wikipedia (not always known for their accuracy but this article seems to not have been tampered with and to the best of my remembrance it is accurate) has an extensive article on it. The short of it is that oppression by Prince Nordom Sihanouk had more to do with Pol Pots rise than any American bombing did. In fact I was there when we went into Cambodia in 1970 and the incursion, at least where I was at, was done by infantry, not bombers, except for close air support. The mission was to locate and destroy caches of weapons and supplies that belonged to the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong that they had stashed there because they used Cambodia as a safe haven where we could not go after them.
Lobo Gris
A column by Gareth Porter on Huffington Post suggests that the US war in Vietnam effectively enabled Pol Pot and the Killing Fields:
“Had Richard Nixon chosen to negotiate a quick end to the war, the Vietnamese troops would have left Cambodia, Sihanouk probably would have remained in power and Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge would probably have remained a footnote to history.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-gareth-porter/bushs-killing-fields-a_b_61577.html
Bush is getting desperate! He knows he can’t forestall the withdrawal forever. So he has to come up with some other lie to spoon feed the American people to stop them from demanding troop withdrawal’s. All this nonsense is another one of his infantile head games. His days are numbered. He is a sad pathetic figure of a man and always has been. People are sick of his war and he knows it. So he is only doing what comes normal for a ’snake in the grass’!
Do you really think Bush is brainy enough to have a clue what’s really going on?
I think he just smiles and reads speeches somebody writes for him. If you were to ask him to show you where Vietnam was on a world map, do you think he could even find it?
He’s a puppet.
Americans are being set up.
The U.S. will not leave Iraq. There are many U.S. military bases in Iraq and American soldiers will be there for many decades to come.
After the Americans left Vietnam, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and overthrew the Khmer rouge. The Killing Fields were not the result of our leaving Vietnam. They were the result of our destabilizing the Cambodian government.