President Bush Says Iraq Will Be Worth It...Cuz

Speaking today at the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Kansas City, President Bush compared the current conflict in Iraq with Vietnam. But he meant it in a good way.

Attempting to shore up support for Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri "Good Guy" Al-Maliki, the President asserted that America's previous wars in Vietnam and Korea also lost popular support, but in the long run proved worthwhile, leading to lasting peace.

The war in Iraq, like the Vietnam War, will eventually be worth it because:

• We don't want the Middle East to become a giant suicide-bombing, journalist-beheading, cartoon-hating madrasa that September 11ths us every 5-10 years.
• We need the oil. No one wants to talk about it, but we do. Priuses don't just run on happy thoughts.
• Eventually, someone's bound to make a cool movie about this thing.
• Pass.

Comments

[booker52]

Gee, now Bu$h wants to compare it to Viet Nam, a place he never went to, a place Cheney got out of going to as well!!! Damn chicken hawks!!!! Easy to keep sending everyone else it seems. He really should read history, like WWII, cuz if we do like he said, we would have to really clean house over there in Iraq. So, yet once again, maybe his spouse (like the school teacher that she is) might want to have him crack a book or two!!!

[oafishcad]

We can't leave yet. We haven't found Saddam's WMDs. That is the reason given for the war after all.

[Herrington]

Well heck, I know where the WMDs are. They are hiding under the beds of right wing soccer moms.

[Taan]

Any comment about a Bush speech must acknowledge that he did not write it, since his intellectual abilities do no stretch that far. You need only compare his off the cuff ramblings with the speeches to recognize the immediate difference. This is the man America placed in charge of the nation twice, although by devious means. The second time around, the warning bells should have been deafening. When you take such a "leader" and multiply it by an entire Administration, the results can only lead to gross errors which will take generations to remedy. For the dead and maimed, this will not happen in our lifetime.

[Taan]

Any comment about a Bush speech must necessarily acknowledge that George W. Bush did not write it, since his intellectual abilities do not stretch that far. You need only compare his off the cuff ramblings with the speeches to see the immediate difference. This is the man America placed in charge of the nation twice, although by devious means. The second time around, the warning bells should have been deafening. When you take such a "leader" and multiply that by an entire Administration, the results can only lead to gross errors which will take generations to remedy. For the dead and maimed, this will not happen in our lifetime.

[burndoutxs]

The 58,000 deaths of our troops are nothing compared to the losses of the civilian population of Southeast Asia. According to a conservative estimate by McNamara, as many as 3.5 million were killed by our bullets, bombs, Napalm, etc. And for some reason they still did not respect us militarily or morally.

The question to ask Bush and war supporters is how many Iraqis must be killed to "win"? At what point will they surrender and lick our boots? The obvious answer to the latter is Never.

[Kungfublood]

Good because no one in his family served in the wars while making billions of dollars from the deaths of innocents.

[CountryBeforeParty]

And how's this for factually inaccurate­...

The Killing Fields were in Cambodia, not Vietnam.

And, by the way, Vietnam went in to Cambodia to try and take out the Khmer Rouge regime.

Yes, there were killings, a lot of killings, after we left. But you know what else happened after we left?

The country unified.

[cowalker]

But, but "Killing Fields" is such a cool phrase. Sticks in your mind long after the timetables and the names of leaders have gotten hazy. What do you think, Bush got a history degree from Yale or something?

[BuckBurris]

Ah! the wonderful wisdom of Wipe Bush.
Do you recall how he pranced, giggled, and said, "Feels good!" as he left his primp session to announce his invasion of Iraq?
Now the used assWipe wants more and more to bleed and die for his Bosses, those shitty Neocons.

[realpolitic]

Bush is obviously right, we were not in Vietnam long enough. We were only there for a decade or so. Another decade and we would have shown success! What's another ten years and 50,000 lives.

[oafishcad]

He could have protected the skys over Texas from Viet Cong another 10 years.

[waiguoren]

Iraq is the Bush war. He has said it himself. He has gotten everything he has asked for from Congress, and then some.
This does not prevent bitter old gung-hoers from even now saying, "The goddamn liberals are losing this war !" I've heard this many times.
Was a war ever lost without "We wuz stabbed in the back," as an excuse for the real culprits?

[Sundialsvc4]

Be very careful not to belittle your enemy, because with a stroke of his imperial pen he can conscript "any Person from age 18 to 42" (look up the Uniform National Service Act of 2007, on thomas.loc.gov) and suddenly the war will be .. for you, your wife, your son, AND your daughter .. very real indeed.

This man is no Texan. He moved to Texas from Maine, under the same set of false and hollow pretenses which govern every single thing he does. This is one of the world's most dangerous men, and his right-hand man is no better.

In the years immediately preceding "World War: Episode One" and "Two," plenty of folks were content to say that they could not smell blood in the air; that everything was going along as it should; that there was nothing at all to be afraid of. Yes, they said that in those days.

I think that we should stop "thinking small." Don't think 'Nam or Korea; those were merely regional wars. Think big. Think "World War, Episode Three: The Return of the Nukes."

A war to seize the oil resources of the world is going to very soon consume the whole world. And we know from history that each Episode featured prominently the same technological innovation that stalled the previous one. We have an arsenal of literally thousands of nuclear weapons of all shapes and sizes, not just ICBMs. When "Episode Three" breaks out, they will be used.

So... where were you, and what were you doing, "Before The War?" What did you do to try and stop it? Why didn't you do more, much more? What WERE you thinking? Why WEREN'T you thinking??

[wndrwrthg]

Unlike the set piece wars that were WW I and II, Iraq, like Vietnam are wars that our military are ill equiped to fight. All of our might does no good against guerilla activity. These wars must be fought by the populace of the countries involved. Local peoples fighting to protect their homes and loved ones are the only ones capable of winning such a struggle. Our military, as capable and professional as it is, is geared toward an enemy of equal statis. Guerilla warfare is inherantly unwinable without the wholesale slaughter of ALL citizens in the area of operations. No standard military has succeded in winning this type of war, as history has proven. To have stayed in 'Nam would only have resulted in the further deaths of our troops.

[CaveatMagnusFrater]

One standard militaruy has succeded in this type of war. Ceasar's conquest of Gaul. He did as you say and killed large parts of the population and enslaved many more.

Synopsis from Wikpedia: Gaul was effectively conquered. As many as 1 million people (probably 1 in 4 of the Gauls) died, another million were enslaved, 300 tribes were subjugated and 800 cities were destroyed during the Gallic Wars. The entire population of city of Avaricum (Bourges) (40,000 in all) was slaughtered. During the Julius Caesar's campaign against the Helvetii (present-day Switzerland) approximately 60% of the tribe was destroyed, and another 20% was taken into slavery...­Gaul never regained its Celtic identity, never attempted another nationalist rebellion, and remained loyal to Rome until the fall of the Western Empire in 476.

mike

[Herrington]

Plenty of peoples have been conquered and subjugated over the course of history. The strategic flaw of many attempts to do so in the last two centuries is that the conquerors seemed not to have the stomach for wholesale brutal suppression of revolt. The Nazis, Stalin, and Mao had plenty of success. The Soviets lost in Afghanistan because they were politically unwilling to do what Stalin was willing to do. You just can’t suppress a revolt with democracy. Had we been as brutal as the Vietcong, things might have been different in Vietnam. But how would that have made a better world?

I think the Afghans have a particular mind set about war. It’s a job. They do not get all worked up and go for a total victory, but instead, show up to work, fire a few shots and go home, 9-5. War is a socially stable avocation for them, supported by the community, the religion and blind to incidental death tolls. So they, and now the Iraqi insurgency are using the same very sustainable strategy, a strategy that can’t be defeated by a conventional army whose goal is total victory unless you act more like Hitler than you do Eisenhower.

We lose 2-5 soldiers and spend 200 million dollars a day to occupy Iraq . Bin Laden knew that if we would attempt to get even for 9/11 by invading the middle east that it would ruin us, because of the way we fight. We should have known that too, but went ahead and did it anyway. He, with his rag tag band of a few thousand, is bringing this country to its knees with a strategy that was proven on the Soviets. With the perspective of time, bin Laden will be the most highly regarded military and political strategist of this century and it was a gift from W. W will go down in history as what he is, an idiot.

[BadChristian]

George the Uniter...

His plan is to refight every single fight in American history, and try to make sure that no one wins this time.

Then, like the vultures they are, they can turn loose the Privateers to pick through the rubble.

The Captains of Industry in America have been bumbling aristocrats for too long... Georgie is the perfect rep for them. Trickle down for money, blame grows from the bottom up. Bad apples are falling all around this tree.

[sdguppy]

Iraq IS like Vietnam in that we are fighting a Generation IV war with Generation II tactics. Sending our brave men out on "patrols" makes them the target in target practice for the enemy, the Iraqis just have different weapons.

Insurgents or whatever you call them know the land, the people and the plan. We cannot win over there so we'll cause more harm over here.

[opines]

Iraq is like Vietnam in that a Texan President used it to transfer taxpayer wealth to Brown & Root (LBJ) and Kellogg Brown & Root, now a subsidiary of Halliburton (GWB),

[LeftRight]

How did either Korea or Vietnam lead to long lasting peace, thus proving them worthwhile? Korea, we are still fighting it almost 55 years later, even though we don't have any deaths. Vietnam, the only reason that they are now a booming economy is that they were granted trading status by Clinton, and then only 20 years after we left. Both wars continued the cold war, and the cold war outlasted both of them. The only time we've really done well for peace was right after a given war in which we won, but were exhausted (e.g.WWI, and that one had the seeds of WWII in the "victory")

[maddogbitesback]

Hate to tell you this but - WW1 America entered when it was virtually over. WW2 well that had been going on for years all over the world - started in China in 1937 but who cared. Started in Europe in 1939 but that wasn't America's problem. America actually made money and its big corporations like Ford made money in Germany and in the States. In Iraq the war is over breaking the control the Iraqi's have over their own oil. Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were good friends of America and given tons of military equipment.

[TUCANOFULANO]

Bush stayed away from Vietnam when he was a younger coward, and now he is older - nothing else changed