Iraq is to Vietnam as Dubya is to WTF!?!?

Just as effective democracy assumes and requires the consent of the governed, so does an effective analogy assume and require a common set of beliefs and experiences among its intended audience. This week, George W. Bush finally made the analogous connection he has so vehemently avoided between Iraq and Vietnam. But, as he has done with Biblical interpretation and the English language, the boy has badly mangled the meaning.

On August 22, Bush used his speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars to yet again to "reframe" the Iraq debate. How long can you "reframe" something before you realize that the problem is your crappy art and not the choice of a speckled mahogany vs. fluted sterling silver enclosure? Answer: at least four years.

After rehashing freedom-loving, fascist-hating arguments previously applied to American mid-century intervention in Europe, Shrubya used Microsoft Word's search-and-replace feature to tell the story with Asians. That's when he broke out the surprise Vietnam analogy.

However, it was neither the well-understood Vietnam-as-quagmire nor the equally-applicable Vietnam-as-conflict-he-avoided that the president relied upon. No, Bush rested his latest justification on Vietnam-as-lost-because-we-didn't -stay-long-enough. Yeah, that was just the problem. Think about it. Had we stayed longer, we could have killed every last person in Vietnam and won the damn thing, but those perpetual back-stabbers in Washington again failed to support the troops.

Bush's strategery in this case, as with global warming, evolution and other facts, depends on creating doubt. He said things like:

1. "Now, I know some people doubt the universal appeal of liberty, or worry that the Middle East isn't ready for it."

2. "Others believe that America's presence is destabilizing, and that if the United States would just leave a place like Iraq those who kill our troops or target civilians would no longer threaten us."

3. "Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility, but the terrorists see things differently."

4. "Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left."

No, there isn't. This is a complex literary device known as "bullshit," which is employed all too often by people who don't know what they're talking about. I, too, can invoke the tree hugging, ape-descending, freedom-hating "some" and "others" to create a "legitimate" debate where none legitimately exists. Watch me work my magic:

1. Some can argue that babies come from a magical stork that shoves the fetus into a woman's body moments before birth then teleports back to its home in the trash can where Oscar the Grouch lives.

2. Others believe that babies are always inside of women, remote controlling them like that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles villain, Krang, the talking, fluid-dripping, pink brain that installed himself inside an ogre's abdomen in order to defeat our turtle heroes.

3. There is a legitimate debate about how a woman becomes pregnant.

For Bush to sell the Iraq war by using America's most shameful military expedition of the 20th century shows just how desperate he is. He's not just drinking the Kool-Aid, he's freebasing the powder.

Follow Baratunde Thurston on Twitter: www.twitter.com/baratunde

Comments

[tiggersthotfulspot]

Iraq *is* like Vietnam!

In the one sense that the leaders who got us into both wars could easily have been hanged for war crimes, had accepted tenets of international law been upheld.

[Praedor]

Great post! I am now forever a fan. As for the bogus nonsense spouted by Bushie that "there is a legitimate debate on how we got into Vietnam"..­.BULLSHIT! indeed. We got into Vietnam precisely the same way we got into Iraq: via prefabrication. For Vietnam we had the trumped up, false, bullshit "Gulf of Tonkin" incident. Total bullshit. For Iraq we had "WMDs" and "nuk-u-lar weapons" and "Saddam and Al Qaeda are lovers".

If Bush wanted to compare Iraq to Vietnam, he should have started with THAT similarity and then worked up to the quagmire part.

[WTFbush]

I wonder if any members of the VFW audience while on the ground in Viet Nam, could have used more close air support? I am sure a lot of them could have. Perhaps they would have got it except that Mr. Bush was too busy helping his dad's friend get elected in Alabama.

Have you ever wondered how many U.S. troops could have been saved, had Bush implemented the training that he received and had gone to Viet Nam? How many fewer American servicemen's names would be forever etched in the stone of the Viet Nam War Memorial? If it was just one, what a wonderful thing that would have been.

[ivangoldstein]

Great article, free-basing the powder is so appropriate!

[TomR]

----
1. "Now, I know some people doubt the universal appeal of liberty, or worry that the Middle East isn't ready for it."
----

Bush redefines the word LIBERTY:

n. A lack of security which enables chaos, death and destruction in Iraq.

(Quite universally appealing indeed...in Bizarro World!!!)


----
2. "Others believe that America's presence is destabilizing, and that if the United States would just leave a place like Iraq, those who kill our troops or target civilians would no longer threaten us."
----

True: Others believe that America's presence in Iraq is destabilizing. Therefore the United States should begin withdrawing from Iraq.

False: Those who kill our troops or target civilians would no longer threaten us.

T + F = T

See, all you do is mix something that's true with something that's false and it becomes true again. Wheeee!

(No one believes this False statement or logic...except in Bizarro World!!!)


----
3. "Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility, but the terrorists see things differently."
----

See, we don't need the help of other countries in fighting global terrorists, so we don't care how our allies and other countries feel about us. We only care about how the terrorists feel.

(A very sweet gesture toward the terrorists...in Bizarro World!!!)

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/home_page/306.php?nid=&id=&pnt=306&lb=hmpg1
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2004/03/17/survey040317.html


----
4. "Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left."
----

Bush redefines the word DEBATE:

n. The act of questioning a President's policy in order to provide legitimate justification for that policy.

(Since any Presidential policy can be debated, we have the right to do whatever the hell we want...in Bizzaro World!!!)


- Tom

[dotmafia]

You want to end this war?

Start by consistently and continually showing the American public the daily effects of it on the Iraqi population.

Without censure.

Show the blown-up bodies.

Show the dead and wounded children.

Show the grieving families of the dead and wounded.

Anyone who criticizes this as blatantly indecent, should question the decency of what America has forced upon the Iraqi civilians.

I recently went to the Dominican Republic on vacation and was shocked to see 2-3 minutes of news footage of up-close dead bodies from a car accident. This is routine there. It is done to try and make people drive better by showing them the consequences of bad driving.

If the American public was truly exposed to the realities of what their government and politicians subject the peoples of other nations to, they would not be so quick to send their sons and daughters off to war, and they would think twice about the decency of their own morals and "Christian values".

The American mass media is party to this illegal, cruel and unjust war. Shame, shame, shame on them.
_

[TheHandyman]

This is one of the lessons learned from the Viet Nam War by those that start and profit from these wars. You must not show the carnage and costs of War. Since Viet Nam we have had Grenada, Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicarugua, Serbia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Irag, Somalia and who knows where else and we have seen vitually nothing in the way of news coverage.

I remember the little invasion of Grenada that Reagan hyped as being akin to an invasion by Russia. A year after the invasion a white paper was issued that said that absolutely every thing the Reagan Administration claimed as reasons to invade was false. Our government, with the complicity of the corporate owned media, has made sure that the pictures do not and can not bely the lies they tell us.

The Fourth Estate is owned lock, stock, and barrel by whatever Party is in power. Say good-bye to the USA, our founding fathers had great hopes and expectations but we failed to do our part. Cakes and Good Government demand the best ingrediants and the participation of the cook.

[AnastasiaM]

was shocked watching the news the day Bush uttered what he uttered. I don't know how he views soldiers. Does he view them as people? I don't know if he does. He reminds me of a corporate CEO, more concerned about KPI's than the human cost.

The mistake of pulling out of Vietnam? How many more lives were going to be lost in that war if the US didn't pull out? How many more lives are going to be lost in Iraq for the same reason? And it's also an issue of health; there has never been any discussion about uranium depletion, and how this has affected soldiers (miscarriages, birth defects and/or sterility in the case of males), or Iraqi civilians, a certain percentage of whom have seen illnesses like leukemia (and birth defects) soar ever since certain weapons were used in this war and the last war (those using uranium isotopes). This is an environmental issue, and Bush wants to prolong it? Will he accept responsibility for the environmental clean up? Will any of the allies?

We, down here, knew that this war was about oil (as the first comment mentions), and what gets me is this is still denied by some people or political groups.

[LorettaSingbiel]

"The mistake of pulling out of Vietnam? How many more lives were going to be lost in that war if the US didn't pull out? How many more lives are going to be lost in Iraq for the same reason?"

We SUPPOSEDLY marched into Iraq to prevent their use of WMDs. Yet, WE used WMDs on Hiroshima & Nagasaki.

By the end of 1945, because of the lingering effects of radioactive fallout and other after effects, the HIROSHIMA death toll was probably over 100,000. The five-year death total may have reached or even exceeded 200,000, as cancer and other long-term effects took hold.

On Nagasaki, the best estimate is 40,000 people died initially, with 60,000 more injured. By January 1946, the number of deaths probably approached 70,000, with perhaps ultimately twice that number dead within five years.

But OUR excuse...We "SAVED" lives.

Well then, IF Saddam had WMDs, PERHAPS he SHOULD HAVE USED them on AMERICA...to "SAVE" lives!

Stay safe, healthy and happy,
Love, Loretta

[mamacat]

This has been said before, but isn't it strange how the only groups who want the U.S. to stay in Iraq are the neo-cons (Republican and Democrat) and Al-Qaeda? The neo-cons want to stay because they want to keep feeding money to the corporations getting rich off the war, and Al-Qaeda wants us to stay because they know it is the wrong thing for us to do.

[LorettaSingbiel]

Al-Qaeda wants us to stay because they know it is the wrong thing for us to do.

And recruitment for them goes UP, whereas recruitment of us goes DOWN.

Stay safe, healthy and happy,
Love, Loretta

[mamacat]

Loved the post and a lot of very good comments.
As one said, if Rove really has stopped pulling Bush's strings, we may see a lot more of these public relations disasters from Bush.
Some observations:
during the troop surge in Vietnam (to 500,000), the pet phrase from the leaders was "we can see the light at the end of the tunnel."
During the 2007 troop surge in Iraq, the pet phrase of the leaders is that we have gained "tactical momentum."
Well, duh, what do you expect after throwing in tens of thousands more troops? To have to retreat? Isn't that the whole purpose of attacking with more troops?
The problem is that the Iraqis don't want to become Americans, they want to be Iraqi, and they want to control their own country. Our leaders seem to think we can set the parameters for when we let our troops go back home, based on some decisions made by politicians in the back rooms of the White House.
A last question, didn't this President say, after the last election, that The American People Have Spoken, and I Have Heard Them, or something close to that? So then, what is he doing increasing troop levels, instead of cooperating with the Iraqi Legislature in drawing down our troop levels?

[Evmaggie36]

No attacks because when bin Laden warned us to get out Saudi Arabia and we did not.9 -11. We could not run away from our bases fast enough-closed them all.....bin Laden got what he wanted. Has he made any demands yet like get out of Iraq?

[Evmaggie36]

Our Presidink needs to give the same speech at Arlington on Vereran's Day... should make everyone warm and fuzzy.

[rabun666]

Bush's absurdities and lies about Vietnam. The Vietnamese intervened in Cambodia to stop the killing fields genocide being conducted by the American supported Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, The US government objected to the intervention to stop the genocide which was being conducted by the US government supported Pol Pot and his gang.These fact are confirmed by a Major General a guest on James Zogby's call in show of 8/23/7 and he did say Bush was wrong, thereby lying. It is obvious the VFW and American Legion leaderships are bribed by the Republicans to provide a platform for the lies, insults and abuse of Bush and Cheney's absurd lies. It's not like Bush was greeting the returning troops,attending funerals and visiting the maimed in hospitals. BUSH WAS HIDING DRUNK AND DOING DRUGS. He couldn't have gone to Nam if deployed as no one knew where Bush was, Bush didn't even know where he was. It's all documented.

[ProgressiveChange]

'isms' are easier to package for war. Civil War in Vietnam became a domino theory, stop communism cause celebre.

We had to stop 'them' there or they would have had to be stopped here. Its a there or here thing.

Then there's the allies' thing. We had to stay in Vietnam to show them and other nations we were tough cookies willing to fall on our bayonets rather than give up. Failing to convince the Viet Cong to democratize, we had a moral obligation --- direct from God --- to kill them. Napalm them. Defoliate them.

So let's all get together the terrior-ism thing. Its a worse 'ism' than communism. More threatening to the homeland.

I have it on good authority that Bin Laden is waiting to open a Branch Office in Baghdad ... apparently, he prefers the weather in Iraq to the mountainous climate of Pakistan. He won't strike the United States until he opens the Baghdad branch. He liked Kabul and the Afghan climate.

So, this would explain why Bush is so adamant about fighting this 'ism' in Iraq. He knows that Osama is a principled fellow, who won't get busy until he operates from Baghdad.

[markwr]

I don't know what is more troublesome: the fact that Bush says things that are either dishonest or imbecilic OR that there is a large number of people--say 28%--who actually think he understands the world and that what he says makes sense.

[lwaxanatroi]

The thing that scares me the most about this "we coulda won but the politicians stabbed us in the back" is that this is exactly what Hitler told the Germans about WWI. It turned them into aggrieved, angry people only too happy to blame the Jews so they wouldn't have to face the fact that they lost a major war that they didn't have to wage in the first place. This is powerful stuff. It's not just Kool-aid, it's primo heroin and it is well on the way to destroying our democracy just as it killed the Weimar Republic. And the cute part is that Bush calls the realist historians "revisionists." Ha.