Desperate to shore up support for continuing his unpopular war on Iraq, George W. Bush drew an analogy with Vietnam when he addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars. "The price of America's withdrawal [from Vietnam] was paid by millions of innocent citizens," Bush declared. But he overlooked the four million Indochinese and 58,000 American soldiers who paid the ultimate price for that imperial war. And the myriad Vietnamese and Americans who continue to suffer the devastating effects of the defoliant Agent Orange the U.S. forces dropped on Vietnam. The 10 years it took to end our war there claimed untold numbers of lives.
Bush cited the "killing fields," referring to the more than one million Cambodians who died after we pulled out of Vietnam. He failed to mention that if Richard Nixon had ended the war by 1969, as the antiwar movement was demanding, the war wouldn't have extended into Cambodia. Secret U.S. carpet bombing of Cambodia destroyed that country, enabling Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge to come to power. Nixon, too, had warned of a bloodbath in Vietnam to justify continuing his war.
Contrary to the picture Bush painted, Vietnam is a unified, stable country that doesn't threaten the region; it has become a trading partner of the United States.
In his desperation to rationalize the death and destruction he is wreaking in Iraq, Bush credited the United States with the great progress South Korea and Japan have made. He didn't say that the people of North and South Korea seek to reunify their country but the United States stands in the way. And Bush neglected to add that his government is pressuring Japan to repeal Article 9 of its Peace Constitution which now forbids the aggressive use of military force.
George Bush also reiterated that Iraq is "the central front" of the war on terror. But for his invasion, war and occupation of Iraq, however, al Qaeda wouldn't be there.
Bush claimed "our troops are seeing this progress that is being made on the ground." Perhaps the President didn't read the elegant op-ed that seven infantrymen and noncommissioned officers penned in the New York Times last week. "The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefield in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework," they wrote. The soldiers noted the two million Iraqis in refugee camps and close to two million more who are internally displaced. "Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence."
The only reason we stayed in Vietnam as long as we did was to avoid the U.S. superpower from being perceived as the "loser." American involvement in Vietnam finally ended because our soldiers refused to fight, our people took to the streets in record numbers, Nixon was weakened by his impending impeachment, and the North Vietnamese - unlike the government in the South - won the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people.
Congress has no more will to end the Iraq War than it did the Vietnam War. It was one year after our troops came home that Congress finally cut the funding for all support of the South Vietnamese government; Nixon didn't veto the bill because he needed insurance against impeachment. There is no substantial support in Congress or among the leading presidential candidates to bring all the troops home and disband the mega-bases Bush has built in Iraq.
Resistance to the Iraq War will continue to grow within the military. Like the Vietnamese, the Iraqis will be instrumental in ending Bush's war. The soldiers pegged it in their op-ed: Iraqis "will soon realize that the best way to regain their dignity is to call us what we are - an army of occupation - and force our withdrawal."
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and president of the National Lawyers Guild. Her new book, Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law was just published. Her articles are archived here.
As ugly as the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam was - it did cause thousands of deaths - in the end, it worked strategically. The cold war was won. The international community led by the American superpower is still winning, and communism is dwindling in Hanoi.
Vietnamization and Iraqification are both appropriate analogies for Mr. Bush to make, but extreme corruption characterized and ineffectiveness both efforts. Ultimately, the United States cannot afford to stay in Iraq - even for the purpose of taking its oil. We have to fight in Pakistan and Afghanistan where the battle should have been fought in the first place.
Hanoi is surrounded by capitalist tigers and is only an ideological relic. We hope to expand our contact with your country but Iraq must begin to sort out its own problems. There needs to be a dramatic scaling back of U.S. presence so that our attention can be turned elsewhere.
My deeply felt thanks to Ms. Cohn for her helpful post and commitment to preserving our own constitutional system, which is under attack by those who wish to impose a totalitarian regime in the United States under the guise of the GWOT.
First, I am very sorry to hear of the situation you describe in Vietnam.
Second, I would like to point out that the intervention in Vietnam was not based on valid foreign policy objectives by the United States when it became involved in the conflict during and after the French occupation. That is to say that the United States was not threatened by your country.
Third, the United States involved itself in several coups and invaded South Vietnam preventing reunification and further polarizing the entire country, most notably Ho Chi Minh sought assistance from China and Russia.
Fourth, the conflict in Vietnam was symbolic for the United States in a cold war against an ideological world rival. Our national treasury and American lives were being squandered, and the real battle was with Russia economically world-wide. The conflict was bankrupting our system and seriously dividing our nation.
Fifth, In Vietnam, our adversary had an alternative ideology. This is not the case in Iraq. If we reduce our troops in Iraq, Al Qaeda will brag. But they won't be any closer to victory because they are nihilists. The United States offers democracy, free markets, and globalization. (see below)
There is an article in it which will blow you completely away. Just read it.
What Bush has failed to acknowledge, and something which Petraeus will certainly ignore in his September report card is the one question which needs to be answered. Not logistical questions about numbers or movements of militias or insurgents. Not how many people died last month, or the month before. Those numbers are meaningless.
The question that needs to be answered is can the people of Iraq ever truly pledge allegiance to their national flag. Not to their faction, or mosque, but to the country of Iraq. Would a Sunni go to war and die for a Shiite’s right to vote, the way soldiers of differing faiths do in this country. Do they understand and believe that we are all of us equal at the core?
If not, then they have a long way to go to ever comprehending democracy. And how many American lives should we risk to teach that lesson, on the off chance they even care.
I know military coups are always a bad thing. But tell me again. Please.
They tell me that our continued escalated presence there is increasing the bloodshed. Could this possibly get any worse... Well yes, we are all expecting it to. But, under the next Administration whoever that will be, while shrub and Poppy watch from the bow of Victory III.
Back then, we had more visuals ... body bags coming home daily ... a military draft and the college students' response in the streets ... Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gene McCarthy giving voice to the immorality of the war ... National Guardsmen shooting Kent State students ... protest singers and concerts ... a massive anti-war movement.
Bush has muted, if not all but eliminated, the images. Virtually no images = little strident and demonstrative emotions.
Americans need visuals to end this debacle. In the interim, deceptions and politically correct posturing prevail.
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