Trashing History: Bush and Vietnam

The good news is that George W. Bush at last has found parallels between his Iraq misadventure and the Vietnam War. The bad news is that he is again writing his own revisionist history. The president is on dangerous ground -- for both wars are based on a bed of lies and miscalculations.

American involvement in Vietnam escalated after an alleged attack on U.S. Navy vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964. The incident offered President Lyndon B. Johnson the pretext for expanding American involvement from an "advisory" role to combat operations. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney insisted in 2001 -- and ever since -- that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda, a charge without foundation. They also offered baseless allegations that Saddam had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

After four years of futile war in Vietnam, LBJ heeded the advice of his "Wise Men," commenced negotiations, and rejected his generals' requests for a "surge" in U.S. forces. But Bush, four years after he declared "mission accomplished," eagerly opted for a new surge for Iraq.

President Bush invoked Vietnam recently to an audience of veterans -- a usual venue for him. He mined the buried, but always festering wound of Vietnam -- and exploited it shamelessly.

For four years, Bush rejected any Vietnam parallels with his Iraq misadventure; he now distorts the events of three decades ago to rouse his base and intimidate his critics. Bush needs no Swift Boat warriors; his brigades of speech writers (with probably with no memory of Vietnam) serve just fine.

Bush's remarks play to his base -- and project out to his critics, warning that their demand for troop withdrawals is fraught with dire consequences. Karl Rove's spirit remains embedded.

Bush's audience cheered when he claimed that the United States had abandoned Vietnamese and Cambodians to vindictive enemies, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths. Not a word, however, about the estimated 1 million Vietnamese civilian and military casualties from a quarter-century of war against the French and the Americans.

But the postwar brutalities in Southeast Asia did not result from U.S. "abandonment."

Bush is ignoring the reality of the U.S. withdrawal. That iconic image of people clambering onto helicopters hovering over the American embassy in 1975 is misleading. Our war was already over. Richard M. Nixon's policy of "Vietnamization," which allowed for the steady reduction of 500,000 U.S. troops, had begun in June 1969. Nixon realized we could not remain indefinitely in Vietnam and he pursued a policy of training and arming South Vietnamese regulars to carry on their own battle. Four years later, the last U.S. troops had departed.

The South Vietnamese, who, on paper, outnumbered their opponents, were left to their own devices -- and collapsed within three years. The South Vietnamese populace lacked the steel and determination of the North; their government lacked popular support and political legitimacy.

The United States lost the Vietnam War, and Bush cannot bear that basic truth. Some military commentators are quick to assert the Vietnamese never defeated U.S. forces on the battlefield. Perhaps. But the American pursuit of political goals, implemented and insured by military means, failed.

If nothing else, the conflict shows that there are limits to American power. But Bush will not accept this.

The president is citing Vietnam as a usable past to push his own war aims -- but not too far. He repeatedly says that we must stop Al Qaeda in Iraq or we will have to fight them here. Shades of the 1960s "domino theory." We were told then that if the Communists conquered Vietnam, the countries across the Pacific would topple like dominos. First Thailand and Cambodia would be lost, then the Philippines and Japan. Then Hawaii and, ultimately, the Viet Cong and their Russian and Chinese allies would land on the beaches at La Jolla.

President Bush, who did not fight then, and his vice president, who has explained that he had "had other priorities" (and was failing in his graduate studies at Wisconsin), apparently did not follow the tide of events. They might have noticed no domino fell.

Bush's sudden recovery from Vietnam amnesia is intended to beguile our veterans and soldiers with self-serving noble ideals or misinformed, ulterior goals. Fighting and re-fighting the Vietnam War persists in the battle of symbolic politics. True to form, Bush remains our "great divider." He speaks to a bitter sub-culture that believes we should have "won" in Vietnam and still insists that the Vietnamese hold U.S. prisoners.

The White House Web site has a 2006 picture of a smiling George W. Bush posing with Laura Bush and the president of Vietnam and his wife -- in front of a giant portrait of Ho Chi Minh. Bush praised Vietnam as "a remarkable country." Irony abounds. The CBS correspondent John Laurence, in his unforgettable memoir of the Vietnam War, returned in the 1980s to see the booming Vietnamese economy. An American official probably offered him perhaps the best epitaph for the war: "It would have been a lot easier if they had just let us win the war."

The Vietnam War requires remembering it all -- and all its lessons. We must remember the postwar calamities -- as well as My Lai, the brutalities and repressiveness of our client South Vietnamese regime, the mirage of domino theory, the always-promised, never-delivered "light at the end of the tunnel," the limits of our will and power - and, of course, Gen. Alexander Haig's report to Nixon in 1972: "We are an eyelash from victory."

Stanley Kutler is the editor of The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War (Scribner's, 1995) and the The Wars of Watergate (Alfred A. Knopf). He is the E. Gordon Fox Emeritus Professor of American Institutions at the University of Wisconsin, and also professor of law.

Comments

[JackMonroe]

The problem with guys like Bush is that they tend to believe their own propaganda. Which is always a mistake. In Bush world Vietnam was lost by 1. the media, in particular, CBS 2. Jane Fonda & 3. some later Beatles songs - the John Lennon stuff. If those three had just stayed out of it, Vietnam would be a grateful third world country, happy to be serving our GI's at our permanent bases, and knocking off running shoes.

But because of the aforementioned traitors, Jane Fonda in particular, because she's still good looking, Vietnam is a communist country, without permanent bases, (but knocking off running shoes for us).

The sad fact is that Bush would actually have to read an entire book on the subject of the war in Vietnam to grasp how complicated the war was, there and at home.

On the other hand, Bush probably on a rudimentary scale, understands that he alone, as the decider, is responsible for the worse foreign policy blunder in our history. One that is likely to have consequences far surpassing those of our loss in Vietnam. I suppose that's why he believes his own propaganda.

Reminds me of this story I once read about the Czar Nicholas. One day, in 1905, while playing tennis a courier brought him a message. The message contained the news that the Japanese had destroyed the Russian navy. He read it, refolded it, and stuck into his pants pocket, and continued with his tennis game.

Well, as a Vietnamese once told me, "Things can always get worse..."

[Doofus]

It happens to be pretty f*cking obvious that when
or if the Iraq War is 'officially' lost, as it was started by
a Repo guy, who was then re-elected to finish (i.e., 'win')
it, then the Republican Party, the ancient & sometimes
honorable G.O.P. is *TOAST*.

You can expect they will come up with some
wild & wonderful justifications & excuses &
rationalizations for their pitiful performance,
some of which will even border on 'funny'.

It's either that, or 'Blame the Democrats!'

[darker]

No, we're incapable as "tacticians".
Rabid, greedy, dangerous OPPORTUNISTS is what's running & ruining the USA. To the Bushes, Bushies and republicans--THEY are most important. America? Forgeddaboudit.

NO. It should be Country first!
We're US taxpayers and NOT chattel of the ultra-rich who steal public office.
We want accountability from them.

Bush-Cheney's "JUSTICE" DEPT. OF CHAOS under Gonzales must be investigated.

Bush-Cheney's entire chaotic administration must be investigated.
THERE MUST BE ACCOUNTABILITY.

ACCOUNTABILITY is the requirement of a Democracy. Bush-Cheney-Gonzales served up a chaos of "smoke & mirrors" while behaving like CRIMINALS.

All of them must be investigated and held accountable.

[rmreddicks]

"You know, you never beat us on the battlefield," Colonel Tu responded, "That may be so, but it is also irrelevant." As reported by Col. Harry G. Summers Jr.

In fact the People's Army of Vietnam did defeat us on the battlefield from time to time. Not often, but occasionally. And again it's irrelevant. Distinctly irrelevant. When at war winning the war is what counts.

Winning the peace is what finally is necessary.

Successful grand strategy requires (almost demands) no war. Successful strategy requires securing the peace, amongst other elements.

We are a nation of tacticians. Being an atheist, I guess the lord is blessing and keeping us. God knows we don't deserve it considering our abilities and our justness.

[Hastings]

No matter how hard they try to rewrite history, no matter how hard they try to blame others, those of the antiwar movement during the Vietnam War will be chased to their graves by the ghosts of the holocaust they created.

[oafishcad]

You do realize that you are completely and utterly wrong. The protests were right. The war was wrong. simple as that. The attempts by the conservatives to rewrite history won't work.

[Hastings]

I'd like to tell you a true story oafishcad. Several years ago I was having dinner with a Laotian friend of mine. As we ate he began to tell me of how at the tender age of 10 years old he stripped down to his underwear and swam across the Mekong River to escape to Thiland. His village had been forced to gather the day before and witness the burtal mutilation and execution of a man and a woman by the Communist leader of their region of Laos. The couple's crime was that they had tryed to flee to freedom. As my friend told me the harrowing and heroic story of his escape to freedom he suddenly stopped, looked me squarely in the eyes and asked, "Why did you leave us to face the darkness and evil alone." I sat in stunned silence as all of the phony slogans, lies, and just plain bullshit I had shouted during my years in the "antiwar movement" few out of my head. When I answered I spoke the only ture words I had spoken during all the time I had shamefully worked in the "movement". I said, "We hated Richard Nixon more than we loved you."

oafishcad, there was an evil in the jungles of Southeast Asia but it wasn't the United States of America.

[rmreddicks]

Which ghosts? The ghosts of 2,000,000+ Vietnamese? The ghosts of 1,000,000 + Cambodians killed by the Khmer Rouge who came to power in no small part by America's violation of Cambodian sovereignty and the thousands killed by U.S. bombers? The ghosts of untold Laotians? The ghosts of 60,000 American dead? The ghosts of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark? The ghosts of four murdered Kent state students? The murder of 2 Jackson State students? Or the ghosts of conflicted pigs like Hastings? I may be chased but I'm not running from people who think like you.

[dougd]

It would seem that there are different ways of viewing the Vietnam experience.

[oafishcad]

Historical truth is whatever President Bush says it is. That's how it works now.

[realitytrumpsbull]

One really interesting aspect of vietnam history was dear old American Standard Oil...

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=american+standard+oil+vietnam+war

Seek, and ye shall find, ask, and ye shall something something mumble mumble...

[realpolitic]

Bush's meanderings on Vietnam prove he was asleep at Yale and Andover and whatever other of the finest schools in the land he attended. Our finest institutions of learning could not penetrate the Bush consciousness. Therefore, he is just the man not to blink in the face of terrorists, as long as they do not give him a history test.

All we were doing in Cambodia was bombing the country. Our goal was to slow the supply of Communist forces in South Vietnam along the Ho Chi Minh trail from the north. So to argue that Cambodia was better off with an 'American presence' is to argue they were better off being bombed by B-52's than not being bombed. It was the bombing itself which de-stabilized the country and resulted in a recruiting magnet for the Khmer Rouge. Similar to how our present occupation of Iraq is a recruiting tool for terrorists.

[CitizenE]

Let's face it, Bush longs for the good old days when napalm was part of the arsenal.

[dadw5boys]

Bush could have won in Vietnam.
IF HE HAD SHOWN UP FOR DUTY INSTEAD OF GOING A W O L !