Posted on 08/24/2007 5:33:50 AM PDT by .cnI redruM
Why did he do it? Why conjure up unquiet ghosts? Why now? Vietnam is not only, as President Bush rather flatly put it, “a complex and painful subject” for Americans. The V-word is lodged in folk memory as an unwinnable war that America should never have fought, that wasted blood and treasure, and that, most woundingly, bitterly split the nation.
Vietnam, even today, is a powerful political toxin. Probably the only American politician who can talk about Vietnam without risk is the war hero John McCain. John Kerry tried the “veteran who wants out of Iraq” line in the 2004 presidential elections; the unwanted effect was to remind the nation of his career as an anti-Vietnam protester. As for Mr Bush, it made sense to keep quiet about a war in which he did not exactly rush to serve.
The White House response to the use by anti-war Democrats of the “Vietnam quagmire” analogy has been to point out how different — both in character and in strategic significance — these two conflicts are. Until now. Mr Bush’s quick potted history will be denounced as a distortion of history; there are as many opinions about “what went wrong” as there are toilers in the Vietnam history industry. He must know that to make lessons from Vietnam the core of his appeal for greater American patience in Iraq invites the retort that, as in Vietnam, “we should never have gone in”.
His judgment is that what matters more to Americans is “Where do we go from here?” And here he is right that the Vietnam endgame is relevant. Public opinion dictated the timing and manner of America’s withdrawal from Vietnam, and could play the same forcing role in Iraq. The consequences for South East Asia were appalling; the scars endure. The uncontroversial core of his message is that the consequences of a political panic over Iraq would be far graver.
Mr Bush’s case is that America’s gravest mistakes in Iraq are behind it, that the counter-insurgency strategy devised by General Petraeus is yielding results, but that the military have a question: “Will their elected leaders in Washington pull the rug out from under them just as they’re gaining momentum and changing the dynamic on the ground?” For elected leaders, read Democrats. In historical perspective, the Democrats do not come well out of the Vietnam debacle.
The Democrats’ obsession with forcing on the White House a congressional deadline for pulling out almost all America’s 160,000 troops from Iraq has the whiff of the Vietnam days. So does last month’s decision by Harry Reid, the Democrat leader in the Senate, to suspend the entire defence spending Bill — the first time this has happened for 45 years — when he realised he did not have the votes to attach a withdrawal deadline to it.
The poisoning of the political climate was North Vietnam’s most effective weapon. It is not yet al-Qaeda’s, but it could be. As Hanoi publicly admitted at the time, its 1968 Tet Offensive ended in costly defeat, but no one in America wanted to know. Its 1972 Easter offensive also failed; but by then most Americans believed the war was lost.
Yet even by 1972, and even though much of the US media was writing that America was the problem, not the solution, and that the Vietnamese should be left to fight it out, voters did not want to leave their ally in the South defenceless. Senator George McGovern campaigned that year on a platform of an immediate cessation of bombing and a complete withdrawal within 90 days of taking office. The result was one of the Democrats’ most spectacular defeats, and Richard Nixon’s reelection.
The strategy chosen to extract the US with the minimum of risk to its ally South Vietnam and the region was “Vietnamisation”. The US would withdraw its military, train up the Vietnamese and back Saigon with guaranteed and continuing military and economic support.
Those guarantees were written in to the 1973 Paris Peace Accords negotiated by Henry Kissinger under which North Vietnam pledged to withdraw from Laos and Cambodia and not to overthrow the Saigon Government. But Hanoi knew it could violate the accord with impunity, confident that the large postWatergate Democrat majority in Congress would never authorise renewed airstrikes. Not only that; the Democrats refused to authorise the promised US military aid, leaving the South Vietnamese all but defenceless against North Vietnam’s rapid Soviet-assisted military build-up, and its full-scale tank-led invasion in 1975.
Dr Kissinger recently observed that “one important similarity” between Vietnam and Iraq is that “the domestic debate became so bitter to preclude rational discussion of hard choices”. Six months ago, that point seemed to have arrived. To be a hawk was to court political death and social ostracism. “Hard choices” had gone out the window with the Hamilton-Baker Iraq Study Group’s sage advice to turn the problem over to the neighbours, Syria and Iran included. Mr Bush’s ratings were awful.
They still are. But with better news has come a wiser tone. Americans are heartened by early indications of progress on the ground. The New York Times was so astounded by polls showing rising support for the war that it ran them again to make sure. An antiwar strategy may not be the sure election winner that most Democrats assume. By asserting the right of Congress to set war policy, they have promised their left wing more than they can perform, appeared reluctant to support US troops in combat and stirred old doubts about whether Democrats can be trusted with the nation’s defence.
I do not think Mr Bush’s Vietnam parallel was aimed against the Democrats. Almost everything he says just now has a single aim, to buy time for the Petraeus “surge”. But if I were Barack Obama, I would be fretting a bit about collateral damage.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Now liberals and their media are committing the same treason regarding the Iraq war, the good news is that we are winning this war despite the defeatists and traitors among us. Also the majority of voters will remember the defeatism and treason of liberal in this war for many years to come and the democrats will pay a very heavy political price for it.
Sure he was. < /sarcasm>
Thank you President Bush!
Sorry, but I don’t think the Dems are looking at the comparison in depth. They just see this as an opportunity to score a few cheap political points and look worried for our troops to a public who already see them as callous, uncaring, and trasonous. I mean, can you really see John Effin Kerry in a meeting with aides pouring over the Vietnam references and debating the phraseology of a public rebuke?
bingo
This cohort detests smelly hippies and will defeat Hillary.
“The V-word is lodged in folk memory as an unwinnable war that America should never have fought, that wasted blood and treasure, and that, most woundingly, bitterly split the nation.”
Only for morons. Vietnam was one theater of a very bitter cold war. Our efforts there showed both the Soviet Union and China that we would go the extra mile to block the spread of communism, and helped greatly, IMO, to bring to an end that system of tyranny. Much of what the modern world has become, with Russia and China moving - albeit at a snail’s pace - into econmic liberalism and democracy is owed to the troops who fought in that thankless war. History will document this fact after the smug Baby Boomer Ageing Hippie Liberal America-bashers have passed from the scene and a generation with greater insight and far greater objectivity takes over the task of writing the texts of the period.
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No Joke.
JOHN KERRY =
Pictures of a vietnamese Re-Education (SLAVE LABOR) Camp
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1308949/posts
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..”JOURNEY from the FALL”.. MoviePremieres = Fall of Saigon CLARITY..
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1806248/posts
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No, I do believe it was the anti-war folk who compared Iraq to Vietnam. But it’s okay for them to do that, right?
The Democrats hate hearing about Vietnam because they refuse to take responsibility for their actions.
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Thank you, Thank you very much ..HIDEK6
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“WE WERE SOLDIERS ONCE...& YOUNG”...4-FREEDOM
http://www.Freerepublic.com/forum/a39626542519c.htm
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Signed:..Trojan 6-India
“ALOHA RONNIE” Guyer
Veteran-”WE WERE SOLDIERS” Battle of IA DRANG-1965, Landing Zone Falcon
http://www.lzxray.com/guyer_set1.htm
http://www.RickRescorla.com/The%20Statue.htm
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I’m not sure this is a good article or not. The writer seems to be missing some points.
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During the 2004 Presidential Campaign I personally witnessed survivors of Communist Vietnam’s Re-Education (SLAVE LABOR) Camps coming into our Little Saigon CA Republican Headquarters in droves to register to vote against JOHN KERRY.
Fully understanding those who were responsible here for their untold suffering in Vietnam after the Fall of Saigon, including having had their stomachs cut open by GODless Communist Vietnamese prison guards.
I know too, for I’ve had my fingers run along inside in those deep scars.
“We did they do this to me?” these Camp survivors would ask me.
“Because they could” I answered.
For Communists have NO sense of humor.
And America’s Communist North Vietnam’s supporters during Vietnam War were:
JOHN KERRY
TED KENNEDY
HILLARY RODHAM
WILLIAM CLINTON
BARBARA BOXER
JANE FONDA
TOM HAYDEN
RAMSEY CLARK
JESSE JACKSON
Deja vu, now..?
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The Democrats of today promise NO SUPPORT OF ANY KIND to the Iraqis, only “cut and run.”
Then what, imbeciles? Boots on the ground in Israel in three or four years?
ping
IMO, the Vietnam war was “lost” by DC politicians and anti-war, anti-America traitors. Our brave soldiers didn’t lose the Vietnam War. Political hacks and political games lost the war. Vietnam-era 60’s politicians and Liberals have our soldiers’ blood on their hands and on what little conscience they have. Today’s traitorous politicians are equally as guilty as 60’s DC politicians. Too bad the politicians of the 60’s and those of today, can’t be sent to the war zone for a good dose of reality. They should have to serve and be ruled by the same political BS and rules of engagement like our brave American patriots were and are today. Politicians should have their lives put on the line using the stupid rules of war issued by DC morons playing games. IMO, it’s disgusting and an American disgrace. Each of these political slimes will face their God and have to confess their dirty deeds and power-hungry tricks. They’re not worthy of licking the bottoms of our soldiers’ boots.
"Hillary Clinton is the only candidate who is viewed much more negatively than positively by veterans. Clinton would seem to be at a decided disadvantage among veterans, given that roughly 9 in 10 in the sample are men," said Gallup managing editor Jeff Jones.
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