Robert Scheer: In the Shadow of Ho Chi Minh
[Robert Scheer is the co-author of The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq. See more of Robert Scheer at TruthDig.]
Iraq and Vietnam are not the same country, yet both have long experience with imperial meddling and fiercely resist it.
President Bush has said many dumb things in defense of his Iraq policy. Citing the Vietnam War as a model, however, is perhaps his most ludicrous yet.
This past week found the president sitting before a bust of the victorious Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, seemingly unaware that the United States lost its war with the Communist-led country. Having long and vehemently denied parallels between the invasions of Vietnam and Iraq, he nevertheless admitted now to seeing one.
"Yes," Bush said. "One lesson is that we tend to want there to be instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is ... just going to take a long period of time to--for the ideology that is hopeful, and that's an ideology of freedom, to overcome an ideology of hate.... We'll succeed, unless we quit."
Bush seems not to have noticed that we succeeded in Vietnam precisely because we did quit the military occupation of that nation, permitting an ideology of freedom to overcome one of hate. Bush's rhetoric is frighteningly reminiscent of Richard Nixon's escalation and expansion of the Vietnam War in an attempt to buy an "honorable" exit with the blood of millions of Southeast Asians and thousands of American soldiers. In the end, a decade of bitter fighting did not prevent an ignominious U.S. departure from Saigon.
Now, however, Vietnam is at peace with its neighbors and poses no security threat to the United States. Many of the "boat people" have returned as investors, and successive American presidents have made visits to the second fastest-growing economy in Asia. While Vietnam is still run by its Communist Party, eventually postwar leaders on both sides have accepted that peace is practical....
Iraq and Vietnam are not the same country, yet both have long experience with imperial meddling and fiercely resist it. Bush has said Iraq "is in many ways, religious in nature, and I don't see the parallels" to Vietnam, but that is just another sign that he probably cut most of his history classes at Yale.
He--and apparently the mass media, as well--seems to have forgotten that the United States tried to stoke a religious war in Vietnam by intervening to install a Roman Catholic exile in power in this primarily Buddhist country. The struggle to overthrow that U.S. puppet dictator, Ngo Dinh Diem, began with Buddhist monks immolating themselves on the streets of Saigon....
Read entire article at AlterNet
Iraq and Vietnam are not the same country, yet both have long experience with imperial meddling and fiercely resist it.
President Bush has said many dumb things in defense of his Iraq policy. Citing the Vietnam War as a model, however, is perhaps his most ludicrous yet.
This past week found the president sitting before a bust of the victorious Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, seemingly unaware that the United States lost its war with the Communist-led country. Having long and vehemently denied parallels between the invasions of Vietnam and Iraq, he nevertheless admitted now to seeing one.
"Yes," Bush said. "One lesson is that we tend to want there to be instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is ... just going to take a long period of time to--for the ideology that is hopeful, and that's an ideology of freedom, to overcome an ideology of hate.... We'll succeed, unless we quit."
Bush seems not to have noticed that we succeeded in Vietnam precisely because we did quit the military occupation of that nation, permitting an ideology of freedom to overcome one of hate. Bush's rhetoric is frighteningly reminiscent of Richard Nixon's escalation and expansion of the Vietnam War in an attempt to buy an "honorable" exit with the blood of millions of Southeast Asians and thousands of American soldiers. In the end, a decade of bitter fighting did not prevent an ignominious U.S. departure from Saigon.
Now, however, Vietnam is at peace with its neighbors and poses no security threat to the United States. Many of the "boat people" have returned as investors, and successive American presidents have made visits to the second fastest-growing economy in Asia. While Vietnam is still run by its Communist Party, eventually postwar leaders on both sides have accepted that peace is practical....
Iraq and Vietnam are not the same country, yet both have long experience with imperial meddling and fiercely resist it. Bush has said Iraq "is in many ways, religious in nature, and I don't see the parallels" to Vietnam, but that is just another sign that he probably cut most of his history classes at Yale.
He--and apparently the mass media, as well--seems to have forgotten that the United States tried to stoke a religious war in Vietnam by intervening to install a Roman Catholic exile in power in this primarily Buddhist country. The struggle to overthrow that U.S. puppet dictator, Ngo Dinh Diem, began with Buddhist monks immolating themselves on the streets of Saigon....