VietNam?
President Bush gave a speech the other day about the war in Iraq. Perhaps you saw the headlines...
"Bush Compares Iraq to Vietnam" declared the Washington Post, ABC News and others. However a more truthful, nuanced headline on the speech can be found at the New York Times (yes I said the NYTimes had a more truthful take on the speech). Even our own Star Tribune was a little closer to the mark.
Military historian Max Boot, writing for the Wall Street Journal, comments that the President's remarks were "incomplete" and fills in the missing gaps.
"The problem with Mr. Bush's Vietnam analogy is not that it is inaccurate, but that it is incomplete. As he noted, "The tragedy of Vietnam is too large to be contained in one speech." If he chooses to return to the subject in future speeches, there are some other parallels he could invoke:
• The danger of prematurely dumping allied leaders. A chorus of voices in Washington, led by Sens. Carl Levin and Hillary Clinton, is calling on Iraqis to replace Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. Even Mr. Bush and his ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, have expressed disappointment with Mr. Maliki. They have been careful, however, to refrain from any calls for his ouster. That's wise, because we know from our experience in Vietnam the dangers of switching allied leaders in wartime...The danger of winning militarily and losing politically. In 1968, after Gen. Creighton Abrams took over as the senior U.S. military commander in South Vietnam, he began to change the emphasis from the kind of big-unit search-and-destroy tactics that Gen. William Westmoreland had favored, to the sort of population-protection strategy more appropriate for a counterinsurgency. Over the next four years, even as the total number of American combat troops declined, the communists lost ground... The danger of allowing enemy sanctuaries across the border. This a parallel that Mr. Bush might not be so eager to cite, because in many ways he is repeating the mistakes of Lyndon Johnson, who allowed communist forces to use safe rear areas in Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam to stage attacks into South Vietnam. No matter how much success American and South Vietnamese forces had, there were always fresh troops and supplies being smuggled over the Ho Chi Minh Trail... The danger of not making plans for refugees. One of the great stains on American honor in Indochina was the horrible fate suffered by so many Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians who put their trust in us. When the end came we left far too many of them in the lurch, consigning them to prison, death or desperate attempts to escape. "
The legacy and lessons of VietNam are too big to contain in one speech or even a dozen speeches. President Bush should have started this series of speeches during the 2004 campaign when the ghosts of VietNam were first raised. Then maybe the American people would have a fuller appreciation of where we were in VietNam and the dangers that lie before us today.
"Bush Compares Iraq to Vietnam" declared the Washington Post, ABC News and others. However a more truthful, nuanced headline on the speech can be found at the New York Times (yes I said the NYTimes had a more truthful take on the speech). Even our own Star Tribune was a little closer to the mark.
Military historian Max Boot, writing for the Wall Street Journal, comments that the President's remarks were "incomplete" and fills in the missing gaps.
"The problem with Mr. Bush's Vietnam analogy is not that it is inaccurate, but that it is incomplete. As he noted, "The tragedy of Vietnam is too large to be contained in one speech." If he chooses to return to the subject in future speeches, there are some other parallels he could invoke:
• The danger of prematurely dumping allied leaders. A chorus of voices in Washington, led by Sens. Carl Levin and Hillary Clinton, is calling on Iraqis to replace Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. Even Mr. Bush and his ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, have expressed disappointment with Mr. Maliki. They have been careful, however, to refrain from any calls for his ouster. That's wise, because we know from our experience in Vietnam the dangers of switching allied leaders in wartime...The danger of winning militarily and losing politically. In 1968, after Gen. Creighton Abrams took over as the senior U.S. military commander in South Vietnam, he began to change the emphasis from the kind of big-unit search-and-destroy tactics that Gen. William Westmoreland had favored, to the sort of population-protection strategy more appropriate for a counterinsurgency. Over the next four years, even as the total number of American combat troops declined, the communists lost ground... The danger of allowing enemy sanctuaries across the border. This a parallel that Mr. Bush might not be so eager to cite, because in many ways he is repeating the mistakes of Lyndon Johnson, who allowed communist forces to use safe rear areas in Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam to stage attacks into South Vietnam. No matter how much success American and South Vietnamese forces had, there were always fresh troops and supplies being smuggled over the Ho Chi Minh Trail... The danger of not making plans for refugees. One of the great stains on American honor in Indochina was the horrible fate suffered by so many Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians who put their trust in us. When the end came we left far too many of them in the lurch, consigning them to prison, death or desperate attempts to escape. "
The legacy and lessons of VietNam are too big to contain in one speech or even a dozen speeches. President Bush should have started this series of speeches during the 2004 campaign when the ghosts of VietNam were first raised. Then maybe the American people would have a fuller appreciation of where we were in VietNam and the dangers that lie before us today.
Labels: Iraq, Undermining the War
posted by The Lady Logician at
7:25 AM
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