The Liberal Avenger
(click to inflate)
George W. Bush, explaining why it’s unpatriotic to compare the war in Iraq to the Vietnam War:
I think the analogy is false. I also happen to think that analogy sends the wrong message to our troops, and sends the wrong message to the enemy. Look, this is hard work… we must stay the course.
George W. Bush, showing a remarkable willingness to send the wrong message to our troops and to the enemy:
.
George W. Bush, plagiarizing Lyndon Johnson:
.
***Mind the Gaffe***
White House communications director Kevin Sullivan, explaining why an invocation of Vietnam seemed like a good idea at the time:
The president was aware of wanting to set the table for the upcoming report and the discussion that will follow it in a new way that was both compelling and illustrative: ‘We’ve done this work before, and it was beneficial to the American people.’
Journalist Frank James, on why invoking The Quiet American was a bad idea:
Bush seemed to be seizing on Greene’s idea of U.S. naivete on entering the war and trying to turn it around and apply it to those now calling for a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.
But Greene wrote his book about the way America bumbled into Vietnam, not how it left it.
Senator Harry Reid, on what Bush could be doing to make more productive use of his time:
Instead of providing the country with a history lesson… should be reevaluating his flawed strategies that have led to one of the worst foreign policy blunders in our nations history.
***The Long View***
General John Johns, Vietnam vet and counterinsurgency expert, on the real lesson of Vietnam:
Bush is cherry-picking history to support his case for staying the course. What I learned in Vietnam is that U.S. forces could not conduct a counterinsurgency operation. The longer we stay there, the worse it’s going to get.
Steven Simon, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, on the dangers of staying in a war too long:
The president emphasized the violence in the wake of American withdrawal from Vietnam. But this happened because the United States left too late, not too early. It was the expansion of the war that opened the door to Pol Pot and the genocide of the Khmer Rouge. The longer you stay the worse it gets.
Senator John Kerry, explaining why we should have left Vietnam earlier, not later:
Half of the soldiers whose names are on the Vietnam Memorial Wall died after the politicians knew our strategy would not work.
Vietnam Veteran Hermann Carroll, pointing out a rather obvious difference between the Vietnam War and Iraq:
The enemy was fighting to unite the country in Vietnam. In Iraq, they’re tearing it apart. It’s a civil war.
Senator John McCain, confusing the Vietnam era with the post-Vietnam era:
I saw it once before. I saw a defeated military and I saw how long it took a military that was defeated to recover. And I saw a divided nation beset by assassinations and riots and a breakdown in a civil society.
McCain again, this time remembering the post-Vietnam era, but forgetting the thousands executed by death squads in Iraq and the millions who have already fled the country:
There was thousands executed. There was millions, hundreds of thousands put in reeducation camp. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, how got on boats to leave because of the oppressiveness of the government.
***The View from Vietnam***
Vu Huy Trieu, who actually answered the call of duty during the Vietnam War:
Doesn’t he realise that if the US had stayed in Vietnam longer, they would have killed more people? Nobody regrets that the Vietnam war wasn’t prolonged except Bush.
Journalist Kay Johnson, describing the wreckage brought about by America’s hasty, 6-year retreat from Vietnam:
It is of course tempting to imagine Iraq as Vietnam is today. While still a Communist-run regime that brutally persecutes political dissent, Vietnam is nonetheless stable, peaceful and one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, second in Asia only to China for growth in the past decade. For the past decade, Hanoi has also been an official U.S ally, and Vietnamese military ties with the U.S. have been increasing. There is even speculation that the U.S. company Westinghouse may provide a reactor for Vietnam’s planned nuclear power program, scheduled to go on-line in 2020.
But for all of that to happen, the war had to end.
***Election Politics***
George W. Bush, on why the Republicans lost the ‘06 election:
“The fundamental question is: Will the government respond to the demands of the people? If the government doesn’t respond to the demands of the people, they will replace the government.”
John Edwards, commenting on the political legacy of George W. Bush:
If Mayor Giuliani believes that what President Bush has done is good, and wants to embrace it and run a campaign for the Presidency saying, ‘I will give you four more years of what this president has given you,’ then hes allowed to do that. Hell never be elected President of the United States, but hes allowed to do that.
(cross posted at appletree)
