Good article
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, August 22, 2007; 1:16 PM
President Bush boldly entered risky rhetorical territory this morning, likening the war in Iraq to Vietnam.
It's an analogy Bush typically avoids, given how strongly Vietnam is associated in the national consciousness with the concept of quagmire -- and with its lesson about the limits of American military power.
But Bush today tried to turn the Vietnam analogy on its head, arguing that the U.S. withdrawal led to disaster there and emboldened American enemies around the globe. He even went so far as to argue that present-day terrorists like Osama bin Laden are inspired by the turning of American public opinion against the war in Vietnam.
The White House was so proud of this speech that Bush's new counselor, Ed Gillespie, took the unusual step of releasing extensive excerpts last night. Among them:
"Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left. Whatever your position in that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps,' and 'killing fields.'
"There was another price to our withdrawal from Vietnam, and we can hear it in the words of the enemy we face in today's struggle -- al-Qaeda. In an interview with a Pakistani paper after the 9/11 attacks, Bin Laden declared that 'the American people had risen against their government's war in Vietnam. They must do the same today.' . . . . Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility -- but the terrorists see things differently."
Bush's speech was a big hit at the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention in Kansas City. But it's hard to imagine that it will go over nearly as well with a wider audience -- not to mention with historians.
That's because the obvious lesson of Vietnam is not that leaving a quagmire leads to disaster, but that staying only makes things worse. (And oh yes: that we shouldn't get into them in the first place.)
The previews of today's speech allowed reporters and bloggers to get a head start on putting Bush's remarks in context.
James Gerstenzang and Maura Reynolds write in the Los Angeles Times: "Historian Robert Dallek, who has written about the comparisons of Iraq to Vietnam, accused Bush of twisting history. 'It just boggles my mind, the distortions I feel are perpetrated here by the president,' he said in a telephone interview.
"'We were in Vietnam for 10 years. We dropped more bombs on Vietnam than we did in all of World War II in every theater. We lost 58,700 American lives, the second-greatest loss of lives in a foreign conflict. And we couldn't work our will,' he said.
"'What is Bush suggesting? That we didn't fight hard enough, stay long enough? That's nonsense. It's a distortion,' he continued. 'We've been in Iraq longer than we fought in World War II. It's a disaster, and this is a political attempt to lay the blame for the disaster on his opponents. But the disaster is the consequence of going in, not getting out.'"
Gerstenzang and Reynolds also spoke to Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who "criticized Bush's speech, saying the president 'continues to play the American people for fools.'
"'The only relevant analogy of Vietnam to Iraq is this: In Iraq, just as we did in Vietnam, we are clinging to a central government that does not and will not enjoy the support of the people,' he said."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid issued a statement: "President Bush's attempt to compare the war in Iraq to past military conflicts in East Asia ignores the fundamental difference between the two. Our nation was misled by the Bush Administration in an effort to gain support for the invasion of Iraq under false pretenses, leading to one of the worst foreign policy blunders in our history. While the President continues to stay-the-course with his failed strategy in Iraq, paid for by the taxpayers, American lives are being lost and there is still no political solution within the Iraqi government. It is time to change direction in Iraq, and Congress will again work to do so in the fall."
David Jackson and Matt Kelley write in USA Today: "Vietnam historian Stanley Karnow said Bush is reaching for historical analogies that don't track. 'Vietnam was not a bunch of sectarian groups fighting each other,' as in Iraq, Karnow said. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge toppled a U.S.-backed government.
"'Does he think we should have stayed in Vietnam?' Karnow asked."
Talking Points memo blogger Josh Marshall asks: "[I]sn't this quite possibly the worst argument for his Iraq policy? . . .
"[V]irtually none of the predicted negative repercussions of our departure from Vietnam ever came to pass.
"Asia didn't go Communist. Our Asian allies didn't abandon us. Rather, the Vietnamese began to fall out with her Communist allies. With the Cold War over, in strategic terms at least, it's almost hard to remember what the whole fight was about. If anything, the clearest lesson of Vietnam would seem to be that there can be a vast hue and cry about the catastrophic effects of disengagement from a failed policy and it can turn out that none of them are true."
After one of the few other times Bush used a Vietnam analogy -- during his official visit to Vietnam last November -- Robert Scheer wrote in The Nation: "The lesson of Vietnam is not to keep pouring lives and treasure down a dark and poisonous well, but to patiently use a pragmatic mix of diplomacy and trade with even our ideological competitors.
"The United States dropped more bombs on tiny Vietnam than it unloaded on all of Europe in World War II, only hardening Vietnamese nationalist resolve. Hundreds of thousands of troops, massive defoliation of the countryside, 'free fire zones,' South Vietnamese allies, bombing the harbors . . . none of it worked. Yet, never admitting that our blundering military presence fueled the native nationalist militancy we supposedly sought to eradicate, three US Presidents -- two of them Democrats -- lied themselves into believing victory was around some mythical corner.
"While difficult for inveterate hawks to admit, the victory for normalcy in Vietnam, celebrated by Bush last week, came about not despite the US withdrawal but because of it."
What Else Bush Said
Listening to Bush today, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the war in Iraq is entirely a battle against al-Qaeda. But you'd be wrong.
Bush spoke extensively of the ideological struggle against al-Qaeda, comparing it to the enemies that this country has faced down in the past. From a White House " Fact Sheet" released this morning: "Today, The Violent Islamic Extremists Who Fight Us In Iraq Are As Certain Of Their Cause As The Nazis, Imperial Japanese, And Soviet Communists Were Of Theirs -- And They Are Destined For The Same Fate."
But ideally the media coverage of the speech will remind the public that the group called Al Qaeda in Iraq is only one of large number of players on the Iraqi battlefield, that its affinity with its namesake organization does not appear to extend much beyond a desire to end the U.S. occupation -- and that it wouldn't even exist had Bush not invaded in the first place.
As seven soldiers wrote in a New York Times op-ed on Sunday: "What soldiers call the 'battle space' remains the same . . . It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers' expense."
Bush also ratcheted up his rhetorical attack on the critics of the war, going so far as to speak on behalf of the American troops in Iraq: "They have a question: Will their elected leaders in Washington pull the rug out from under them just as they are gaining momentum and changing the dynamic on the ground in Iraq?" he asked.
Is Bush right? Do the grunts see withdrawal as pulling the rug out from under them -- or as giving them a ride home?
Maliki Watch
It can be hard to keep up with this White House. Just as I was filing yesterday's column about the White House's desperate efforts to prop up Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki (despite the growing realization that his government is a failure), Bush was backpedaling on Maliki. Sort of. And then in today's speech, he was front-pedaling again.
Bush's remarks to reporters in Canada yesterday were widely interpreted as a backing away from Maliki.
Michael A. Fletcher and Megan Greenwell writes in The Washington Post: "President Bush pointedly declined Tuesday to offer a public endorsement of embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, expressing his disappointment at the lack of political progress in Iraq and saying that widespread popular frustration could lead Iraqis to replace their government."
Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Jim Rutenberg write in the New York Times that "it was a striking attempt by the White House to distance itself from the Maliki government before September, when the president's troop buildup faces an intense review on Capitol Hill. . . .
"Mr. Bush is already facing skepticism within his own party over the troop buildup, and will almost certainly confront repeated attempts by Democrats to force an end to the war. So he seems to be laying the groundwork for a new message, one that says, 'We're doing our job in Iraq; don't blame us if the Iraqis aren't doing theirs.' . . .
"Experts say Mr. Bush does not appear to be trying to force Mr. Maliki out, if only because there is no obvious alternative. Rather, they say, the president's remarks are aimed at a domestic audience. Back in January, Mr. Bush sold the troop buildup to the country as a plan that would tamp down violence and create 'political breathing space' to allow the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds to create a unity government.
"Now Mr. Bush is admitting publicly what anyone who follows events in Iraq can plainly see: that plan is not altogether working."
All this reportage about Bush distancing himself from Maliki came despite the fact that, as The Post's Fletcher wrote in a pool report, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe stopped by the press cabin on Air Force One yesterday afternoon "to emphasize that Bush's comments earlier in [Canada] were not to be taken as backing away from the iraqi pm."
This morning, Gerstenzang of the Los Angeles Times wrote to his colleagues that Johndroe complained about the coverage, saying "that despite WH efforts to make that support clear on Tuesday, 'that did not come through.'
"What was misreported? 'Bush backs away from Maliki; Bush is cool toward Maliki,' Johndroe said.
"Does Bush still feel Maliki is 'the right guy?' 'Yes,' Johndroe said, adding that Maliki is the PM, chosen by Iraqis. 'That makes him the person we will deal with.'"
And in this morning's speech, Bush called Maliki "a good guy -- good man with a difficult job," and said "I support him."
Bottoms Up?
From Bush's remarks in Canada yesterday: "There are two types of political reconciliation that can take place in a new democracy: One is from the top down, and one is from the bottom up. Clearly, the Iraqi government has got to do more through its parliament to help heal the wounds of years -- having lived years under a tyrant. . . .
"There's bottom-up reconciliation taking place. It's noticeable and tangible and real, where people at the grass-roots level are sick and tired of the violence, sick and tired of the radicalism, and they want -- and they want a better life. And they're beginning to reject the extremists that have the desire to have a safe haven, for example, from which to launch further attacks on America. In other words, there's a process taking place. And the fundamental question is, will the government respond to the demands of the people? And if the government doesn't demand -- respond to the demands of the people, they will replace the government. That's up to the Iraqis to make that decision, not American politicians."
Dan Froomkin - The Analogy Quagmire - washingtonpost.com
