http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/22/news/history.php
Bush challenged on Iraq-Vietnam analogy
WASHINGTON: The American withdrawal from Vietnam is widely remembered as an ignominious end to a misguided war - but one that cleared a path for Vietnam to become a unified and stable nation, with healthy ties to the United States.
Now, in urging Americans to stay the course in Iraq, President George W. Bush is challenging that history.
In reminding Americans on Wednesday that the pullout in 1975 was followed by years of upheaval in Southeast Asia, Bush argued that the lessons of Vietnam provide reason to stay in Iraq, rather than to leave anytime soon. Bush in essence accused his war critics of amnesia over the exodus of Vietnamese "boat people" refugees and for mass killings in Cambodia that upended the lives of millions of people.
Bush is beyond just needing a history lesson...
Forget the fact that the Khmer Rouge came to power before we pulled out of Vietnam....
Forget the fact that the Khmer Rouge came to power because we continued to bomb the crap out of Cambodia during the early 1970s which caused the government to destabalize, allowing them to overthrow the government and seize power.
Forget the fact that many of the top Khmer Rouge government officials fled Cambodia when Vietnam invaded in 1978, and were given political assylum in the United States, where many of them still live today, having never been prosecuted for war crimes.
Forget the fact that the United States gave financial and military support to the Khmer Rouge after Vietnam's invasion in 1978, and continued to support their resistance movement until the late 1980s.
I guess he can conveniently forget all of that, and instead blame the 1.7 million Cambodians killed by the Khmer Rouge on our failure to continue the war in Vietnam.
Even if his facts were correct, what about the 2+ million Vietnameese civilians who were killed by the US military during the war? Are they any less important? How many more civilians would have been killed had the war continued?
Using his logic, you might as well blame the Korean War on Japan's failure to succeed in winning WWII. After all, if Japan had not been defeated and been forced to pull out of Korea (thus creating a power vacuum), I guess the Korean war would not have happened. Can you imagine if a Japanese politician blamed the 5 million Korean deaths (those killed in the Korean War) on Japan's failure to win WWII, thus implying that things would have been better in Korea had Japan won the war??
Blaming the Vietnamese government for the many years of "upheaval" in Southeast Asia after the war is like blaming Abraham Lincoln for the many years of "upheaval" in the Southern states after the Civil War.
We have a total nut case in the Oval Office.
