Not this shit again! (in so many ways)
Dude who weaseled out of serving in Vietnam, advised by guys who also weaseled out of Vietnam, uses Vietnam to stiffen the spines of his enablers, members of the 101st Keyboarders who are managing not to serve in Iraq while cheering for others to stay and suffer in the sandbox.
Finally, the plan all comes together. Finally, after denying it so often, IRAQ IS VIETNAM all over again.
"Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left," Bush will say.
"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,' " the president will say.
The president will also make the argument that withdrawing from Vietnam emboldened today's terrorists by compromising U.S. credibility, citing a quote from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden that the American people would rise against the Iraq war the same way they rose against the war in Vietnam, according to the excerpts.
"Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility, but the terrorists see things differently," Bush will say.
This is just atrociously galling.
First of all, for the third time in three weeks (because this is plainly the new Right Wing Line..."okay, it IS like Vietnam but...") this canard of an argument is being made now by Bush himself, which I guess is an off-handed admission of
"OOPS, BUSH SURE DONE FUCKED UP!"Second of all, this argument couldn't be made, just like Vietnam, if the original fuck up based on deception hadn't been made in the first place. The argument of we cannot end this fuck up because we fucked it up and the only way to minimize the fuck up is by telling America troops, "you're fucked" is not exactly the strongest argument ever made.
Third, as I've said a few times on this blog recently, Bush (and his minions) once again show all the subtle knowledge of history you'd expect from them after all these years.
ONCE AGAIN: Pol Pot would not have accomplished more than being a dumbfuck in the jungle if we, THE UNITA STATES O'MURICA! hadn't bombed the shit out of that country and made it the third-party victim of Nixon's Surge of the early 1970s.
We managed to never come to grips with the fact that we were the Khmer Rouge's enablers as much as our horrendous Iraq misadventure has been a huge boon for reactionary theocrats that will help drag the middle east down an even lower path. Pot and his group went from being place-holding countryside revolutionaries to being the group that at least stood up to the Americans who had managed to drop more than 100,000 tons of bombs primarily on civilians.
It's the kind of thing that can really piss a people off and did. We thus, as seemingly ever, managed to use brute force to create a boon for a lunatic. T
he thing that ended the Khmer Rouge was...you guessed it, our old enemy Vietnam who invaded that nation and ended it. And you know who AIDED the fucking Khmer Rouge to resist Vietnam (hell, financed the border crossings that led to Vietnam snapping back)...THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA! (That's right under Jimmy Carter, but right-wingers spare me your indignation, your crowd was fully on board at the time).
And, of course, Bush is also predicting that if we withdraw from
Vietnam Iraq, they will never forgive us and all the dominoes will fall and we'll never be able to deal with them as friends or deal with them ever again.
So there!
It would be nice to see actual discussion of the errors of Bush's argument but that would require two things. First of all, it would require thought and a knowledge of history -- as opposed to inculcated cynism and second, Bush would have to be a Democrat.