Korea, Vietnam and Iraq: Bush's View of History

[populist101]

President Bush made a rather puzzling speech to the VFW on August 22. In his continued defense of his immoral, deadly, imperial misadventure in Iraq, Mr. Bush cited the Vietnam War, a catastrophic forerunner to the one in Iraq. Regarding the final U.S. departure from Vietnam in 1975, he said this: ".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."

Mr. Bush rightly states that millions died following the decision of the U.S. to allow the Vietnamese people to determine their own system of government without American interference. What he seems to conveniently forget is that millions of Vietnamese people died during the U.S. involvement there, in addition to more than 50,000 Americans. The final pullout of U.S. soldiers did not end the war; it merely allowed Vietnam's citizens to end it. Certainly people of compassion grieve with the loss of life experienced there; however, it could be argued that the death toll in Vietnam's civil war could have been reduced by half if the U.S. had never interfered. It could also have been reduced significantly if the U.S. had left earlier. Each day the U.S. remained in that country only added to the death toll.

The president also said this: "Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War.." Yet he has consistently seemed to reject 'legitimate debate' about how the U.S. got into the Iraqi War. Perhaps Mr. Bush would like to avoid the shining of too bright a light on the reasons for that involvement. The deceptions, falsehoods and threatening innuendos that he and his loyal minions, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powel and others proclaimed as known facts to the American public, the United Nations and the world all proved to be untrue. He seems to minimize the importance of looking at the recent past, and wants the world instead to look upon his view of a disastrous future if U.S. soldiers leave Iraq.

While re-writing the past and predicting the future, the bloody present escapes his notice. Mr. Bush says little about current conditions in Iraq: the daily deaths of Iraqi men, women and children, and U.S. soldiers; the suffering of refugees fleeing their homes to an unknown and uncertain future; the anguish of parents unable to provide water and food for their starving children because of his war. He chooses instead to resurrect again the once alluring but now stale idea that if a nation is not under the oppressive thumb of the U.S., it represents a threat to the American way of life. He refers to a ".stable continent whose people want to live in peace with America not attack America." This, he seems to say, represents the only two alternatives: if a nation does not buckle under to U.S. economic or military force, it must then be an enemy.

Mr. Bush appears to believe that he can whitewash almost anything to skew it to appear as an American victory. In addition to invoking the Vietnam disaster, and neglecting basic facts pertaining to it, he sought to portray South Korea through the same distorted filter. Said he: "The defense strategy that refused to hand the South Koreans over to a totalitarian neighbor helped raise up an Asian Tiger that is a model for developing countries across the world, including the Middle East."

The president appears to have forgotten, or perhaps he never knew, that the U.S. occupied the southern part of Korea after World War II in an apparent effort to prevent a Russian occupation of that country. Today, this 'Asian Tiger' hosts over 20 United States Army facilities. If this is the model that he seeks for Iraq, that nation can expect a large, permanent American military presence.

"We are still in the early hours of the current ideological struggle, but we know how the others ended, and that knowledge helps guide our efforts today." More pearls of wisdom from the self-proclaimed war president. U.S. involvement in Vietnam led to the deaths of between one and two million Vietnamese people, the destruction of that country's economy and the near-destruction of the U.S. economy. It drove one U.S. president from office and caused unprecedented turmoil on American streets and college campuses. America's reputation around the world was in tatters.

The Korean War, which was far shorter than the Vietnam War, resulted in the deaths of over 400,000 people, including tens of thousands of Americans. Over fifty years later, American military presence in that country is overwhelming. Despite Mr. Bush's claims to the contrary, it does not appear that U.S. efforts in Iraq are being guided by any knowledge of the outcomes of those earlier wars.

News reports state that Mr. Bush is going to continue with this same theme in coming speeches as well. If further indication were needed that he is incapable of learning from the past, or from his own mistakes, just this should be sufficient. He is determined to force America to 'stay the course,' despite the mortal dangers to U.S. soldiers and Iraqi citizens that are present on each step of that course, and the disastrous end to which it leads. As his escalation of the war only brings more dead soldiers home to America he insists on continuing the carnage. And as the Iraqi people continue to oppose their U.S. aggressors, Mr. Bush sends more aggression.

His optimistic picture of Iraq belies the facts, which Mr. Bush has never felt any compulsion to show any awareness of, let alone understand. There is no reason to believe that he will ever do so. Iraq must wait at least until the inauguration of a new president in January of 2009 for any hope that their suffering will cease. Until then, Iraqis and Americans will continue to die in Iraq's tragic civil war.

by Robert Fantina (click here for more articles), who is a long-time activist for peace and social justice. He has worked with the Coalition for Peace Action in New Jersey. Following the 2004 presidential election, he moved to Canada, where he now resides. Robert is the author of Desertion and the American Solder: 1776-2006.