THINKING FOR OURSELVES

Beyond Vietnam

By Shea Howell

Michigan Citizen, Sept. 2-8, 2007

President Bush has launched a new campaign to rally support for the war in Iraq. After years of avoiding, denying, and evading the "V" word, Vietnam has surfaced as a justification for continuing U.S. military involvement in Iraq. At first glance it seems ridiculous to think that a failing president would claim a failed war as a reason to continue his own failing policy.

Yet Bush is doing just that. He started with one of the few remaining friendly audiences he could find, the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Speaking in Kansas City, Bush compared calls to end the war in Iraq to those that led to the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. He argued that the U.S. must stay the course in Iraq or suffer the humiliation of defeat and the guilt of abandoning our allies.

"Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left," Bush said. "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.'"

"Then as now, people argued that the real problem was America's presence, and that if we would just withdraw, the killing would end," Bush said. "The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be," he added. Following this speech Bush returned to his ranch and recorded his weekly radio address which showed neither doubt nor any intention of reducing the American commitment in Iraq. On Tuesday he made another speech in Reno, Nevada, arguing that a hasty withdrawal of troops would prove disastrous for the Middle East and for American security.

"We are still in the early stages of our new operations," Mr. Bush said in the radio address broadcast Saturday, as if there were not those who fervently wished the country was in the later stages, preparing to bring the troops home.

In 2004 Bush criticized those comparing the Vietnam and Iraq wars, saying, "I think the analogy is false. I also happen to think that analogy sends the wrong message to our troops and the wrong message to the enemy. Look, this is hard work. It's hard to advance freedom in a country that has been strangled by tyranny. And yet we must stay the course because the end result is in our nation's interest." So why has Bush now decided to invoke the ghosts of Vietnam?

This decision is a sign of how much Bush and his supporters intend to play to the most violent of the reactionary rightwing forces in the coming election season.

This new offensive is not about rallying large scale public support for a failed war. Bush has tried that time and again with dismal results. Rather it is about advancing the reactionary right wing view that the U.S. lost Vietnam because it was not willing to use the full military might of the U.S., including its nuclear arsenal, to achieve victory. Rightwing reactionaries have long believed that the U.S. can only achieve its rightful place in the world when it is willing to use maximum force to secure its interests. It believes we can control any nation, as long as we are willing to use our full military power. Bush's new campaign is about more than Iraq. It is about the forces he is willing to unleash at home to maintain power for an ideology that represents the worst our country has offered the world in a long time.

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