KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Citing America’s war experience in Asia, and even Vietnam, U.S. President Bush on Wednesday stupidly made the case for staying the course in Iraq and reiterated his support for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. In his speech at the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Mr. Bush said:
The ideals and interests that led America to help the Japanese turn defeat into democracy are the same that lead us to remain engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq. 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 result of American sacrifice and perseverance in Asia is a freer, more prosperous and stable continent whose people want to live in peace with America not attack America.
Bush then cited Vietnam as a cautionary tale for those urging troop withdrawals today.
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.’
Let me see, the French were getting their ass kicked by the Viet Minh and the United States was tired of advising the South Vietnamese Army, so they got directly involved in the war for all of Vietnam’s tin, rubber and off-shore oil. As for the boat people, the re-education camps, and the fall of Phnom Penh, they were caused by Nixon and Kissinger’s secret war in Cambodia.
South Korea was ruled by the totalitarian dictator, Park Jung Hee, from 1961 to 1979, and South Korea didn’t have a civilian leader until 1992 when Kim Young Sam was elected. How’s that for a freer and democratic Asia.
