358: GEORGE W. BUSH – His speech on the War in Iraq in August 2007

31 August, 2008

GEORGE W BUSH – His speech on the War in Iraq in August 2007

Gleaned from The Guardian via AP via Naharnet Thursday 23^rd August 2007

President George Bush aptly compared a premature pullout from Iraq with the pullout from Vietnam – and the bloodshed and chaos that followed.

He said he would resist pressure from congress the following month for an early and ill-advised withdrawal. He signalled that US troops, whom he hailed as the greatest force for human liberation and hope the world has ever known would be in Iraq so long as he was president. He also said that the consequences of leaving without getting the jobdone would be devastating and that the enemy would follow them home.

Freedom's Watch, a conservative group, launched a $15m (£7.5m) advertising campaign in 20 states the day before, saying: It's not the time to quit. It's not the time for politics.

Bush had previously strenuously avoided making any explicit references to Vietnam. It was a gamble and a risk to remind Americans that Vietnam turned out to be a military quagmire and to remind them of the shambolic retreat or escape from the US Embassy rooftops in Saigon on the day a Black Hawk crashed in Iraq killing 14 US soldiers.

Daniel: It is true! Vietnam turned out to be not only a military quagmire but a moral and reputation destroyer: America! America! Was this you?  – which, of course, provided the politicians with butter for their breads, and provided the media with selected news, pictures, and scenes for their pages, screens, and air-time – BUT! Only because the USA leaders and politicians at the time thought it was only a game – albeit a War Game – and handled it as such.

Bush turned the argument around and made a series of contentious political parallels. He argued that US involvement in the Far East had turned it from a continent with only two democracies in 1939 – Australia and New Zealand – into a region where democracy was the norm: he mentioned Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam.

In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule in which hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation, torture, and execution. Some historians argue that it was the US covert bombing of Cambodia that produced the Khmer Rouge rather than US withdrawal from Vietnam. Daniel: Horse-shit! It was the other way round! It was the fact that the Cambodians were being intimidated and suppressed, forced into accepting and adopting an ideological way of life, and starved, tortured, and executed when they refused, that prompted the USA to intervene. The savage murderous and merciless rule only increased because the USA had tucked her tail between her legs and slunk off – instead of staying and finishing the job.

Bush added that in Vietnam, former allies of the United States: government workers and intellectuals, and businessmen, were sent off to prison camps where tens of thousand perished. Hundreds of thousands more fled the country on rickety boats, many of them going to watery-graves in the South China Sea.

In his speech, he quoted advance excerpts from his forth-coming speech on Wednesday to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and said that History would prove the Iraq war was right and worth it; and that he wanted a nation running short on patience with the Iraq war to take a good long strong look at it. He compared it to previous US involvements in Asia that lost popular backing but eventually proved their worth and led to lasting peace; and that the ideals and interests that led America to help the Japanese turn defeat into democracy were – or must be – the same that prompted the USA to remain engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The defence strategy that refused to hand the South Koreans over to a totalitarian neighbour helped to raise an Asian Tiger that is a model for developing countries across the world, including the Middle East.

Bush had often used historical comparisons in urging patience on Iraq, but White House aides hoped a specific focus on Asia will get skeptics to re-think their positions on Iraq and get beyond the daily violent setbacks there. He even cited Vietnam as a cautionary tale for those urging troop withdrawals today.

Three decades later, there was a legitimate debate on how the USA got into the Vietnam War in the first place, and how she left. Whatever their position in that debate was; one unmistakable legacy of the Vietnam War was that, the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to their vocabulary new terms like boat people, re-education camps, and killing fields.

Bush's speech at the VFW was the first in a planned two-punch combo.

After comparing the current war against extremists with the militarists of Japan and the communists in Korea and Vietnam in Wednesday's speech, he planned to discuss the war in Iraq in the context of its implications for the broader Middle East in a speech the following Tuesday at the annual American Legion convention in Reno, Nevada.

In the aftermath of Japan's surrender, many thought it was naive to help the Japanese transform themselves into a democracy. Critics complained after the USA had intervened to save South Korea from communist invasion. And in Vietnam, people argued that the real problem was the US presence there, and that the killing would end if they withdrew.

The advance of freedom in those lands should give us confidence that the hard work we are doing in the Middle East can have the same results we have seen in Asia – if the USA showed the same perseverance and sense of purpose.

My comments: If George W. Bush said all that, then I strongly advise the Adamant Asinine American Ass-holes to stop making fun of him – Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O’Brian, and the other Clown-Comedians like Jon Stewart and his birds-of-the-same-feather obnoxious guests on his Lame-Night Show – AFTER GETTING OFF HIS BACK!

All the Americans – even his own people – at the time, made fun of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address or Speech. Abraham Lincoln had to die to be vindicated; and for the United States of Adamant Asinine Ass-holes to appreciate and acknowledge him as the greatest President the USA ever had or will ever have – my not-so-humble opinion – and to include his short, brisk, and now famous speech among American Historical Documents in the Harvard Classics.

If I need to say more, then……

Posted by akill 08:45 | General | Comment(12) | Permalink

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