Bush compares Iraq to Vietnam
Updated on 22 August 2007
The US president warns that early US withdrawl from Iraq could lead to the sort of chaos that followed the Vietnam war.
"At their core they are all ideological struggles." So said President Bush today, comparing the war in Iraq to Vietnam as he warned that any early withdrawal from the country would lead to the sort of chaos he said claimed "millions of innocent citizens" after the US left Vietnam three decades ago.
The speech, to thousands of US war vets in Missouri, is the latest in an aggressive campaign by the US administration to convince the American public to stay the course in Iraq. It comes ahead of a crucial progress report on the surge in Baghdad, due in less than three weeks.
But by envoking the spectre of Vietnam, seen by most as a defeat for the United States, the president has started a painful debate.
A room full of militray veterans gave President Bush a rare sympathetic audience as he tried out a new justification for staying the course in Iraq.
But to many, Vietnam means quagmire and defeat, so Bush has always before rejected comparsion with a war pursued in the face of public opposition until the US was forced to leave.
It was a mistake that must not be repeated today, he says
One 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" and "killing fields".
To many, Vietnam means quagmire and defeat, so Bush has always before rejected comparsion with that war.
Previous conflicts had been just as unpopular, the president said, but in South Korea and Japan US military intervention DID produce stable, friendly democracies, where critics had said it could not be done.
Tomorrow a $15m TV campaign will try to persude the American people to support the troops and their president, and that it is not the time to quit.
It is all part of major fightback from the White House. Another speech next week will say it is vital for the whole of the Middle East that US troops stay in Iraq.
The president has three weeks to make the case before General Petraeus comes to Washington to report to Congress on progress in Iraq - and it won't all be good news
Iraqi premier Nouri al-Maliki knows he will get a lot of the blame for lack of political progess. He was furious that President Bush seemed to suggest yesterday that he'd lost American support. He won't be much cheered by being called a good guy today.
