Vietnamese Scoff At Bush's Iraq Analogy

(CBS/AP)  President Bush touched a nerve among Vietnamese when he invoked the Vietnam War in a speech warning that death and chaos will envelop Iraq if U.S. troops leave too quickly.

People in Vietnam, where opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq is strong, said Thursday that Mr. Bush drew the wrong conclusions from the long, bloody Southeast Asian conflict.

"Doesn't he realize that if the U.S. had stayed in Vietnam longer, they would have killed more people?" said Vu Huy Trieu of Hanoi, a veteran of the communist forces that fought American troops in Vietnam. "Nobody regrets that the Vietnam War wasn't prolonged except Bush."

He said U.S. troops could never have prevailed here. "Does he think the U.S. could have won if they had stayed longer? No way," Trieu said.

Vietnam's official government spokesman offered a more measured response when asked at a regular media briefing to comment on Bush's speech to American veterans Wednesday.

"With regard to the American war in Vietnam, everyone knows that we fought to defend our country and that this was a righteous war of the Vietnamese people," Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung said. "And we all know that the war caused tremendous suffering and losses to the Vietnamese people."

Dung said Vietnam hopes that the Iraq conflict will be resolved "very soon, in an orderly way, and that the Iraqi people will do their best to rebuild their country."

Although Vietnam opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Dung stressed that ties between Hanoi and Washington have been growing closer since the former foes normalized relations in 1995, two decades after the war's end.

In his remarks to U.S. veterans at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Kansas City, Mo., Mr. Bush said a hasty retreat from Iraq would lead to terrible violence.

"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,'" Mr. Bush said.

Many people in Vietnam said Mr. Bush's comparison was ill-considered.

The only way to restore order in Iraq is for the United States to leave, said Trinh Xuan Thang, a university student.

"Bush sent troops to invade Iraq and created all the problems there," Thang said.

If the U.S. withdrew, he said, the violence might escalate in the short term but the situation would eventually stabilize.

"Let the Iraqis determine their fate by themselves," Thang said. "They don't need American troops there."

Ton Nu Thi Ninh, former chairwoman of the National Assembly's committee on foreign affairs, said Mr. Bush was unwise to stir up sensitive memories of the Vietnam War.

"The price we, the Vietnamese people on both sides, paid during the war was due to the fact that the Americans went into Vietnam in the first place," Ninh said.

Mr. Bush's comments drew criticism from politicians and historians who claimed he did not understand the lessons of the Vietnam War or was using the wrong historical lessons to sell our military's continued presence in Iraq.

"It's an untenable position," historian Douglas Brinkley told CBS News White House correspondent Bill Plante "It's divisive. It's not going to sell. You are not going to be able to sell the lessons of Vietnam as, 'We should have stayed a decade longer.'"

Mr. Bush, who has rejected Iraq-Vietnam comparisons in the past, linked the U.S. pullout back then to the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Foreign policy analysts took issue with this argument.

"The president emphasized the violence in the wake of American withdrawal from Vietnam. But this happened because the United States left too late, not too early," said Steven Simon, a Mideast expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. "It was the expansion of the war that opened the door to (Khmer Rouge leader) Pol Pot and the genocide of the Khmer Rouge. The longer you stay, the worse it gets."

[vietnamtiger]

Millions of Vietnamese who are NOT communists agree and support the idea of a better Vietnam if the war was won by the South Vietnamese Army. The media and the news should ask the Vietnamese like myself instead of interviewing communists leaders.

Have you forgotten that we are the people who stood for freedom and liberty? Have you forgotten that millions of people were killed AFTER the war was over in concentration camps which were called Re-Education camps by the communists to fooled the world? They killed and tortured millions after the war. Yet the media like CBS and other major network interview these killers instead of Freedom fighters like myself and many others.

[vietnamtiger]

Has the media become so money driven that they don''t think about morals when they print news like this? Do you think a communist who killed innocent people will admit to it by supporting Mr. Bush''s war agenda? Of course not. But yet CBS and other major network are so ignorant or money driven that they will print this garbage quoting communist generals who have killed millions of innocent people of South Vietnam. Why didn''t CBS ask them about their WAR crimes and how they got away with it just like Mr. Bush is getting away with it? CBS lack the decency to ask Vietnamese as well as Americans who fought against the communists in Vietnam what they thought of Mr. Bush''s comment or analogy. Some of us would agree while some will not agree with Mr. Bush, but I am sure we are all angry as hell that CBS quoted a communist instead of us. Is CBS so ignorant that they don''t know there are millions of Vietnamese oversea who would do anything to have Democracy for Vietnam? Millions have protested against relation with the communists yet CBS and other media had paid very little attention to that.

[vietnamtiger]

I hope CBS and all major network media wake up and talk to us more often to get our views because you are simply ignorant to think that the communists will ever tell the truth when you interview them. They have one agenda only, and that is to hide their war crimes.

We, the freedom fighters may have been forgotten by people like CBS, but we''re not dead yet. We might not support Mr. Bush''s war in Iraq, but if he is willing to support a democracy in Vietnam, I can guarantee you that not only myself, but millions of others will definitely support him 100 percent.

Long live the freedom fighters and the Vietnam Tiger. Down with the communists.

[rushlimpdrug]

stonebog - your choice of making a joke here is to say the least tasteless.

[kopana]

again, signs of what scientists have been telling us keep coming true...that global warming continues to have unusual weather patterns such as torrential rains, drought, and what has President Bush done about any of this????? Again, allow the the crazy war to go on...What have we done there anyway besides cause civil wars and destroyed the country essentially including the museums of most ancient of cultures.....We are more apt to die of the effects from global warminig than any terrorist attacks although Bush has done a good job ensuring that more innocent middle of the road Middle Easterns hate us even more, what a great foreign policy he has...I wondered if he attends one wedding(his daughter) and over 100,000 funerals. May make a good movie script, yeah... a real tear jerker

[tuckerndfw]

The primary difference between Iraq and Vietnam is that Bush and Cheney did everything they could to avoid becoming involved in Vietnam.

Maybe if Bush and the other draft dodging cowards in his administration had volunteered to serve in Vietnam, they could have won the war.

It is pathetic that the Vietnamese are also laughing at the lying, drunken, drug addicted, draft dodger deserter Bible thumpers voted into office twice.

Bible thumpers'' God must be a real practical joker if Bozo is the best he could come up with as his chosen candidate for US president.

[rashid821]

It''s obvious US can''t leave Iraq, not because of more casualties they thought there would be but because they can''t seem to ignore the vast oil of Iraq.

[brianbwb-2009]

I don''''t hate the U.S., but I do hate the actions of a tyrranical/imperialist government whom is supposed to be a government "by the people", but certainly not me.
Posted by USAyesterday

This is the whole world''s sentiment, anyone who tries to tell you that some country "hates our freedoms" is lying through the side of their face.

[brianbwb-2009]

Posted by USAyesterday,

Right on, plus the French turned tail and ran after the US got struck in, but it proved so profitable for Bechtel corp., with their $25,000 toilet seats and $1,500 screwdrivers, and billion dollar airports, railroads and oil refineries bombed by US planes and rebuilt, to a total tune of $17 trillion, that the war profiteers could not possibly let it end.

[usayesterday]

Posted by incog-nito at 03:02 AM : Aug 25, 2007

"The Vietnamese looked on the US to support them in throwing out the French oppressors" Posted by ronwiltx

Now that untruth is so opposite the facts that it has to be intentional, it was the French who asked the US to help them quell a rising insurgency in their colony. There is no way that the US would help other "white" people lose their position of dominance of another ethnic group, they never have, and never will.
Posted by brianbwb at 02:55 AM : Aug 25, 2007
....................


Plus... the fearmongering of "Communism" (the same as "Terrorism" is today). And, the fact that the general population of Vietnam were oppressed by the U.S./French backed dictator Ngo Dinh Diem. The communist dictator Ho Chi Minh was a dictator, true, but he was much preferred by the majority of the Vietnamese over Ngo. However, because Ho Chi Minh was a Communist, that did not sit well with the equally oppressive forces of the U.S. The biggest losers of the Vietnam war, in the end, was the Vietnamese. The Iraqis, today, are ultimately going to be left holding the bag as their Vietnamese bretheren did over 30 years ago.

I don''t hate the U.S., but I do hate the actions of a tyrranical/imperialist government whom is supposed to be a government "by the people", but certainly not me.