Turns out Iraq is like Vietnam after all
President George W Bush has warned a US withdrawal from Iraq could trigger the kind of upheaval seen in South East Asia after US forces quit Vietnam.
"The price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens," he told war veterans in Missouri.
Mr Bush said the Vietnam War had taught the need for US patience over Iraq.
So stick it out for another decade or two, I guess. I'm really curious where they're going to find the troops. More to the point, I give you Jim Henley:
The President is going to argue that after the US pulled out of Southeast Asia, millions of people died.
One more time. Millions of people died while we were there. A fair proportion of them were people we ourselves killed. In any reckoning of the costs of intervening and withdrawing from Indochina, those people count too. It’s a bizarre, narcissistic blind spot to imagine otherwise.
Which brings us to Iraq, per the President’s insistence. It is possible that if we leave, hundreds of thousands will die and millions be displaced. That has already happened under our government’s tender and expert care. There is no short-term prospect that it will stop happening. But I guess if you die while the US is around, you have the comfort of knowing we were trying.
As with so much else, this is just another way to keep the US staggering along in Iraq until Bush can pass the problem off to somebody, anybody, else, and hope they can pass the blame for the disaster off as well.
