Vietnam Followup

After you read this you'll be able to scrape your brain off the wall with a spatula and chew it like bubble gum - POP!!!

George W. Bush on Wednesday said the consequences of a US withdrawal from Iraq could echo the “killing fields” genocide that destroyed Cambodia after the US pulled out from Vietnam in the mid-1970s.

In a speech signalling Mr Bush is in no mood to compromise with his Iraq war critics, the US president threw down the gauntlet in advance of Democratic plans next month to revive a congressional vote setting a deadline for withdrawal of most of the 160,000 US troops in Iraq.

Much of Mr Bush’s speech, which was delivered in Kansas City to the US Veterans of Foreign Wars, focused on the history of the US occupation of Japan and Germany after the second world war and on the aftermath of the US military pull-out from Indochina.

“The price of America’s withdrawal from Vietnam 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. “Iraq is a central front in the war on terror. Withdrawal without getting the job done would be a disaster.”

The US president, who appeared to be in ebullient spirits, also reprised his controversial linking of democracy to religious values. “We are still in the early hours of the current ideological struggle,” he said. “Our world will never be safe until the people of the Middle East know the freedom that our Creator intended for all.”

An understanding of cause and effect is necessary for functioning. No wonder we're so fucked. I've mentioned this before, but be sure to read the Harper's article on the Stabbed in the Back myth. It's what Bush is trying to set up for whomever the Democratic president is who takes us out of Iraq. Yes, it will be a disaster, but for Bush to say something like that ignores both his role in creating the disaster and the disaster that will continue to happen whether we're there or not. Yes, it's still a disaster.

The logic is "as long as we're trying we're free from blame, because it implies that we could succeed, which would make everything worthwhile." That is absolutely morally and causally specious logic. Trying? How much? Without a draft? Without properly equipping our troops? Without any plan? How about some other questions like are we making things better or worse? What about the cost? What do the other actors think and why? None of these questions are being asked, not by the administration, the media or the very serious people in our foreign policy community. Just shut up and cheer.

Adding, that last quote is precious. Freedom to do exactly as we tell them.

I'm sure Josh Marshall will have more on Bush's speech later, but he's already got a post up after reading the prepared remarks:

The story of the 'boat people' is unquestionably tragic. And there's little doubt that there are many Iraqis who will pay either with their lives or nationality for aiding us in various ways during our occupation of the country. But to govern our policy on this basis is simply to buy into a classic sunk cost fallacy. A far better -- and really quite necessary -- policy would be to give asylum to a lot of these people rather than continuing to get more of them into the same position in advance of our inevitable departure.

More concretely though, didn't the killing fields happen in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge rather than Vietnam? So doesn't that complicate the analogy a bit? And didn't that genocide actually come to an end when the Communist Vietnamese invaded in 1979 and overthrow the Khmer Rouge regime? The Vietnamese Communists may have been no great shakes. But can we get through one of these boneheaded historical analogies while keeping at least some of the facts intact?

Not a snowball's chance in hell.