Has the President missed any major American wars which he can compare to his war in Iraq?
[ul][li]Revolutionary war X[/li][li]War of 1812 O[/li][li]Civil war X[/li][li]World war I ?[/li][li]World war II X[/li][li]Korean war X[/li][li]Vietnam war X[/ul][/li]Didn’t Bush once compare Saddam to Kaiser Wilhelm II?
The war of 1812 remains oddly unaccounted for. Well, the president has another year and 5 months to work it back into the national dialog.
Someone will need to tell him there was a War of 1812.
No one I have heard is claiming that the factions in Iraq are going to start handing flowers to each other when we leave. I guess they used them all up when we came.
The question is: would the impact of our leaving Vietnam have been better or worse if we did it,say, six years earlier. Cambodia would definitely have been in better shape.
Aw, give him credit.
I’m sure he heard *The Battle of New Orleans * on the radio at least once.
I’m sure he has, but since New Orleans has a French heritage, he probably thinks it happened during the French and Indian War.
I’m not going to post it here as I did it just for laughs, but a google search turns up the incredible fact that Bush (and Condi of all people) actually HAS drawn comparisons between the war of 1812 (and Madison) and Iraq. I’m sure everyone here is completely surprised…
As to the OP, its pretty indisputable that bad things happened in Vietnam when we pulled out. Its debatable if things would have been better or worse had we stayed. The biggest mistake IMHO was going there in the first place, just like Iraq.
The other thing is…what did you expect Bush to say? Is this a surprise to anyone?? Hell, though he didn’t say it, I would be shocked if he DIDN’T think leaving Vietnam was a mistake.
-XT
I just didn’t expect him to use his out loud voice. This is a very bad analogy that would bite him in the butt, if he had any butt left after the last two years of ass chewing. I guess at this point he just doesn’t care anymore.
Not so much a surprise that he thinks pulling out of Vietnam was a mistake, but it is surprising that he’d compare Iraq to the “V-word” in anyway at all. Not a great way to get Americans to support your war.
Out of curiosity, can anyone find a poll of what percentage of present day Americans think pulling out of Vietnam was a mistake? Betcha its pretty high.
“My fellow Americans. We cannot leave Iraq before we have obtained victory. Otherwise, Al-Queda will stop American ships on the high seas and impress our sailors.”
Well, “pretty high” in the sense the the number of people who continue to support the current fiasco are “pretty high.” Getting 99,000,000 people to agree on some issue is a high number, even if they represent a distinct minority among their 201,000,000 neighbors. You could probably find similar numbers among those who express opinions regarding Vietnam.
Of course, he was playing to (what he thought was) a hand-picked audience–which, to an extent, he was. The VFW is a pretty hawkish bunch including a number of people who actually think we made a mistake leaving Vietnam in the 1970s (rather than the better thought out point that we should have left in 1955). Even so, I was struck by the number of VFW guys interviewed who disagreed with him.
The President: Aheh. I think I gotcha on this one, Vogature. That would be the War of 1814…Doh!
Just when I think I can’t loathe the man more he sinks to a new low. Here is someone who used his connections to get a highly coveted position in the National Guard to avoid serving in Vietnam, then asks to be transferred so that he can work on the political campaign of a pro-war candidate. Then years later he has the audacity to complain that “we” left Vietnam too soon. Why Congress doesn’t have the balls to call this excuse for a human being on his baloney is beyond me. He can’t have pictures of ALL of them buggering pageboys, can he?
IIRC, this isn’t the first time Bush has said pulling out of Vietnam was a huge mistake. I’m pretty sure he’s said so on multiple occasions. That’s understandable, since there’s a good portion of the right who agrees with that perspective and, I imagine, view the current talk about withdrawing from Iraq as a battle of vindication and revenge for Vietnam. They really don’t want those darned liberals to win again.
Bush did compare Vietnam and Iraq once, on a selective basis. He compared the rising violence in Iraq to the Tet Offensive and referenced the media sensationalism which led to our pullout in the 70s to the covering of the (then) rising sectarian violence. As the Tet Offensive was a last desperate attack, so too were the spectacular Iraqi insurgent attacks before U.S. election cycles. So you can see where he’s coming from.
I never saw many people lamenting the pullout of the USSR from Afghanistan. In fact, our national interest in Afghanistan pretty much dropped to zero after the Soviets left, ignoring the swirling chaotic mess they left behind. But surely no one would seriously contend the Soviets should’ve stayed for some unknown amount of time. I recently made a rather lengthy post about that comparison to our current situation in Iraq and I personally found it pretty compelling. It certainly makes more sense than comparing Iraq to South Korea, WWII’s Japan, Germany and Italy, or the U.S. Civil War, as Bush and his supporters have done on multiple occasions. The attempt by the French to hold onto Algeria works well too…
I have to say that even for George Bush this recent speech was astonishingly dumb. You’d think the last thing he’d want to do is point out any simularities between Iraq and Vietnam. He can spin it all he wants, but for most Americans when you say “Vietnam” the first things that pop into mind are “stupid politicians” and “military defeat” - hardly the kind of ideas Bush should want people dwelling on.
Has he ever compared Iraq to the Spanish-American war? I suppose even he might see how unwise that would be.
The Wars of the Roses?
But that’s not American–!
Sshhh! Don’t say anything!
He’s also overlooked King Philip’s War (let’s see anyone beat that).
Not much I can add besides a link to the local editorial cartoonist’s take on Bush’s speech (if it isn’t there after today, search “Dr. Feelbad”.)
(Just out of curiosity: I don’t suppose anyone has any numbers comparing Iraqi deaths under the Saddam regime to the guesstimated number of deaths under the Prince George regency.)
P.S.: Little Nemo nailed it.
It is estimated that Saddam executed 600k one way or another.
Over a 20 year + period. Bush, by independent estimates, is already responsible for the same ball park figure of ‘extra’ deaths in 4 years.
Go us.
Bush has no right to talk about Vietnam, 1812, the 100 years war, Peloponessian war, or any other war. He was (as far as I’m concerned) a coward who used family and political connections to get out of Vietnam, and now has the gall to say OTHER people should have kept fighting there. he also says that we have to keep losing people in Iraq (Iran next?) because it wouldn’t what? Wouldn’t be macho or whatever to leave now? I’m glad he will be gone soon (not soon enough).
That’s his underlying message. Whatever bin Laden says will grant them a psychological victory, a morale boost, whatever - we can’t do that. So bin Laden knows exactly how to game Bush into doing whatever he wants.
From Bush’s speech:
I’ve got a great idea: let’s do what we think will defeat al-Qaeda, and let’s also try to leave Iraq in a way that minimizes the likely bad effects of our departure. But fact is, we’re going to leave sometime, and whenever that is, we’ll be facing the same risks.
Just like in Vietnam, the only question is, how much carnage will we cause before we leave, in addition to that which will follow our inevitable departure?