At least, that’s what I heard on the radio this morning; can’t find that particular quote in any of the newspaper articles available online discussing W’s visit to Hanoi for the APEC summit.
(He also said, WRT Iraq, “We’ll succeed unless we quit.”)
I seem to remember Reagan saying something almost as stupid back in the '80s – what was it – ah, yes: The lesson of Vietnam is “never to get into a war you don’t intend to win.”
sigh
Some people never learn.
I thought the lesson of Vietnam wsas never to get involved in a land war in Asia, but perhaps W did not see The Princess Bride.
Lessons that categorically state “never get into a war” tend not to sink in very well with world leaders.
cnn.com has this quote:
So, in other words, stay the course.
Wait, so Bush’s message on a diplomatic mission to Vietnam is “hi, how you guys doin’ Good? That’s too bad, because on second thought, we should have killed all you guys and taken over your country a long time ago.”
I mean, wtf?
This is why Bush has always sucked at diplomacy. Everything is a show for Americans back home, without any clue as to what the point of diplomacy is for outside of American audiences.
It was **never **stay the course, George. Sheesh. I expect better of you.
Inconceivable!!
Sorry, I should have given the entire mission statement:
Stay the course!
Slay the horse!
Flay the corpse!
The rumblings in the conservative reality is that all this violence in Iraq is an Islamic form of the Tet offensive (example) so don’t worry you spineless liberals, we’re gonna stay in there like we should have in the 70s! Fool me once, shame on you, uh…can’t get fooled again? Once bitten…bring back pie?
Whatever. You get the idea. We’re gonna stay and make some more mass graves because we can’t let Saddam beat us. There will be no mass grave gap!
Actually that was the lesson learned from Korea. Forgotten again for Vietnam. Remembered and then forgotten again.
Thankfully it is all irrelevant now because the freedom thirsty secular masses of Iran are already stockpiling rose petals.
More or less my first thoughts upon reading the article. I would have given anything to know what was going though the minds of the VN state officials while they listened to this crap. I imagine they were pissing themselves either out of outrage or laughing too hard.
Personally, I’ve always thought that the lesson to be learned from Viet Nam was “Don’t start a war just to fuck with a country’s internal politics, even if the leader is a real doody-head,” but what do I know?
(Looks at Iraq)
Well, OK, apparently, I know more than the president of my country, but still . . . What do I know?
Just laying the groundwork, setting a few positions. “We would have won in Iraq, just like we would have won in Viet Nam, but the liberal wussies tied our hands…”
Look for Chuck Norris to parachute into Anwar Province to free American POWs.
The lssons learned from Vietnam about how to fight an insurgency have been largely ignored.
Even Nixon wasn’t this bad. When he went to China, did he hold a press conference in which he declared “wow, it’s really great to be here. I wish we’d continued the Korean war and thrown all you assholes out of power. Now, about those trade agreements again?”
NOTHING got by Tricky Dick. When he visited the Great Wall, he said “I think that you would have to conclude that this is a great wall.”
One never can underestimate the diplomatic skills of Mr. Bush. If it wasn’t for his father’s influence he could well be rotting in the jungle there. The Domino Theory was just as much a non-threat as Saddam’s WMD.
His suggestion that the US should have stayed even longer in Vietnam is especially risible in light of the fact that he himself was a war dodger. He’s actually saying, “the US would have won in Vietnam if those guys who actually went hadn’t a QUIT.”
You know, a draft that includes Ivy-League schools and women (aka the Bushette twins) might just dramatically pull the head of this administration out of its own collective ass.
Any chance Congress might help that along…?
You don’t think we should have gone in to Korea?
Unfair. Those guys had no say in the important decisions. What he’s saying is that the U.S. would have won if the politicians stateside hadn’t quit; which is incredibly stupid, but not hypocritical.
I thought it was, “No good can come of getting involved in another country’s civil war.”
We learned that lesson, all right. In Iraq, we went in and created a civil war.