But what is especially interesting is the Vietnam trip. It appears that President Bush hasn't read much of the Vietnam War history. Here is the MSNBC News story on Bush's trip to Vietnam:
HANOI, Vietnam - President Bush said Friday the United States’ unsuccessful war in Vietnam three decades ago offered lessons for the American-led struggle in Iraq. “We’ll succeed unless we quit,” Bush said shortly after arriving in this one-time war capital.
[....]
The president said there were lessons to be learned from the divisive Vietnam war — the longest conflict in U.S. history — as the United States wages the unpopular war in Iraq, now in its fourth year.
“We tend to want there to be instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is going to take awhile,” the president said. He called the Iraq war a “great struggle” and said, “It’s just going to take a long period of time for the ideology that is hopeful — and that is an ideology of freedom — to overcome an ideology of hate.”
[....]
The collision of past and present seemed to affect Bush.
“Laura and I were talking about how amazing it is that we’re here in Vietnam,” the president said.
“My first reaction is history has a long march and societies change and relationships can constantly be altered to the good,” Bush said.
Bush said that “the world that we live in today is one where they want things to happen immediately and it’s hard work in Iraq.”
Bush said he assured Howard that “we will get the job done” and will stand with the embattled government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
“We’ll succeed unless we quit,” Bush said. “The Maliki government is going to make it unless the coalition leaves before they have a chance to make it.”
[....]
“We hear voices calling for us to retreat from the world and close our doors to these opportunities,” the president said in a speech at the National University of Singapore. “These are the old temptations of isolationism and protectionism, and America must reject them.”
That is what President Bush said regarding the lessons of Vietnam. Now here is what Keith Olbermann said regarding Bush's lessons of Vietnam. This is through YouTube:
Here are the lessons from Olbermann:
The primary one — which should be as obvious to you as the latest opinion poll showing that only 31 percent of this country agrees with your tragic Iraq policy — is that if you try to pursue a war for which the nation has lost its stomach, you and it are finished. Ask Lyndon Johnson.
The second most important lesson of Vietnam, Mr. Bush: If you don’t have a stable local government to work with, you can keep sending in Americans until hell freezes over and it will not matter. Ask Vietnamese Presidents Diem or Thieu.
The third vital lesson of Vietnam, Mr. Bush: Don’t pretend it’s something it’s not. For decades we were warned that if we didn’t stop “communist aggression” in Vietnam, communist agitators would infiltrate and devour the small nations of the world, and make their insidious way, stealthily, to our doorstep.
The war machine of 1968 had this “domino theory.”
Your war machine of 2006 has this nonsense about Iraq as “the central front in the war on terror.”
The fourth pivotal lesson of Vietnam, Mr. Bush: If the same idiots who told Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon to stay there for the sake of “peace With honor” are now telling you to stay in Iraq, they’re probably just as wrong now, as they were then ... Dr. Kissinger.
And the fifth crucial lesson of Vietnam, Mr. Bush — which somebody should’ve told you about long before you plunged this country into Iraq — is that if you lie your country into a war, your war, your presidency will be consigned to the scrap heap of history.
Olbermann is spot-on regarding these five Vietnam lessons that Bush failed to heed when he invaded Iraq. What is even more insane is that President Bush and his advisors, some of whom were also involved in the Nixon administration during the Vietnam War--can you say Cheney and Rumsfeld, had failed to even understand the parallels between Vietnam and Iraq, or even understand the parallels between the Russian war in Afghanistan and Iraq. The president and his men were blind to these parallels and worst-case scenarios that have now become so true in Iraq. And even now with the lessons of Vietnam and Iraq staring right in their faces--especially in light of the Republican Party's "thumping" in the congressional midterms, they still remain blind--We’ll succeed unless we quit?
Don't know much about history....
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