Bush urges patience on winning Iraq war
By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent

In a land where America suffered military defeat, President Bush urged patience for the war in Iraq Friday and tried to stiffen global resolve to challenge a nuclear-armed North Korea.

"For decades you had been torn apart by war," Bush said in a state banquet salute to Asia's fastest growing economy. "Today the Vietnamese people are at peace and seeing the benefits of reform."

Powerful reminders of the fighting three decades ago, the longest U.S. war and one that — like Iraq — bitterly divided Americans, remain in Hanoi.

Asked if the experience in Vietnam offered lessons for Iraq, Bush said, "We tend to want there to be instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is going to take awhile."

He said "it's just going to take a long period of time" for "an ideology of freedom to overcome an ideology of hate. Yet, the world that we live in today is one where they want things to happen immediately."

"We'll succeed unless we quit," the president said.

Bush is in Vietnam for the annual summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, and his first test Saturday is to persuade South Korea to fully implement U.N. sanctions imposed on North Korea for testing nuclear weapons.

South Korea has balked at some of the measures, and Bush planned to press President Roh Moo-hyun on the issue. South Korea suggests Washington needs to show more flexibility.

In weekend discussions, Bush hoped to coordinate strategy with China, Russia, Japan and South Korea for the resumption of disarmament negotiations with North Korea. Bush was to see Japan's new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, later Saturday.

In all, leaders of 21 nations and territories are gathered here, and it is unclear whether the summit will produce a unified stand toward North Korea.

As for local Vietnamese, the turnout for Bush as his motorcade moved past storefronts was far more subdued that the enthusiastic reception that greeted President Clinton six years ago. A few people waved, but most merely watched impassively. Weary of war, many here deeply disapprove of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Bush's limousine took him along Truc Bach lake, where then-Lt. Cmdr. John McCain, now a Republican senator from Arizona, was captured after parachuting from his damaged warplane. McCain spent more than five years as a prisoner of war.

"He suffered a lot as a result of his imprisonment, and yet we passed the place where he was literally saved, in one way, by the people pulling him out," Bush said. He was talking with reporters after meeting with Prime Minister John Howard of Australia, a staunch partner in Iraq.

Bush was to pay a visit Saturday to the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, charged with recovering and identifying the remains of Americans who were killed in action but never brought home. With personnel in Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Hawaii, the command identifies about six MIAs each month.

Reflecting on his visit, Bush said that "my first reaction is history has a long march to it, and that societies change and relationships can constantly be altered to the good."

There were bronze busts of Ho Chi Minh, the victorious North's revolutionary communist leader, as Bush met with the Vietnamese president, the prime minister, and the general secretary of the Communist Party. But there also were signs of change and Vietnam's quest to replace poverty with prosperity.

Nong Duc Manh, general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, was quoted by the White House as telling Bush that his country wanted to "put aside the past and look forward to the future."

Facing resistance in Congress, Bush was unable to deliver promised normalized trade benefits to Vietnam but said he was confident they would eventually win approval.

Nearly two weeks after elections at home that brought heavy Republican losses and a rebuke on the Iraq war, Bush discussed the possibility of a new approach with Howard.

"I assured John that any repositioning of troops, if that's what we choose to do, will be done in close consultation with John and his government. But I also assured him that we're not leaving until this job is done, until Iraq can govern, sustain and defend itself."

Bush said the embattled government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki "is going to make it unless the coalition leaves before they have a chance to make it. And that's why I assured the prime minister we'll get the job done."

Howard said a premature withdrawal of troops "would be a catastrophic defeat for our cause, not only in the Middle East, but it would embolden terrorists in that region and it would embolden terrorism in countries like Indonesia."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061117/ap_on_re_as/bush

The press conference was embarassing. I mean I really, genuinely feel embarassed to be an American when this President speaks in other nations.

I don't understand the comparisons. Patience didn't win in Vietnam, it was the same stubborness that had us stuck there and it was a horrific conflict for people of both nations. Could anything be more trivial? Let's not forget several things: 1) both wars were sold on false pretenses, and 2) both were used to incite fear of a further "domino effect," whereas Vietnam proved such a catastrophe was far, far from the case. Anyway, I won't go any further. The right-wing in this country, with all their fussy paranoia, does not understand the Vietnam war. Impoverished people on the other side of the world do not give two shits for American ideology when delivered by firepower. Get over your pride. This is not 1941.

The bolded parts read like a bunch of Kissingerian bullshit to me.

So basically the lesson that George Bush took from our experience in Vietnam is that we weren't patient enough to win. Yeah...

He'd get an F on my history exam.

Actually he was referring to the evolution of a society...how it's not going to happen in an instant. Part of his visit was in promotion of free trade, and in regards to "patience" he was referring to the privatization of some sectors of Vietnam's economy that has led to growth and the possibility of an expanding such freedoms.
The point is that it is not yet time to toss in the towel. President Bush understands that "withdrawing" will lead to mass killings and the real possibility that Iraq would become a centralized location for terrorists to train and plan for attacks against the U.S. He is asking for patience and believes that if we can get the security situation under control then the Iraqi government will be able to function as it should. The difference between Iraq and Vietnam is that in Vietnam we were propping up a government that had no popular support. The Iraqi government was voted for and deserves a chance to work.

He was asked what lessons he can apply from the mistakes of Vietnam and answered patience. It's obviously a Kissingerian answer implying we lost the will to win in Vietnam and that's why we lost it, which is absurd. It's just as absurd to believe the same thing about Iraq. For such an argument to work it's necessary to actually be winning at some point.

The overwhelming lesson of Vietnam was to not let politicians run wars. It was a lesson that has pretty much fallen on deaf ears ever since.



Bullshit. If that's the assertion, than it's spot on. Particularly when you look at the conflict in Vietnam. We WON that war. We had it won. Right after the Tet Offensive we had the North and the Chinese pushed to the brink. But...we couldn't stomach the American losses that came out of the Tet Offensive. What was accomplished during that time period really didn't matter. The overwhelming successes of that push north didn't matter. The glorious victory that it was...well, that all dissappeared. All that mattered in the eyes of the left was the American death toll. All that mattered to the politicians who were running the war was getting re-elected and keeping the people happy, so they pulled our lines back, allowed the North and the Chinese to regroup, and it reformulated our entire stance and methods of fighting the war, an event that ultimately lead to our withdrawal from a war that we should have won. If the death toll from the Tet Offensive had never been published, if American's would have never seen that total, if politicians weren't politicians, we would have controlled all of Vietnam and prevented an immense amount of death and suffering from occuring during the period following the Tet Offensive. Your assertion is ludicrous.



He'd get an F on mine too. What's the point on being patient if you're never gonna do what it takes to be victorious in the first place?



You're probably right, however, if we had followed up post Tet...



Bull fucking shit.



What? How can you even possibly make this assertion?



Save Darfur right? You are so wrong, and so full of shit most of the time, that I doubt you even take the time to realize how utterly retarded half the shit you say really is. The bold part really, really proves how ignorant you are about the Vietnam war, what went down during the Vietnam war, and what went down after it. You're right. The people of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, they love genocide. They prefer it so much more to American ideals.

Time and time again, you prove that you are always more willing to put your own personal politics ahead of humanity.

Let's see:

Vietnamese democide: 1,040,000 (1975-87)
Executions: 100,000
Camp Deaths: 95,000
Forced Labor: 48,000
Democides in Cambodia: 460,000
Democides in Laos: 87,000
Vietnamese Boat People: 500,000 deaths (50% not blamed on the Vietnamese govt.

http://www.vietka.com/DeathCasualty.htm

It's estimated that 2 million civilians died at the hands of the Vietnemese government through the entire ordeal. It's estimated that 2 million Cambodians died in the killing fields at the hands of Pol Pot.

And you just don't give a shit about any of that. And you don't realize nor don't care to realize why most of these people died, and you'll never admit that these people would have died anyway. Yet, it was all sold on false pretenses to you, and it was unwinnable to you.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Somalia is better history lesson to guide us forward in regards to Iraq than anything. There are way more parallels to be found there than to be found in Iraq. However, the stakes are much higher in Iraq in the immediate future than they were in the immediate future following our retarded withdrawal from Somalia. Politics is just destroying so much.

You're kidding yourself. But of course, Vietnam can be explained away by the supposed fact that Johnson was calculating to win an election he wasn't even involved in. Nice critical thinking.


Which are you denying, that the wmd charge was trumped up or the Gulf of Tonkin incident? They're both clear as day examples of exaggeration in order to win support.


Is it not possible to hate both genocide and the United States? If it is, what does this have to do with what G_V typed?


First of all, how does the number of people murdered in Southeast Asia after the war have any impact on whether the war was winnable or sold under false pretenses? They're completely separate issues. Secondly, if, as you say, those 4 million people would have died anyway, what was the war for? Do you seriously think the Vietnam War was fought in order to protect the Vietnamese people?


Somalia is a lot better comparison. I was going to say so earlier but didn't want to get into that. It's also a lot better comparison with regards to mission creep and the inability to implement the change, though in the completely opposite way.

what an asshole, how about the lesson of not invading countries for unnecessary wars.

Like 10+ years of patience to win in a shitty little southeast-Asian jungle? Okay, Rambo.



But we didn't, because nobody with any sense wanted to be there in the first place.



Dude, come on. Gulf of Tonkin? You should know this shit. And WMD? Where are the WMDs? Where have you been the last 3 years?



I don't know why you are asking me this.



Who said anything about genocide? Do you need a fucking history lesson? I don't know what you know, but I'm going to assume you don't know anything. Obviously you aren't going to listen to what I tell you, so go look it up yourself. Go look up why we lost in Vietnam. Read about what happened there. It had nothing to do with failed war strategy.



You think I don't know all this? Maybe you should learn why that stuff happened instead of just citing all that trivia. Learn why and how the Khmer Rouge came into power. Learn why Ho Chi Minh was so popular amongst a nation of colonized peasants. It was a lot more than just totalitarian governments.

Look, you're too idealistic. I don't know what your position is on the Vietnam war, but it wasn't ours to win. My dad served in Vietnam, I learned a lot from him. I've taken the time to educate myself on the war and the country's history, so I know a good deal about it. Probably more than you. Does that explain why people like myself are so skeptical when Bush talks about patience in Iraq?

Yes, you're right. It was just one man influencing war policy in Vietnam. Just like it's only one man now.

Oh, by the way. Nice critical thinking.

The policy and strategic mistakes started long before El BJ, and also continued afterwards.



We were in Vietnam, and militarizing Vietnam long before the Golf of Tonkin. The WMD charges weren't trumped up, the whole world agreed with what we brought forth, they just refused to act on it. It has so far proven to be largely false. Your failures is that you are turning both of these immensely complex and multifaceted wars into one dimensional entities that they are not.



Well, from what I gather GV is pretty discriminatory about genocide that is worthy of hate. Apparently all those primative jungle people living in Indochina at the time deserved it or something.



Well, it was winnable. Perhaps largely preventable, and it was hardly sold under false pretenses. We had more than enough reasons and evidence to be in Vietnam. You need not look no farther than our own constitution and the bill of rights to find your justification for being in both locations as well as Darfur. What amazes me though is the hypocricy in how particular human tragedies are sold from the media and from your set. You'll hype of Darfur, and then slam what we did in Vietnam and Iraq even though what took place in Iraq and Indochina was far worse and more gruesome than what's happened in Darfur.



You're missing my point. My point is that politicians should not be involved in wars. They should vote to support them, and that should be the end of it. It should then be the tasks of military leaders to run wars. You sign for the war, then you support it. You don't stick your head in a year into it and fuck around with what the military leaders want. Furthermore, military leaders should not be politicians and they shouldn't even try to play the role of a politician. These are about the parallels of Vietnam and Iraq. Politicians have gotten involved in war policy making and it has fucked everything up. Politicians, long before Gulf of Tonken, were hindering progress that may have PREVENTED all out war from occuring in the first place. Unfortunately, it was politically unpopular to take the necessary steps. But all that aside, even after TET, we still could have WON THE BITCH! But instead, so began the troop withdrawals, and the reposturing. It's so sad because if politicians had been removed we COULD have saved an enormous amount of lives in Indochina.

Oh, and it shouldn't have been about protecting the South Vietnemese. It should have been about protecting Laos, and Cambodia, and perhaps even saving the North Vietnemese from their prison as well.



Then lets start a new debate on that. I've been meaning to do so for a while.



Yeah, those stupid primative people living and that shitty little jungle. Fuck them right? No oil there, just some people.



Yeah, cuz fuck all those people. And all the people that managed to flee? Fuck them too huh? All the French people? They should have died for ever even thinking about being in that shitty jungle.



Again, you are turning this into a one dimensional issue in regards to both wars, and it's not that. Secondly, we've found many pre GWI WMD's. Over 500 in fact. Plus lots of other damning evidence that shows Saddam was still in violation of the resolutions and was still planning on rebuilding his arsenal.



Wow. You are absolutely positively out of your gord if you don't think what we did after Tet wasn't...arguably one of the top three military blunders of all of war history. Particularly modern warfare. Instead of WINNING, we withdrew, we gave up, we quit. The military blunders of Vietnam predate Tet by almost a decade too. We did SO MUCH SHIT WRONG in Vietnam.



Yes it was. It was easily tenable, but nobody was willing to go out on a political limb and support some unattractive strategies that could have prevented a great majority of the bloodshed. We made errors all across the board yes, but even from a strict military standpoint, we could very easily maintained the soveriegnty of the south, Laos, and Cambodia.



Except...there so few similarities in the two wars... About the only thing that's similar is that they are both run far too much by politicians.

g_v, do you honestly beleive we didnt lose (or however you want to put it) in vietnam due to our strategy? our soldiers were ill prepared for the geurilla tactics used, they werent properly trained, if thats not a result of strategy, i dont know what is

Kissinger: Iraq Military Win Impossible
By TARIQ PANJA
The Associated Press
Sunday, November 19, 2006

LONDON -- Military victory is no longer possible in Iraq, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in a television interview broadcast Sunday.

Kissinger presented a bleak vision of Iraq, saying the U.S. government must enter into dialogue with Iraq's regional neighbors _ including Iran _ if progress is to be made in the region.

"If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible," he told the British Broadcasting Corp.

But Kissinger, an architect of the Vietnam war who has advised President Bush about Iraq, warned against a rapid withdrawal of coalition troops, saying it could destabilize Iraq's neighbors and cause a long-lasting conflict.

"A dramatic collapse of Iraq _ whatever we think about how the situation was created _ would have disastrous consequences for which we would pay for many years and which would bring us back, one way or another, into the region," he said.

Kissinger, whose views have been sought by the Iraqi Study Group, led by former Secretary of State James Baker III, called for an international conference bringing together the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, Iraq's neighbors _ including Iran _ and regional powers like India and Pakistan to work out a way forward for the region.

"I think we have to redefine the course, but I don't think that the alternative is between military victory, as defined previously, or total withdrawal," he said.

Or how about the fact that the Ho Chi Minh trail even existed...

Those people wanted independence from Western governments, and millions of their citizens died fighting for it. That is a lot of goddamn people. You can't argue with it, our involvement was wrong. We supported a corrupt, oppressive government in South Vietnam and they wanted to be liberated. "Liberation" meant Communism and more death (partly due to supporting our prolonged resistence), but the Vietcong had overwhelming support in the South. That's what they chose, and you need to accep that. We didn't know who the enemy was, we were fighting them everywhere. The same thing is happening to Iraq but on a much smaller scale. Still, that's why we lost, and we could very well lose again.



Let's talk about one dimensions, shall we?

Why did you defend the Gulf of Tonkin? You know what kind of psychological effect that has on the American public? It was enormous, and if support for a potential war wasn't high before hand then it surely helped to rattle the sabres. That justified the war. Durrr. I don't know what type of moral universe you are living in, but that isn't any better than say...when Hitler claimed a Polish attack so Germany could invade them.

So not good when other nations or civilizations do it, but perfectly fine for us, cause we're the good guys? Sure. End of discussion.

On Iraq: listen, a war against Saddam Hussein was pretty much off the table had 9/11 never happened. Maybe in the same sense of an invasion of Cuba, but still only a slim possibility. I'm tired of arguing about Iraq, I think the invasion was out of the question and apparently pretty much everybody now thinks the war has been completely botched and we shouldn't be there. But you on the other hand, you see right and wrong, you see black and white, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.



We gave up? Only after continually dropping a bazillion bombs. And illegally invading Cambodia. And then staying in Vietnam for another 7 years.

Dude, you can't get over the fact that the people of Vietnam didn't want us there. It was popular support against us and the South Vietnamese government of Diem which was a totally corrupt, western puppet state. That is why we lost. They were willing to risk their lives for their independence, that's why millions of them died. Buddhist monks burned themselves. Villages of people were slaughtered. That, on top of us firebombing the country for a decade straight and leaving enough landmines to blow up a generation of peasant farmers' children.

Yeah, they would sure love us then. Do you honestly think they were begging for American democracy and capitalism and that we failed them? I don't know what planet you are living on. It wasn't a clash of civilizations, it was their revolutionary war. A million dead Vietnamese to 60,000 American soldiers. What type of war is it when over a million people die on the winning side?

If you aren't willing to make some concessions here, mainly that you have distorted pretty much the entire history of the conflict, then there isn't anything else for me to argue.



Oh really? And what strategies are you referring to? The actual right ones that would have helped us win? You're being so vague here I really don't know how to answer this.



That sounds awfully one dimensional. Does it matter who wars are run by? Aren't politicians supposed to have the vested interests of their constituents in mind when running wars? The fact is, it was a number of things that are too great to name...and I was wrong, strategy did play a part amongst a HUGE number of factors.

I'll leave the rest to the historians who'd probably support my case over the President's. Go watch Fog of War with Robert McNamara and tell me if you still think all the same things.

I was wrong, I think that poor strategy played a part. It was a war, we lost, how difficult is that to equate? How can that not be taken into account?
Duh. The question is, was failed a strategy to win, or even better, lack of "patience," the reason we lost in Vietnam? I don't believe that's the historically accepted answer.

We lost in Vietnam because Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon didn't forsee the overwhelming determination of the Vietnamese to have a state that was free of western powers. Look at the death tolls, that gives a pretty good indication of how unflailing those people were to keep us out of their country. They didn't forsee that this war had no value, that Vietnam was a backwater country that was going nowhere no matter if communism or capitalism prevailed. They didn't care that communist states couldn't agree on anything amongst themselves. They chose to hear only what they wanted, they thought drafted young people cared more about their country and the war than sex and rock music, they ignored the dwindling popular support in the states, etc, etc. So yeah. I guess strategy is one fucking thing.

you of course do realise that since you can never ever ever ever ever ever bring yourself to agree with me, that youre arguing my answer that it was a failed strategy.

our nation did not take into account the others willingness to fight, their guerilla tacticts etc. thats what led to our failure there, pure and simple

Right, McNamara, Westmoreland, and all the rest of the bureaucrats were all seeking re-election too.

The only people you have an argument about are the Congress and Nixon. By the time Nixon took over the war was lost, and everyone knew the war was lost. Yeah, sure there were still those enamored with the fact we were killing a lot more than losing, thus thinking we were actually winning, but it was lost. There was no way we were going to destroy the communists in the North, and we weren't going to contain it in the South.


The blank check for Vietnam was titled the "Gulf of Tonkin Resolution." Yes, there were plenty of military advisors in Vietnam from '54 on, but the Johnson Administration wanted more, and to do so it antagonized the North, trying to provoke an attack, and then fixed the Maddox incident to get the public outraged and receive a blank check. This is historical fact, disputing it is absurd.


Did you not just admit they would have died anyway?


None of the wars you're supporting here were humanitarian ventures. It's sad especially that you claim the Vietnam War was. What a sham of an argument. The French subjugate SE Asia for decades and are pushed out, so the US enters and supports any dictator worth his salt, continues to subjugate true Vietnamese rule, pushes for a brutal war that destroyed much of the country, yet you hail it as humanitarian?

Exactly how was it winnable? Explain what strategy the US could have taken to "contain" communism in Vietnam?


This was hardly your only point. Have you completely forgotten about lambasting GV due to "not caring" about the poor Vietnamese? It's incredible you would do such a thing since the war was hardly meant to help them, but the truth never stopped you before.


protecting them from what? What "prison?" Do you think Ike, JFK or LBJ would have been more popular than Ho?


Well, start a thread or say something about it.

I have no idea which of you is right. I don't know shit about history. But it is fun watching you debate it, nonetheless.

Looking back, Vietnam is an open and shut case. Ask any veteran of the war. It wasn't in our best interest, and maybe losing it was necessary. The protestors, the students, the activists, and the people who opposed it in every way were completely right.

I don't like theorizing about "what could have been" scenarios, but if we had stayed out of Vietnam, surely the government that followed wouldn't have been so swift and brutal in their retribution of western support, because there would have been NO ONE INTERFERRING. Cambodia wouldn't have been in shambles from an illegal US bombing campaign, and the Khmer Rouge would have been less likely to seize power thus sparing the lives of 3 million Cambodian citizens and wrecking their economy for a generation. Of course, it's all speculation but one can't help it.