It crops up in the strangest ways, doesn’t it? In 2004 Christopher Hitchens was berating Democrats and liberals for linking Iraq and Vietnam. Now it’s Bush himself who insists on the connection.
People are picking apart Bush’s historical analogy, I’m glad to see. I’ll just add one bit of good news: at least Bush wasn’t president when that war was going on. U.S. troops might still be slogging through the mud of Indochina.
Bush isn’t wrong, incidentally, that Vietnam’s victorious communists brought suffering to a large number of people. But he would have us believe the oppression and death started only after American withdrawal — that falling U.S. bombs and out-of-control U.S. ground troops did nothing to scar the population.
Similarly, Bush would have us believe that the bloodbath in Iraq lies in the future, that it isn’t happening now.
By this point most people know the truth: that his failed policies created the conditions for Iraq’s collapse. What is happening now is exactly what he and Cheney and Rumsfeld assured us would never happen. So, please, Mr. President. You’re the last person anyone should listen to when it comes to humanitarian concern.
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