Word: vietnamize
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...Democrats leapt on the comparison with Vietnam. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's office sent out a lengthy release pointing to past efforts by Bush and other Republicans to distinguish Iraq from Vietnam, attacking his handling of Veterans' Affairs, and arguing that despite the military progress Iraq is not becoming more stable. "The Iraqis are no closer to political reconciliation and the President's Iraq policy is not working," Reid's statement said. "President Bush should stop politicking and work with Congress to change direction in Iraq so that we can start bringing our troops home and ensure that...
...familiarity - critics would say the lack of credibility - of those themes that provide the answer to Bush's risky invocation of Vietnam. He has so often emphasized the disastrous ramifications of failure and the potential glories of victory, they no longer hold the same currency with a war-tired public. So, given how low support for the war is, why not add the specter of Vietnam to the costs of defeat? And why not suggest that victory in Iraq could help expunge the indignity of America's loss in Vietnam? Petraeus and Crocker will say what they will regardless...
President Bush's speech comparing the U.S. commitment to Iraq to America's historic withdrawal from the Vietnam war has, of course, special resonance here in Vietnam. I've lived in Vietnam since 2001 and I've yet to meet a resident of this country (even among the dozens of dissidents I've interviewed for TIME) who has expressed a wish that the war had continued. Of course, it's significant that nearly 60% of Vietnam's population was born after the war and grew up with state propaganda about what's called here the "American War." Still, most Vietnamese...
...Vietnamese will never forget. By 1973, when the U.S. withdrew its troops under the Paris Peace Accords that divided the country into communist north and capitalist south, a stunning 3 million Vietnamese - soldiers and civilians on both sides - had died (as did 58,000 American soldiers died as well). Vietnam's communist government responded to the Bush speech with a pointed statement that made no mention of Iraq: "Regarding the U.S. war in Vietnam, we all know we conducted a war to protect our nation...
...wonders what would be Bush's alternative vision of the Vietnam withdrawal? How many more people - American and Vietnamese - would have died in the fighting and bombings and spraying of toxic chemicals like Agent Orange if the U.S. had "stayed the course" in a prolonged Vietnam War? And if the U.S. military had actually stayed in South Vietnam past 1973, would Hanoi really have been in a position to invade Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge took over and began its murderous reign? The Khmer Rouge's genocidal regime was finally ended in 1979 with an invasion by the communist Vietnamese...