Vietnam, George? Are you sure you want to go there? Now?

Back on April 13, 2004, the following exchange took place at a Bush press conference:

Q: Mr. President, April is turning into the deadliest month in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad, and some people are comparing Iraq to Vietnam and talking about a quagmire. Polls show that support for your policy is declining and that fewer than half Americans now support it. What does that say to you and how do you answer the Vietnam comparison?

THE PRESIDENT: I think the analogy is false. I also happen to think that analogy sends the wrong message to our troops, and sends the wrong message to the enemy.

What a difference a little over three years makes. On August 22, 2007, Bush gave a speech at the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention, and he did indeed compare Iraq to Vietnam. I am going to quote some of his statements and add my commentary along the way. Here is how he began the Vietnam comparison:

Finally, there's Vietnam. This is a complex and painful subject for many Americans. The tragedy of Vietnam is too large to be contained in one speech. So I'm going to limit myself to one argument that has particular significance today. Then as now, people argued the real problem was America's presence and that if we would just withdraw, the killing would end.

The argument that America's presence in Indochina was dangerous had a long pedigree. In 1955, long before the United States had entered the war, Graham Greene wrote a novel called, "The Quiet American." It was set in Saigon, and the main character was a young government agent named Alden Pyle. He was a symbol of American purpose and patriotism -- and dangerous naivete. Another character describes Alden this way: "I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused."

(emphasis added). First of all, I'm not sure who has argued that "the killing would end" in Iraq if only we were not there. This is classic Bush--make up a bogus argument so he can knock it down. Second, why bring up Greene's novel in general? Bush did not need such reference to make his basic argument (which is explained below). More to the point, Bush damn sure did not need to include the quote "I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused." Why? Because that quote perfectly describes Bush. I have spent almost 20 years structuring, writing, and making arguments for a living. One rule I have developed is "don't make a statement that can be directed right back at you in a negative way" (conversely, nothing gives me a bigger kick than turning an opponent's arguments against him). Bush's inclusion of this quote violated that rule in a big way. Bush could have simply stated "Some people have argued that the killing would end if we leave Iraq" and that's what he should have done instead of unnecessarily quoting a line from a novel that makes him look like a fool. The fact that he did not recognize this is further evidence that the man is plain stupid.

Bush went on to highlight some of the Vietnam-era arguments that thing would be better there once we left, and then he said this:

The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule in which hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation and torture and execution. In Vietnam, former allies of the United States and government workers and intellectuals and businessmen were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousands perished. Hundreds of thousands more fled the country on rickety boats, many of them going to their graves in the South China Sea.

Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left. There's no debate in my mind that the veterans from Vietnam deserve the high praise of the United States of America. (Applause.) Whatever your position is on that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like "boat people," "re-education camps," and "killing fields."

Now I know that George ain't exactly a genius when it comes to geography, but someone should have pointed out to him that Vietnam and Cambodia are two different countries. Now I know that what happened in Cambodia during the Vietnam-era was linked to actions in Vietnam, but I raise the obvious "two different countries" point for a reason. Bush acknowledged that the Vietnam war is a complex subject, but then he tried to turn it into a simple (and simplistic) one. Cambodian history of the time is a very complex subject. Did Bush address that? No. Did he address the overall situation in Vietnam? No. Did he address the possibility that no matter what we did in Indochina the ultimate result might have been the same? No. Did he address how the Vietnam War was affecting efforts in the Cold War? No. Did he address how the Vietnam War was tearing this country apart? No. Instead, he boiled it all down to one conclusion after "no debate" in his own mind (there's a shocker): all the deaths and imprisonments in Vietnam and Cambodia were caused by the American withdrawal.

And later Bush said that "In Iraq, our moral obligations and our strategic interests are one." When this statement is viewed in the context of the entire speech, it certainly seems that Bush is claiming that the American withdrawal from Vietnam was immoral, or, stated differently, that we had a moral obligation to stay in Vietnam.

And that leads me to some questions for our Fearless Leader:

If staying in Vietnam and continuing the Vietnam War was so crucial, was so much our moral obligation, then why did you not volunteer to serve in Vietnam? Why did you choose to avoid service in Vietnam?