AmBushed In Vietnam
President Bush finally had a chance to visit the country who’s war has been compared to the one he started in Iraq. Over the weekend, Bush met with Asian leaders in Vietnam’s capitol Hanoi. He also spent a day in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) which was renamed for the nationalist hero that helped defeat the US during the Vietnam War.
Did Bush learn any lessons from his weekend in Vietnam? Let’s go through a few statements he made during his visit.
“For decades you had been torn apart by war, Today the Vietnamese people are at peace and seeing the benefits of reform.”
Vietnam was at war before and after the US was there and we lost 52,000 soldiers plus the multitude of additional Vietnamese that were killed on our account. Our involvement was a complete waste, the country considers itself communist (albiet it is not) and we have normalized relations with them. Yet we have had an embargo with Cuba for over 40 years and they are our neighbors. Does any of this make sense? No.
Bush also 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.”
Again, we did not give freedom to the people of Vietnam. They earned it themselves, first by defeating the French. Vietnamese people are generally friendly to Americans, but they are very protective of the independance they gained by fighting several wars, including the one they refer to as “The American War.”
Ho Chi Minh is not so much a hero in Vietnam because he was communist, but because he helped liberate the country. There were several years of civil war in Vietnam after we withdrew, just as there will be in Iraq. But it is important that Iraq, like Vietnam, fights for it’s future themselves, without foreign intervention.
So did Bush learn anything from his visit to Vietnam? Clearly, he learned nothing.
2 Comments
Why do you insist on perpetuating the myth that the Vietnam War was an “American War”. There were a million in the South Vietnamese military fighting the North. The North Vietnamese army and Viet Cong did not hesitate to use villagers as human shields, as it helped their recruiting campaigns.
“Liberate” was the term the communist used to illegally overtake South Vietnam. South Vietnam was a prosperous state with many freedoms. After 1975 with the Communist took over all of Vietnam the whole country went backwards, economically, socially, educationally and every way you can think of.
Trent,
This post did not read, I think it should be called the American war, it simply stated that this is what they call it in Vietnam. I’ve been there and seen this for myself. Though I’m sure there are Vietnamese who would disagree with this name, but when you go to the museums this is what it is called.