"Whatever your position in 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,' " the president said.
Unfortunately, this speech is not getting a lot of coverage. It's not even linked on the CNN front page right now. The comparison will backfire because the biggest commonality between Iraq and Vietnam is they are both un-winnable quagmires.
Bush forgot the millions of Vietnamese who died during the war. More would have died if the war continued. Claiming the Cambodian "Killing Fields" were a result of the US withdrawal from Vietnam is utterly false. It was the communist Vietnamses government who overthrew the Khmer Rouge:
By December 1978, because of several years of border conflict and the flood of refugees fleeing Cambodia, relations between Cambodia and Vietnam deteriorated. Pol Pot, fearing a Vietnamese attack, ordered a pre-emptive invasion of Vietnam. His Cambodian forces crossed the border and looted nearby villages. Despite American and Chinese aid, these Cambodian forces were repulsed by the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese forces then invaded Cambodia, capturing Phnom Penh on January 7, 1979. Despite a traditional Cambodian fear of Vietnamese domination, defecting Khmer Rouge activists assisted the Vietnamese, and, with Vietnam's approval, became the core of the new puppet government.
If the Congressional Democrats were such a bunch of spineless wimps, I'd be hopeful that Bush's politically stupid comparison would help hasten the end of the war.
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