Re: [Marxism] Bush Invokes Vietnam

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Financial Times, August 25 2007
Hanoi fires salvo at Bush's 'ill-considered' comments
By Amy Kazmin in Bangkok

Hanoi is dismayed by President George W. Bush's invocation of the 
ignominious US withdrawal from Vietnam to explain the need to maintain 
US forces in Iraq.

Mr Bush suggested that Washington's withdrawal from Vietnam precipitated 
a bloodbath in south-east Asia - including the Cambodian Khmer Rouge 
genocide - an assertion many Vietnamese see as a gross 
oversimplification of the region's complex and tragic history, and 
Washington's own role in it.

"It is very ill-considered and, frankly, cavalier to make use of Vietnam 
insuch a way to extricate himself from the Iraq debate," said Ton Nu Thi 
Ninh, former deputy chair of the foreign relations committee of 
Vietnam's National Assembly. "Opening this up again can only rekindle 
resentment, antagonisms that have been put on the shelf for the sake of 
looking into the future."

Vietnam was "an unjustified and a wrong war in the first place so to 
start analysing things only from the withdrawal of US troops is really 
puzzling", she said. "The root of the problem is not the withdrawal, 
it's the very fact of starting up the war in the first place."

Ms Ninh also objected to Mr Bush's "bad taste" in conflating post-war 
events in Vietnam with the Khmer Rouge "killing fields" in neighbouring 
Cambodia.

Hanoi views the withdrawal of US troops as the culmination of its 
successful nationalist struggle to reunify a divided country.

"With regard to the American war in Vietnam, everyone knows that we 
fought to defend our country and that this was a righteous war of the 
Vietnamese people," Le Dung, foreign ministry spokesman, told a Hanoi 
press conference this week.

"And we all know that the war caused tremendous suffering and losses to 
the Vietnamese people."

Vietnam's communist rulers have struggled for 30 years to promote 
recognition of their nation as a country, rather than a war, as they 
sought to bury the ghosts of the past and forge an amicable working 
relationship with the US, their former enemy.

As Asia's second-fastest growing economy, Vietnam is today a powerful 
magnet for foreign investment, with the US its largest singletrading 
partner and a focus for growing bilateral co-operation.

Tran Quyet Thang, chairman of a local property development company, said 
Vietnam suffered unnecessarily as a result of US hostility and 
vindictiveness after the war, when Washington imposed a long, punishing 
economic boycott on reunified Vietnam.

"They had to withdraw from Vietnam - it was a wise decision and they 
should have done it earlier," he said. "But they should not have 
embargoed Vietnam - they should have engaged Vietnam right away.

"They could have achieved what they think they wanted without the war. 
But they were regretful about losing the war, so they continued fighting 
in their mind."

Ms Ninh believes the US has failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam.

"I think the US has no choice [in Iraq] but to withdraw - what good can 
it do by staying longer?" she said.

"The US has opened the Pandora's box. It seems President Bush is saying 
it's a mess, and we have to stay to prevent it from being any worse.

"The only thing that really comes out is the notion of a quagmire."



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