KANSAS CITY, MO. — Critics of the war in Iraq who compare the conflict to Vietnam have the analogy backward, President Bush plans to tell veterans in a speech today.
In what the White House is billing as a major foreign policy address, the president will say that the lessons of Vietnam teach that the U.S. should stay in Iraq, not withdraw. Terrorists cite Vietnam to predict that the United States will run from the Iraq war, he will say.
"Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility -- but the terrorists see things differently," Bush plans to tell a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, according to speech excerpts released late Tuesday by the White House.
Bush will argue that the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam had dire consequences for the people in that region and so would a withdrawal from Iraq.
"Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left," Bush will say. "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 release of the lengthy excerpts was an unusual move by the White House, which rarely provides advance text of presidential addresses. It was also unusual because Bush has tended to steer clear of analogies to Vietnam, widely considered an unwinnable quagmire that critics have increasingly compared to the Iraq war.
White House counselor Ed Gillespie said today's speech would be the first of two designed to lay the rhetorical groundwork for a mid-September progress report Congress had demanded as part of the debate over whether and how to continue funding military operations in Iraq.
"As we face challenges in Iraq today, we do so knowing we have done this kind of transformative work before, and the benefits to America made the sacrifices worthwhile," Gillespie said in a statement explaining the early release of the speech excerpts.
Today's speech will stress how the U.S. "perseverance in Asia led to a freer, more stable, and more prosperous continent," Gillespie said. On Tuesday, in a speech to the American Legion, the president is to address the importance of Iraq to the future of the Middle East.
