via Crooks and Liars, thanks for the transcript.
It is a shame — and it is embarrassing to us all — when President Bush travels 8,000 miles, only to wind up avoiding reality, again.
And it is pathetic to listen to the leader of the free world, talk so unrealistically about Vietnam, when it was he who permitted the “Swift-Boating” of not one but two American heroes of that war, in consecutive Presidential campaigns.
But most importantly — important, beyond measure — his avoidance of reality is going to wind up killing more Americans.
And that is indefensible — and fatal.
Asked if there were lessons about Iraq to be found in our experience in Vietnam, Mr. Bush said that there were — and he immediately proved he had no clue what they were.
“One lesson is,” he said, “that we tend to want there to be instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is going to take a while.”
“We’ll succeed,” the President concluded, “unless we quit.”
If that’s the lesson about Iraq that Mr. Bush sees in Vietnam, then he needs a tutor. Or we need somebody else making the decisions about Iraq.
Mr. Bush, there are a dozen central lessons to be derived from our nightmare in Vietnam, but “we’ll succeed unless we quit” is not one of them.
The primary one — which should be as obvious to you as the latest opinion poll showing that only 31 percent of this country agrees with your tragic Iraq policy– is that if you try to pursue a war for which the nation has lost its stomach, you and it are finished. Ask Lyndon Johnson.
The second most important lesson of Vietnam, Mr. Bush: if you don’t have a stable local government to work with, you can keep sending in Americans until hell freezes over and it will not matter. Ask South Vietnam’s President Diem, or President Thieu.
The third vital lesson of Vietnam, Mr. Bush: don’t pretend it’s something it’s not. For decades we were warned that if we didn’t stop “communist aggression” in Vietnam, communist agitators would infiltrate and devour the small nations of the world, and make their insidious way, stealthily, to our doorstep.
The war machine of 1968 had this “Domino Theory.”
Your war machine of 2006 has this nonsense about Iraq as “the central front in the war on terror.”
The fourth pivotal lesson of Vietnam, Mr. Bush: if the same idiots who told Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon to stay there for the sake of “Peace With Honor,” are now telling you to stay in Iraq, they’re probably just as wrong now, as they were then… Dr. Kissinger.
And the fifth crucial lesson of Vietnam, Mr. Bush, which somebody should’ve told you about, long before you plunged this country into Iraq — is that, if you lie us into a war — your war, and your presidency, will be consigned to the scrapheap of history.
Consider your fellow Texan, sir.
After President Kennedy’s assassination, Lyndon Johnson held the country together after a national tragedy — not unlike you tried to do.
He had lofty goals and tried to reshape society for the better. And he is remembered for Vietnam and for the lies he and his government told to get us there and keep us there… and for the Americans who needlessly died there.
As you will be remembered for Iraq and for the lies you and your government told to get us there and keep us there… and for the Americans who needlessly died there — and who will needlessly die there tomorrow.
This president has his fictitious Iraqi W-M-D, and his lies (disguised as subtle hints) linking Saddam Hussein to 9/11, and his reason-of-the-week for keeping us there when all the evidence has, for at least three years, told us we needed to get as many of our kids out, as quickly as we could.
That president had his fictitious attacks on Navy ships in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964, and the next thing any of us knew, the Senate had voted 88-to-2 to approve the blank check with which Lyndon Johnson paid for our trip into hell.
And yet President Bush just saw the grim reminders of that trip into hell:
– Of the 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese killed;
– Of the 10,000 civilians who’ve been blown up by landmines since we pulled out;
– Of the genocide in the neighboring country of Cambodia, which we triggered;
Yet, these parallels — and these lessons — eluded President Bush entirely. And, in particular, the one over-arching lesson about Iraq that should’ve been written everywhere he looked in Vietnam, went un-seen.
“We’ll succeed unless we quit”?
Mr. Bush, we did quit in Vietnam! A decade later than we should have; 58,000 dead later than we should have; but we finally came to our senses.
The stable, burgeoning, vivid country you just saw there is there, because we finally had the good sense to declare victory and get out!
The Domino Theory was nonsense, sir. Our departure from Vietnam emboldened no one. Communism did not spread like a contagion around the world.
And most importantly — as President Reagan’s Assistant Secretary of State Lawrence Korb said on this newscast Friday — we were only in a position to win the Cold War because we quit in Vietnam.
We went home. And instead it was the Russians who learned nothing from Vietnam, and who repeated every one of our mistakes when they went into Afghanistan. And alienated their own people, and killed their own children, and bankrupted their own economy, and allowed us to win the Cold War.
We awakened so late — but we did awaken.
Finally, in Vietnam, we learned the lesson. We stopped endlessly squandering lives and treasure and the focus of a nation on an impossible and irrelevant dream.
But you are still doing exactly that, tonight, in Iraq.
And these lessons from Vietnam, Mr. Bush, these priceless, transparent lessons, writ large as if across the very sky, are still a mystery to you.
“We’ll succeed unless we quit.”
No, sir. We will succeed — against terrorism, for our country’s needs, towards binding up the nation’s wounds — when you quit — quit the monumental lie, that is our presence in Iraq.
And in the interim, Mr. Bush, an American kid will be killed there, probably tonight — or, if we’re lucky, not until tomorrow.
And here, sir, endeth the lesson.
raincoaster 
Yes, yopu see, I always believed not all Americans were mad dogs. Some of htem see reality and that is: you should not interfere with opther countries and certainly not with other cultures unless the situation is directly threatening. Iraqi’s can only win democracy if they are eager for it but they are not. They are not because their culture is not ready for it, they don´t live in luxxury conditions that make the western democracy possible. And then …the West itself is bewildered within itself on the point of democracy. You only have to look at the way electioncampaingns are going on to know we, in the west, have first to be more reflectionous about the system.
And the sad thing is that Bush is incapable of reading and understanding all of this. A few cartoons may have caught his attention! As Mencken said, “As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” We must be getting bloody close!
If we don’t learn from history, we’re doomed to repeat it…. And just when you think you’ve videoblogged the whole Bus in Vietnam thing into the ground, Olbermann tops you with ease. Still, check it out….
Well said. The above is so obvious, I can’t even believe it needds to be said. But, it does.
There’s this huge group on the right that believes pulling out of Vietnam was the wrong thing to do which, again, is amazing, and they see Iraq as our chance to regain honor. Obviously it isn’t all of them, just maybe half. And I even think most of them know it was the right thing to do. They just, for whatever reason, hate the dirty hippies so much that they’ll always be against them, regardless. Perhaps the hippies got all the girls and made fun of these particilar squares.
Too bad for us, Mr. VP didn’t get the sweet hippy chick love when he was young.
Yeah, we shouldn’t be there now (in Iraq). Viet Nam was a joke, & a lot of American soldiers were slaughtered for nothing, except for some vague notions of some apparently brazen politicians. I really saw no purpose ot that war. And now there may be a draft – imagine that. Tjat’s a bunch of absolute bullcrap!!!Many kids are going to go over there & maybe be killed, causing a lot of heartbreak for their poor parents & many other people. And there’s just no good reason for it. Can’t anything be done without having to send more troops over there, plus getting the ones alreacy over there, OUT? Isn’t some kind of government in the process of being established? Why doesn’t the UN just take over & have talks? The fighting is going to go on & on I think. Maybe if our troops were pulled out, the Iraquis might just get up & decide to fight for themselves. I don’t know, but I do know that we should not be over there.
What I think we can do is very carefully watch for suspicious activity over here – I think terrorists are pretty obvious, from what I have heard. I think that they keep to themselves & are kind of sullen. Things that are bought – weapons, chemicals, to include large quantities of cleaning supplies, flight lessons – we heard of that one, didn’t we – & so forth, should be taken note of & reported. Methods of payment for such things should be given attention. These are all things that we Americans can do to fight terrorist cells – make it hard for them to operate.
Well, ther’s my 2 cents worth (oh, except that these individuals – terrorists – are good for nothing; they’re like cockroaches; & they are best being caught & deported back to Iraq, or if they have committed any murders of innocent citizens, they should be given the death sentence (DEFINITELY).
Geez. I have a teenage son & my heart would be broken if he would to be sent to that terror hole. I’d feel sad for any of his friends & school mates also. That would be absolutely terrible. I don’t one bit blame the parents of deceased soldiers who had been sent to Iraq for being angry.
So he finally got there after all. Too bad he’s thirty years too late to join in the action. However, I have a suggestion on that point …
@luckymustang
The fundamental difference between Viet Nam and Iraq was that the United States had in place an agreement saying that they would intervene to defend Viet Nam from communist aggression.
Right or wrong, that was the situation, and led to a miserable WWI style war without benefit of possible victory.
Iraq was invaded.
Archie, I think you just gave me my quote of the day, thank you!
I can’t imagine being an American parent when talk of a draft is wafting around. Even Kissinger calls the Iraq invasion a failure, and there is no-one in the White House with military experience. You can bet Jenna won’t be donning a helmet, draft or no draft.
Salonistes: Welcome. I have to thank Michel Daou for the link, but as indicated in the post itself, I did not write this transcript; Crooks and Liars did, and I copied it from them. What’s original here is the YouTube video, because I can’t view Quicktime or Windows Media Player vids on this computer at the moment, for whatever reason.
Click around; there’s plenty here to see, especially if you’re familiar with the words “Cthulhu fhtagn”.
The real problem is the US “news” media. FOX isn’t alone…the entire Press is now a tabloid Press devoid of shame, conscience, or intelligence. Of all the entities most responsible for the tragic debacle in Iraq, the media is the true culprit. If the Press had not been treating the war in Iraq with kid gloves, we might be enjoying peace and prosperity now.
If the press had been more proactive about reporting what they knew, that there were no WMDs, it’s unlikely the invasion would have enjoyed the support that it did, but I do think that the administration has proven by now that they would be perfectly willing to go against the wishes of the nation in the furtherance of their plan. They bear the responsibility of lying to the media and to the people, and to ordering the men and women of their armed forces overseas in a futile and venal mission.
Great clip. I love Olbermann. I actually have a blogging question for you (since I just recently started my own wordpress blog), How did you attach the YouTube video as a file into your post?
YouTube videos are easy to embed in WordPress as long as you give up the idea of changing the size. Can’t be done on WordPress.com, although it can be done on self-hosted WordPress.org blogs.
You use square brackets like this: [ youtube = and here you put the URL of the video, NOT the URL of the page; it’s in the box on top of the embedding code ]
and you take out all the spaces and replace the text with the URL. You can also check the forum and there is an FAQ I believe.
Luckymustang is wringing his/her hands over an impending restoration of a draft:
“Can’t anything be done without having to send more troops over there, plus getting the ones alreacy over there, OUT?”
The paradox is draft will not instituted, because if it is, it’s the WAY out of Bush’s Bush’s un-provoked, unnecessary, largely unilateral invasion and unplanned occupation of Iraq (UULUIUOI). If it is implemented, our sons and daughters and their parents will get off their damn asses and do what we did in the sixties: go into the streets and bring to Bush the hell which he must ultimately be made to eat. Bring on the draft. Bring it on. I dare them to bring it.
I wish I believed that, but ever since 9/11 I have consistently witnessed the people of America going on their knees to the government of America. Nothing could be more perverse, or more abhorrent. Or, alas, more consistent.
I doubt they’ll reinstitute the draft simply because none of the Republicans who are thinking of running for President will want to take the hit from the voters on that. You can bet you won’t be seeing Jenna in a uniform any time soon.
Thank God for Keith Olbermann. One lone but loud voice is better than nothing. I know there are a few on TV who voice their concern, but not one can claim the absolute clarity of message Keith delivers with his Special Comments. He blows the half-wits on FOX out of the water. In fact MSNBC has the best political coverage on TV other than the raw stuff (which I love) onC-Span.
Olbermann deserves a journalism award. Colbert and Stewert as well.
I’ve been very impressed with MSNBC in the past five years. They were the ones who broke the story Osama binLaden had been shorting airlines in the run up to 9/11. They do the hard news that I used to expect of CNN.
OIbermann’s not speaking into a vacuum, however. Almost three thousand people have read this post, and another three thousand will have read it by sundown tomorrow. Plus everyone who saw the video at Crooks and Liars, plus all the people who put it on YouTube, plus, of course, all the people who watched it live. He has an audience.
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