Boy George's Vietnam Speech

Bush gave a widely observed speech to the VFW last Wednesday that contained an extended comparison of Iraq to Vietnam. Two things about it have been gnawing at me. The argument itself is preposterous and has been lambasted in many place, none better than here. The other bothersome point is: how did this weird speech ever get put in bushie's hands? Clearly, george has no knowledge or ability to put together any ideas, even thoroughly off-base ones. But his staff, or Cheney's people, put this together which tells me that they are all in a bubble. These people are radically nuts. What else can you conclude?

Suppose that a President invaded another country, and adopted the unusual tactic of sending our troops in unarmed and unprotected, one platoon at a time, holding signs that said: We want to take over your country! Please surrender! And suppose that, unsurprisingly, the result of this was that those troops were all killed, one after the other. Suppose that the President was urged to adopt a different strategy, but refused, on the grounds that admitting mistakes would give comfort to our enemies; and that when some people began to mutter: not as much comfort as making those mistakes in the first place, he accused them of being defeatists. Finally, suppose that after several thousand troops had been killed in this way, the American people stopped supporting this President and his war. It would be beyond galling for the President to lecture them on their lack of will, or their insufficient concern for the people of the invaded country, when the reason for their lack of support was that his own idiocy had made any good outcome impossible.

I don't see any difference between that case and this one, except that the Iraqi people would have been a lot better off if the President had used my imaginary tactics. And that's why I find being lectured about my lack of will by this President laughable. There was a genuine failure of will when it came to Iraq, and while success was unlikely in any case, this failure made it impossible. But, as I have argued elsewhere, it was not our failure. It was Bush's.