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The value of the Vietnam analogy

Published August 25, 2007 at midnight

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One of the legacies of Vietnam, as President Bush reminded the nation this week, is that you can't discuss its lessons without provoking a bitter quarrel in which many participants seem to feel a personal stake.

Yet that doesn't mean Bush was out of line to invoke Vietnam in his speech on Iraq policy before the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention. After all, his critics have made the comparison repeatedly since it became clear that victory in Iraq - or any satisfactory outcome - was going to be much more elusive than the administration foresaw.

Those critics have been vindicated in many ways, even if the president is reluctant to admit it. Most Americans who supported the war in 2003 never imagined it would be so long and bloody, with so few signs of enduring progress after more than four years.

As it happens, though, the president didn't mention Vietnam to quarrel with critics who claim Iraq has become a quagmire much like that earlier conflict. He said he would "limit myself to one argument that has particular significance today. Then as now, people argued the real problem was America's presence and that if we would just withdraw, the killing would end."

"Three decades later," Bush said, "there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left. . . . Whatever your position is on 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.' "

His argument, obviously, is that America must not abandon Iraq because it would result in a similar bloodbath. Not only that, he went on to argue, "the terrorists would be emboldened . . . a terrorist safe haven on the other side of the world can bring death and destruction to the streets of our own cities."

Bush's speech was greeted with derision from some quarters, although it's not clear why. Iraq could indeed become a safe haven for bad actors, although that assumes al-Qaida or its sympathizers emerge as eventual victors from possible post-withdrawal chaos. Yet that is far from certain given the many factions at play and the numerical dominance of the Shiites.

We take more seriously Bush's worry about a possible bloodbath depending on how the U.S. withdraws, and marvel at the reflexive dismissal of this point by people who should know better. The New York Times, for example, while acknowledging that "the short-term sequels of American withdrawal from Indochina were brutal," insisted they were simply inevitable - as will be any "immediate sequels" of withdrawal from Iraq.

Newsweek's Michael Hirsh, as if seeking a prize for callousness, trivialized the Indochinese horrors in a single disgraceful line: "Yes, a lot of Vietnamese boat people died on the high seas; but many others have returned to visit in the ensuing years."

This nation did make mistakes when it withdrew from Vietnam - mistakes we can learn from. Among the errors: cutting off military aid promised to the Saigon government and failing to take care of those almost certain to be targeted for reprisals.

Is it really too much to ask of even Bush's harshest critics that they too should want to minimize the chance of genocidal bloodletting both as American troops withdraw and after that event?

Just because Bush is transparently buying time for his current military strategy doesn't mean the specter of Iraqi killing fields is cynical nonsense. It is a possibility that serious people, whatever their position on the war, need to take into account.