If you haven’t seen it, I’d really encourage folks to read or watch the president’s speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars’ national convention. It’s helpful to see how one president can be so wrong about so many things in just one address.
Much of the discussion around the political world today seems to be focused on the history of the war in Vietnam, and for good reason; Bush’s version of events is spectacularly mistaken. But let’s not forget that the president also returned to a popular comparison for this White House: the war in Korea.
From today’s speech:
“Critics … complained when America intervened to save South Korea from communist invasion. Then as now, the critics argued that the war was futile, that we should never have sent our troops in, or they argued that America’s intervention was divisive here at home. […]
Throughout the war, the Republicans really never had a clear position. They never could decide whether they wanted the United States to withdraw from the war in Korea, or expand the war to the Chinese mainland. Others complained that our troops weren’t getting the support from the government. One Republican senator said, the effort was just ‘bluff and bluster.’ He rejected calls to come together in a time of war, on the grounds that ‘we will not allow the cloak of national unity to be wrapped around horrible blunders.’
Many in the press agreed. One columnist in The Washington Post said, ‘The fact is that the conduct of the Korean War has been shot through with errors great and small.’ A colleague wrote that ‘Korea is an open wound. It’s bleeding and there’s no cure for it in sight.’ He said that the American people could not understand ‘why Americans are doing about 95 percent of the fighting in Korea.'”
Bush boasted this morning that, regardless of the challenges, “the United States never broke its word.” He added, “Today, we see the result of a sacrifice.”
Um, no.
TPM Reader KS explained today:
I think if people want to make the Korean War analogy, they should do it right. Bush sees the Korean War as a symbol of our commitment to fight aggression and lay the groundwork for development and, eventually, democracy, in South Korea. But we had achieved the liberation of South Korea by October 1950, mere months after the war began. We then made the disastrous decision to push into North Korea in an effort to topple the communist government there. That triggered Chinese intervention, and the war developed into a stalemate that dragged on for three more years. The eventual ceasefire returned things essentially to the status quo ante, an outcome we could have achieved at much lower cost had we not chosen to expand the war.
So, yes, the Korean War analogy is quite apt. Just not in the way Bush means it. The decision to invade Iraq in March 2003 looks a lot like the ultimately futile decision to invade North Korea in October 1950.
I’d only add that it’s odd that Bush would brag today about “the result” of this conflict, given that North and South Korea are still divided, and U.S. troops have been stationed along the DMZ for a half-century.
Oh, and that Bush believes this offers a model for a (very) long-term presence for U.S. troops in Iraq.
It’s no secret that the president doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but today makes clear that his speechwriters are as confused as Bush is.