‘It just boggles my mind’

That's the title of a post by Steve Benen at The Carpetbagger Report and I think that's the best one line response to Pres. Fredo's conflation of Iraq and Vietnam yesterday. Unlike me, Fredo completely botches the comparison. Benen got the title from historian Robert Dallek who was quoted in the LA Times:

Historian Robert Dallek, who has written about the comparisons of Iraq to Vietnam, accused Bush of twisting history. “It just boggles my mind, the distortions I feel are perpetrated here by the president,” he said in a telephone interview.

“What is Bush suggesting? That we didn’t fight hard enough, stay long enough? That’s nonsense. It’s a distortion,” he continued. “We’ve been in Iraq longer than we fought in World War II. It’s a disaster, and this is a political attempt to lay the blame for the disaster on his opponents. But the disaster is the consequence of going in, not getting out.”

Benen collected another quote from a historian who knows something about Vietnam, Stanley Karnow, from USA Today:

Vietnam historian Stanley Karnow said Bush is reaching for historical analogies that don’t track. “Vietnam was not a bunch of sectarian groups fighting each other,” as in Iraq, Karnow said.

Benen has other good links and I think he sums it up perfectly:

Regrettably, in just one day, the right is flunking military policy, national
security policy, foreign policy, and history. Not bad for a day’s work.

Frank James of The Swamp points out that Fredo's reference to The Quiet American is another profoundly stupid rhetorical move:

Bush seemed to be seizing on Greene's idea of U.S. naivete on entering the war and trying to turn it around and apply it to those now calling for a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.

But Greene wrote his book about the way America bumbled into Vietnam, not how it left it.

By reminding people of Greene's book, Bush was inviting listeners to recall the mistakes his administration made in entering and prosecuting the Iraq War. Did he really want to do that?

Logan Murphy at Crooks & Liars has the video clip of retired Maj. General Paul Eaton reacting to Fredo's blunder and provides the transcript:

Eaton: “My father’s name is engraved on the Viet Nam War Memorial. Killed in action after - missing in action for 38 years. I thought it was a bad idea to start going down this uh - this slink to Viet Nam during this speech. It was - it did not serve the country well, it does not serve the American fighting man and woman in Iraq well, and it certainly doesn’t serve the veterans well.”