The Vietnamization of Iraq

(The White House spin machine is promising a major Bush speech on Iraq later today, claiming that the president is "taking charge" of the situation and "has a strategic plan.")

BUSH: "If they tell me we need more troops, we'll provide more troops . . . If they tell me we've got a sufficient level of troops, that'll be the level of troops."

THE SLIME: Now that's what we call presidential leadership.

BUSH: "If they tell me that the Iraqis are ready to take more and more responsibility and that we'll be able to bring some Americans home, I will do that."

THE SLIME: Not content to put his foot in his mouth once, the president has outdone himself yet again. Lead on, Mr. President!

BUSH: (The enemy is) "a combination of rejectionists, Saddamists and terrorists."

THE SLIME: Saddamist? Perhaps the president meant "sodomist"? Or "sodomite" if we're speaking in the English language? We're not sure what a rejectionists is. Perhaps the president is referring to non-believers and athiests?

BUSH: "The president is going to listen to those who are on the ground who can make the best assessment."

THE SLIME: Just when you think it's impossible for the president to top his last "double header," he goes "out of body" and refers to himself in the third person! And for the third time delegates the responsibility given to him by the voters to "those on the ground." We guess he means those mortals on the ground as opposed to himself and those at the White House who have their divine heads up in the clouds when they're not buried in the sand or up their butts. Perhaps our biblically minded president even fancies himself as a modern day Saint Peter, who 2000 years ago was said to have denied knowing Christ to Roman soldiers three times. Only in Bush's case, he appears to be denying his own identity!

We'd also love to be able to ask the president precisely which unelected military leaders are making foreign policy decisions these days. I guess we know it's not one of the many military advisors who strenuously advised Bush against invading Iraq. So many, in fact, that Bush had to pressure his personal friend, the now retired General Tommy Franks, into leading it with less than half the troops requested.

Scott McClellan: "We (the White House) will be releasing a "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," which is an unclassified version of the plan the Bush administration has been following.

THE SLIME: Well, we just hope it's not another one of Bush's "color by the numbers" books. We do give them some credit for coming up with a catchy title, although it sounds like something they stole from a movie. Perhaps the president will soon be telling us how he "loves the smell of napalm in the morning . . . smells like victory?"

Donald Rumsfeld: "They have to do it for themselves. There isn't an Iraqi that comes into this country and visits with me that doesn't say that. They know that. They know that they're the ones that are going to have to grab that country, and it's time."

THE SLIME: In other words, "Iraqification." It's almost word for word what they were telling us during the 20 years we were fighting the Vietnam War, just substitute "Vietnamization" for "Iraqification." And this eventually became Nixon's exit strategy, to "Vietnamize the War," which meant telling the public that we were training a South Vietnamese army loyal to American colonial interests that would assume all of the fighting.

The imbecility of Rumsfeld' statement, which comes for a change from a different White House imbecile, is worth exploring. The question we would ask the reader to consider is: "Is it reasonable to anticipate that the people of any given country (in this case, Iraq) would embrace the interests of the country which invades it, and support a new system of government that is being set up and backed by the invaders?"

It should therefore surprise no one that after three years of occupation, the U.S. backed Iraqi army remains incapable of "fighting for itself." No amount of money, and no amount of additional U.S. troops, can bring credibility to a government and an army supported by a foreign occupier.

The European colonial powers figured this out decades ago, that old-fashioned military-imposed imperialism was neither workable nor profitable. Bush's power-play invasion of Iraq was and is a failed attempt to reverse the course of history. Besides being illegal an immoral, Bush's war stands as a disasterous failure of an unworkable, and incredibly destructive, imperial policy.

Say the Secret Word
A fourteen letter word never heard or spoken at the White House. Email us the correct answer and we'll mention your name in our next blog. (Degree of Difficulty: "a piece of cake")

Blog Sources:

No Iraq pullout without victory.