Bush's Invocation Of Vietnam War Pullout To Defend His Iraq Strategy Rankles Vietnamese

Thursday, August 23rd 2007, 2:39 pm

By: News On 6

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) _ President Bush touched a nerve among Vietnamese when he invoked the Vietnam War in a speech warning that death and chaos will envelop Iraq if U.S. troops leave too quickly.

People in Vietnam, where opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq is strong, said Thursday that Bush drew the wrong conclusions from the long, bloody Southeast Asian conflict.

``Doesn't he realize that if the U.S. had stayed in Vietnam longer, they would have killed more people?'' said Vu Huy Trieu of Hanoi, a veteran of the communist forces that fought American troops in Vietnam. ``Nobody regrets that the Vietnam War wasn't prolonged except Bush.''

He said U.S. troops could never have prevailed here. ``Does he think the U.S. could have won if they had stayed longer? No way,'' Trieu said.

Vietnam's official government spokesman offered a more measured response when asked at a regular media briefing to comment on Bush's speech to American veterans Wednesday.

``With regard to the American war in Vietnam, everyone knows that we fought to defend our country and that this was a righteous war of the Vietnamese people,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung said. ``And we all know that the war caused tremendous suffering and losses to the Vietnamese people.''

Dung said Vietnam hopes that the Iraq conflict will be resolved ``very soon, in an orderly way, and that the Iraqi people will do their best to rebuild their country.''

Although Vietnam opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Dung stressed that ties between Hanoi and Washington have been growing closer since the former foes normalized relations in 1995, two decades after the war's end.

In his remarks to U.S. veterans, Bush said a hasty retreat from Iraq would lead to terrible violence.

``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,''' Bush said.

Many people in Vietnam said Bush's comparison was ill-considered.

The only way to restore order in Iraq is for the United States to leave, said Trinh Xuan Thang, a university student.

``Bush sent troops to invade Iraq and created all the problems there,'' Thang said.

If the U.S. withdrew, he said, the violence might escalate in the short term but the situation would eventually stabilize.

``Let the Iraqis determine their fate by themselves,'' Thang said. ``They don't need American troops there.''

Ton Nu Thi Ninh, former chairwoman of the National Assembly's committee on foreign affairs, said Bush was unwise to stir up sensitive memories of the Vietnam War.

``The price we, the Vietnamese people on both sides, paid during the war was due to the fact that the Americans went into Vietnam in the first place,'' Ninh said.