US President George W. Bush invoked the Vietnam War on Wednesday
to argue against withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, warning
that if the US pulls its troops out of Iraq, "the terrorists would
be emboldened."
"If we were to abandon the Iraqi people, the terrorists would be
emboldened, and use their victory to gain new recruits," Bush said
in a speech to members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, at their
convention in Kansas City, Missouri.
"The tragedy of Vietnam is too large to be contained in one
speech," he said.
Bush said that three decades after Washington withdrew from
Vietnam, there was a debate about how the country had got into the
Vietnam War and how it had left it.
"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,'" he noted.
Bush said that a terrorist safe haven on the other side of the
world could bring death and destruction to the streets of US
cities, as demonstrated by the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
He said that unlike in Vietnam, if the US withdrew its troops
from Iraq "before the job is done," the enemy "will follow us
home."
"And that is why, for the security of the United States of
America, we must defeat them overseas so we do not face them in the
United States of America," he said.
Democrats have pushed for withdrawing American troops from Iraq,
but Bush has asked members of Congress and the public to withhold
judgment on his troop "surge" in Iraq until an assessment report on
Iraq is submitted in September.
A recent poll released by CNN showed that 64 percent Americans
now oppose the Iraq war.
(Xinhua News Agency August 23, 2007)
