HANOI — Six years ago today, Bill Clinton became the first U.S. president to visit Hanoi and the first in more than three decades to visit Vietnam, closing a painful chapter in American diplomatic and military history.
When President Bush arrived today, he was shadowed by an issue that was politically difficult for him when he first ran for president, just as it was for Clinton: the question of military service during the Vietnam War. And there was new attention to an issue that is politically painful for him in 2006: whether the Iraq war is turning into a new generation's equivalent of the torturous Vietnam conflict.
The irony in all of this is just too obvious it really needs no comment - a war waged illegally without Congressional declaration, mismanagement by a egotistical Secretary of Defense, apathy at home, hubris in the White House. How dare this man now go to Vietnam to further slap every poor fool that left sweat, blood and friends there in that pointless war.
He was there of course to talk about the neoconic trinity of free trade, democracy and "global cooperation"
Bush said he was committed to liberalized trade rules, despite what he noted were "the old temptations of isolationism and protectionism" in the United States.
I suppose he was talking about true conservatives, i.e. paleoconservatives.
No comments:
Post a Comment