Bush to prove war opponents wrong

Photo: Bush to prove war opponents wrong

President George W. Bush on Wednesday will show Americans impatient and frustrated by the Iraq war that naysayers are wrong. He is to ask citizens to take a long view of the conflict.

Bush will depict the Iraq war like decades-old U.S. conflicts in Asia - ones that he said lost popular backing but eventually proved their worth and led to lasting peace.

"The ideals and interests that led America to help the Japanese turn defeat into democracy are the same that lead us to remain engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq," Bush said in advance excerpts of his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

"The defense strategy that refused to hand the South Koreans over to a totalitarian neighbor helped raise up an Asian Tiger that is a model for developing countries across the world, including the Middle East," Bush said.

Bush often calls on historical comparisons in demanding patience from the American public and an increasingly opposition Congress. But White House aides hope his focus on Asia can cause skeptics to rethink the Iraq conflict beyond the daily, violent setbacks.

Bush even cites Vietnam - considered a setback mark in U.S. military and foreign affairs - as a cautionary tale for those urging troop withdrawals today.

"Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left," Bush said. "Whatever your position in 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."'

The "killing fields" were in Cambodia, however, where then-President Richard Nixon expanded the bombing of Southeast Asia in a failed attempt to interdict North Vietnamese supply lines. Cambodian outrage over the bombing led to the downfall of the government and the rise of the Khmer Rouge, whose brutal agrarian revolution was characterized by the emptying of the cities into "killing field" farming communes.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid quickly dismissed Bush's sense of history.

"President Bush's attempt to compare the war in Iraq to past military conflicts in East Asia ignores the fundamental difference between the two," he said. "Our nation was misled by the Bush administration in an effort to gain support for the invasion of Iraq under false pretenses, leading to one of the worst foreign policy blunders in our history."

Bush's speech at the VFW amounts to the first in a one-two punch.

He will compare today's campaign against extremists with the war against militarists of Japan and the communists in Korea and Vietnam. Then, in a speech Tuesday at the annual American Legion convention in Reno, Nevada, he will put the war in Iraq in the context of the Middle East.

In the aftermath of Japan's surrender, many thought it was naive to help the Japanese transform themselves into a democracy, Bush will tell the VFW conventioneers. He said critics also complained when America intervened to save South Korea from communist invasion. And in Vietnam, Bush said, people argued that the real problem was the U.S. presence there, "and that if we would just withdraw, the killing would end."

"The advance of freedom in these lands should give us confidence that the hard work we are doing in the Middle East can have the same results we have seen in Asia - if we show the same perseverance and sense of purpose," Bush said.

The president's address at the convention is preceded by a parade of presidential hopefuls and Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, are to report to Congress before Sept. 15 about the impact of the troop buildup that Bush ordered in January. Their report will provide the basis for Bush's decisions about the way forward in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Bush has notably tempered his view of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

When they met in Jordan last November, the president called al-Maliki "the right guy for Iraq." Now, he continually prods al-Maliki to do more to forge political reconciliation before the temporary military buildup ends.

"I think there's a certain level of frustration with the leadership in general, inability to work - come together to get, for example, an oil revenue law passed or provincial elections," Bush said in Canada on Tuesday.

Crocker echoed Bush's frustration with the lack of action by al-Maliki's government.

"Progress on national level issues has been extremely disappointing and frustrating to all concerned - to us, to Iraqis, to the Iraqi leadership itself," Crocker said.