Hanoi fires salvo at Bush's 'ill-considered' comments
By Amy Kazmin in Bangkok
Published: August 25 2007 03:00 | Last updated: August 25 2007 03:00
Hanoi is dismayed by President George W. Bush's invocation of the ignominious US withdrawal from Vietnam to explain the need to maintain US forces in Iraq.
Mr Bush suggested that Washington's withdrawal from Vietnam precipitated a bloodbath in south-east Asia - including the Cambodian Khmer Rouge genocide - an assertion many Vietnamese see as a gross oversimplification of the region's complex and tragic history, and Washington's own role in it.
"It is very ill-considered and, frankly, cavalier to make use of Vietnam insuch a way to extricate himself from the Iraq debate," said Ton Nu Thi Ninh, former deputy chair of the foreign relations committee of Vietnam's National Assembly. "Opening this up again can only rekindle resentment, antagonisms that have been put on the shelf for the sake of looking into the future."
Vietnam was "an unjustified and a wrong war in the first place so to start analysing things only from the withdrawal of US troops is really puzzling", she said. "The root of the problem is not the withdrawal, it's the very fact of starting up the war in the first place."
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