Bush: Vietnam offers lessons for Iraq war
President George Bush today said the United States’ unsuccessful war in Vietnam three decades ago offered lessons for the American-led struggle in Iraq.
“We’ll succeed unless we quit,” Bush said shortly after arriving in the one-time war capital of Hanoi.
Bush met with Australian prime minister John Howard, one of America’s strongest allies in Iraq and in wars past.
The president said there were lessons to be learned from the divisive conflict fought and lost in Vietnam.
“We tend to want there to be instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is going to take a while," the president said.
He called the Iraq war a “great struggle” and said: “It’s just going to take a long period of time for the ideology that is hopeful – and that is an ideology of freedom – to overcome an ideology of hate.”
