US President George W. Bush insisted on Thursday that US troops would not pull out of Iraq before "the terrorists are defeated," a day after acknowledging a possible parallel between violence there and the Tet Offensive during the US war in Vietnam.
The comments, coming less than three weeks before crucial elections, follow his acknowledgement on Wednesday that the current steep spike in violence in Iraq "could be" compared to the Tet Offensive, widely considered to be key to souring US public opinion on the Vietnam War.
"Our goal in Iraq is clear and unchanging. Our goal is victory," said Bush, speaking at a rally on Thursday for embattled Republican congressman Don Sherwood in the town of La Plume, Pennsylvania.
PHOTO: AP
"We are a nation at war, and we must do everything in our power to win that war," he said.
"We will not pull out our troops from Iraq before the terrorists are defeated. We will not pull out before Iraq can govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself," Bush said.
The ongoing flare-up in violence in Iraq comes in the middle of a bitterly fought political campaign ahead of Nov. 7 elections to decide control of the US Congress between opposition Democrats and Bush's Republicans.
Democrats are pinning their hopes of winning on the unpopular Iraq war and Bush's poor poll numbers.
Sensitive subject
Even the mention by Bush of the Vietnam War has loud political resonance. The war divided Americans at the time and remains a deeply sensitive subject four decades later.
The 1968 Tet Offensive which was launched by the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese against South Vietnamese and US forces was considered a military defeat but a psychological victory, in that it crystallized US public opinion against the war.
Bush acknowledged the Vietnam parallel on Wednesday for the first time when asked in an ABC News television interview about a comparison by Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist, of the strife in Iraq with the Tet Offensive.
The Tet Offensive occurred before US presidential elections, bolstering the anti-war camp and leading the former Democratic president, Lyndon Johnson, to announce that he would not seek reelection.
Bush "was making a point that he's made before, which is that terrorists try to exploit pictures and try to use the media as conduits for influencing public opinion in the United States," White House spokesman Tony Snow said.
"We do not think that there's been a flipover point," he said. "The president's determined it's not going to happen with Iraq, because you have a president who is determined to win."
"It is possible -- although we don't have a clear pathway into the minds of terrorists, it is possible they are trying to use violence right now as a way of influencing the elections," Snow said.
Bush's remarks appeared to put his Republicans on a slippery slope.
Similar analogy
Although US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made a similar analogy in June 2004, the Bush administration has always shied from the comparison.
Nearly 60,000 Americans were killed in Vietnam.
Since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, 2,772 US troops have been killed, according to a Pentagon tally.
This month has already proved to be one of the deadliest for US forces with 73 killed.
Opposition Democrats have made Bush's handling of Iraq a major campaign issue, and opinion polls show public sentiment against the war is growing.
A new online voting system aimed at boosting turnout among the Philippines’ millions of overseas workers ahead of Monday’s mid-term elections has been marked by confusion and fears of disenfranchisement. Thousands of overseas Filipino workers have already cast their ballots in the race dominated by a bitter feud between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and his impeached vice president, Sara Duterte. While official turnout figures are not yet publicly available, data from the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) showed that at least 134,000 of the 1.22 million registered overseas voters have signed up for the new online system, which opened on April 13. However,
EUROPEAN FUTURE? Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama says only he could secure EU membership, but challenges remain in dealing with corruption and a brain drain Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama seeks to win an unprecedented fourth term, pledging to finally take the country into the EU and turn it into a hot tourist destination with some help from the Trump family. The artist-turned-politician has been pitching Albania as a trendy coastal destination, which has helped to drive up tourism arrivals to a record 11 million last year. US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also joined in the rush, pledging to invest US$1.4 billion to turn a largely deserted island into a luxurious getaway. Rama is expected to win another term after yesterday’s vote. The vote would
FRAUD ALLEGED: The leader of an opposition alliance made allegations of electoral irregularities and called for a protest in Tirana as European leaders are to meet Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama’s Socialist Party scored a large victory in parliamentary elections, securing him his fourth term, official results showed late on Tuesday. The Socialist Party won 52.1 percent of the vote on Sunday compared with 34.2 percent for an alliance of opposition parties led by his main rival Sali Berisha, according to results released by the Albanian Central Election Commission. Diaspora votes have yet to be counted, but according to initial results, Rama was also leading there. According to projections, the Socialist Party could have more lawmakers than in 2021 elections. At the time, it won 74 seats in the
ALLIES: Calling Putin his ‘old friend,’ Xi said Beijing stood alongside Russia ‘in the face of the international counter-current of unilateralism and hegemonic bullying’ Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday was in Moscow for a state visit ahead of the Kremlin’s grand Victory Day celebrations, as Ukraine accused Russia’s army of launching air strikes just hours into a supposed truce. More than 20 foreign leaders were in Russia to attend a vast military parade today marking 80 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, taking place three years into Russia’s offensive in Ukraine. Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in February 2022 and has marshaled the memory of Soviet victory against Nazi Germany to justify his campaign and rally society behind the offensive,
RSS