He Can Read?!?
Posted on August 23, 2007
by: Big Jar
In a recent speech about the Iraq War, George W. Bush inexplicably brought up a novel entitled The Quiet American, written by the famous novelist Graham Greene. Here’s what Bush had to say about the novel:
“In 1955, long before the United States had entered the [Vietnam] war, Graham Greene wrote a novel called ‘The Quiet American.’ It was set in Saigon and the main character was a young government agent named Alden Pyle. He was a symbol of American purpose and patriotism and dangerous naivete. Another character describes Alden this way: ‘I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused.’
“After America entered the Vietnam War, Graham Greene — the Graham Greene argument gathered some steam. Matter of fact, many argued that if we pulled out, there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people.”
Bush goes on to say that our early withdrawal from the Vietnam War caused millions of deaths in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge’s reign.
Jon Stewart once said about the Bush administration, “It’s not that you can’t make this stuff up–it’s that you wish you had to.” I am utterly stupefied that the President chose this book and this comparison to support his argument. Perhaps he has become unsettled by the increasingly frequent comparisons between the Iraq War and the Vietnam War, and hoped to put an end to those who said the same mistakes we made thirty years ago are reoccuring today.
However, his argument is really bizzarre because he doesn’t actually address the book or its contents after bringing them up. When he says “the Graham Greene argument”, I guess he’s talking about criticism towards the Vietnam War, but his supposed refutation of this argument is historically inaccurate. Read this:
Historians have cited the U.S. intervention and bombing campaign (spanning 1965-1973) as a significant factor leading to increased support of the Khmer Rouge among the Cambodian peasantry. Historian Ben Kiernan and Taylor Owen have used a combination of sophisticated satellite mapping, recently unclassified data about the extent of bombing activities, and peasant testimony, to argue that there was a strong correlation between villages targeted by U.S. bombing and recruitment of peasants by the Khmer Rouge. Kiernan and Owen argue that “Civilian casualties in Cambodia drove an enraged populace into the arms of an insurgency that had enjoyed relatively little support until the bombing began,[3]. In his study of Pol Pot’s rise to power, Kiernan argues that “Pol Pot’s revolution would not have won power without U.S. economic and military destabilisation of Cambodia” and that the U.S. carpet bombing “was probably the most significant factor in Pol Pot’s rise.” [4]
Wow, that sounds familiar.
Mr. Bush, what are you doing? This excerpt from your speech was so ineptly written that I believe it actually succeeded in hindering your effort to galvanize support for the war. I know you don’t write your own speeches, but in this case it sounds like you did. How could you “name drop” a novel that criticized U.S. foreign policy and then fail to address its arguments? You spend more time lending weight to Graham’s criticisms than you do to dispelling them!
Furthermore, how could you try to dismiss it by using a blatantly false historical example? Didn’t you realize that comparing the Iraq War to Vietnam is not in your favor? Did you think no one would notice that you had lied about the Khmer Rouge? Did you think that journalists wouldn’t call you on this? This isn’t historical minutae; this is something a person can learn through five seconds of research. Finally, didn’t you realize that once people looked into your claims, they would realize that your examples overwhelmingly prove that you are wrong?!
More about the book itself: The Quiet American is a harsh condemnation of American involvement in Southeast Asian politics. It condemns our country’s hubris in thinking it can conquer an unwinnable fight solely through its superior military technology. If this book had been written yesterday, many would assume that its protagonist was modeled after Bush himself.
I hope that the war supporters listening to the President’s speech go to the library and check out this book. In the end, the person who does the most to alienate supporters of the Iraq War may be the President himself.
Comments
One Response to “He Can Read?!?”
Leave a Reply
Kevin Baker’s 2006 Analysis “Stabbed in the back! The past and future of a right-wing myth” is required reading.
Indeed, the right has distilled its tale of betrayal into a formula: Advocate some momentarily popular but reckless policy. Deny culpability when that policy is exposed as disastrous. Blame the disaster on internal enemies who hate America.
http://harpers.org/archive/2006/06/0081080