Bush Lies About Senator William Fulbright and Vietnam

In his speech August 22, 2007 President George W. Bush, displaying a profound and dangerous misunderstanding of American History and our involvement in World War II, the Korean Conflict, and the Vietnam War, took a sentence from Senator J. William Fulbright's The Crippled Giant and mangled it out of context.

In 1972, one antiwar senator put it this way: "What earthly difference does it make to nomadic tribes or uneducated subsistence farmers in Vietnam or Cambodia or Laos, whether they have a military dictator, a royal prince or a socialist commissar in some distant capital that they've never seen and may never heard of?" ...The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be...

It has been over thirty years since I read the book. If memory serves me correctly, Senator Fulbright asked a rhetorical question and was not dismissing the aspirations "nomadic tribes or uneducated subsistence farmers."  His point was that in the desperate struggle to survive, the battles for control of the government "in some distant capital" was not the focus of their daily lives.

Fulbright went on to say that he hoped that one day the democracy would be attainable for them.

When I have the book in hand, I will post the remainder of Fulbright's thoughts, HERE.

Update: 8/23/07 at 6:15 PM. Anthony provided the entire quote in his comment below. Now that I have had the opportunity to read it in context, Bush's distortion is more egregious than I imagined. The most moderate history professor would give the speech a failing grade based on this one distortion.

Nor does it matter all that terribly to the inhabitants. At the risk of being accused of every sin from racism to communism, I stress the irrelevance of ideology to poor, peasant populations. Someday, perhaps, it will matter, in what one hopes will be a constructive and utilitarian way. But in the meantime, what earthly difference does it make to nomadic tribes or uneducated subsistence farmers, in Vietnam or Cambodia or Laos, whether they have a military dictator, a royal prince or a socialist commissar in some distant capital that they have never seen and may never even have heard of?

At their current stage of undevelopment these populations have more basic requirements. They need governments which will provide medical services, education, birth control programs, fertilizer, high-yield seeds and instruction in how to use them. They need governments which are honest enough to refrain from robbing and exploiting them, purposeful enough to want to modernize their societies, and efficient enough to have some ideas about how to do it. (emphasis added) Whether such governments are capitalist or socialist can be of little interest to the people involved, or to anyone except their incumbent rulers, whose perquisites are at stake, and their great-power mentors, fretting in their distant capitals about ideology and "spheres of interest."

As you can see, Fulbright made the point that a socialist or capitalist government was not important but that what was needed was, "...governments which are honest enough to refrain from robbing and exploiting them.." In this day and age of no bid multi billion dollar contracts to Haliburton, that sounds pretty democratic to me.

It is despicable that a United States President would twist the words of a heroic United States Senator and portray Fulbright as suggesting that democracy is of little consequence to impoverished people.

If Bush wished to quote Fulbright, he might have noted:

• We have the power to do any damn fool thing we want to do, and we seem to do it about every 10 minutes.
• We are trying to remake Vietnamese society, a task which certainly cannot be accomplished by force and which probably cannot be accomplished by any means available to outsiders.
• The rapprochement of peoples is only possible when differences of culture and outlook are respected and appreciated rather than feared and condemned, when the common bond of human dignity is recognized as the essential bond for a peaceful world.
• The cause of our difficulties in southeast Asia is not a deficiency of power but an excess of the wrong kind of power which results in a feeling of impotence when it fails to achieve its desired ends.
• The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust our own government statements. I had no idea until then that you could not rely on them.
• Power tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is particularly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God's favor, conferring upon it a special responsibility for other nations - to make them richer and happier and wiser, to remake them, that is, in its own shining image.

Comments

[nonheroicvet]

Hey - what do you expect - George W. Bush is a despicable kind of guy.

[Steve Vokers]

I've been in a state of outrage fatigue for, oh, the last five or six years. I'm having trouble coming up with the energy to be shocked by anything this administration does or that this President says.

[antpoppa]

'The Crippled Giant', what a great read by Senator Fulbright. I'll assume that the book is still in the public library. Again, another case of history repeating itself. I am glad that you're listening to the Bush speeches, personally I've gotten a physical reaction to watching the man, and it's not good.
Vice President Dick Cheney has said, with words to this effect, "it will be when George Bush has passed on or is on his deathbed that the American people will appreciate him."
To that I say... Amen.

[Stu Levitan]

Todd Gitlin quotes this entry at http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/aug/23/canard_watch_where_to_start

[Anthony Banks]

Here is a more fulsome quotation from Fulbright's The Crippled Giant:

"Nor does it matter all that terribly to the inhabitants. At the risk of being accused of every sin from racism to communism, I stress the irrelevance of ideology to poor, peasant populations. Someday, perhaps, it will matter, in
what one hopes will be a constructive and utilitarian way. But in the meantime, what earthly difference does it make to nomadic tribes or uneducated subsistence farmers, in Vietnam or Cambodia or Laos, whether they have a
military dictator, a royal prince or a socialist commissar in some distant capital that they have never seen and may never even have heard of?

"At their current stage of undevelopment these populations have more basic requirements. They need governments which will provide medical services, education, birth control programs, fertilizer, high-yield seeds and instruction in how to use them. They need governments which are honest enough to refrain from robbing and exploiting them, purposeful enough to want to modernize their societies, and efficient enough to have some ideas about how to do it. Whether such governments are capitalist or socialist can be of little interest to the people involved, or to anyone except their incumbent rulers, whose perquisites are at stake, and their great-power mentors, fretting in their distant capitals
about ideology and "spheres of interest."

[Paul]

Thank you Anthony!!!!

[Thomas]

You are a very discouraging group; filled with hypocracy and hatred while professing a desire for understanding and communication. It seems the only communication you're interested in is hearing yourselves spew the same retoric over and over. I never cared for Clinton as president but I never wished him ill or spoke of looking forward to his death. You would have likely cheered had Reagan died at Hinkley's hand. I thought Kennedy was a dreadful president on so many levels. But I came to tears when he and his brother died.

I read Fulbright's book and disagreed with much of it, though I thought it was well written and carefully thought out. Still, I look at the passage quoted by Bush and I see the basic tenet of Bush's point. I have not yet decided if I agree with it, but I don't think it's out of left field and that it is open to interpretation. But it does not matter if I agree or don't agree. It does not matter that I like or dislike Bush or any other president. I respect the office and support and pray for those that are given the honor of holding that office. And I would never wish them dead, no matter who holds that office. They are our country's leader. You should show it the respect it's due.