Chelsea war vets sour on Bush’s Iraq-Vietnam comparison

Volume 1, Number 51 | The Weekly Newspaper of Chelsea | September 7 - 13, 2007

By Evangel Fung

Last Tuesday, an informal survey taken on the streets of Chelsea revealed that many war veterans rejected President Bush’s recent comparison of the Iraq and Vietnam wars, dismissing the administration’s effort to marshal support for the Iraq war as inadequate.

At a convention center in Kansas City on August 22, Bush addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention, saying that pulling out of Iraq the way the military pulled out of Vietnam would result in even more civilian deaths and the loss of U.S. credibility.

“Baloney!” said Jay Maiello, 77, a retired florist who resides on 56 7th Ave., while stirring a pot of coffee at SAGE, an elderly center on 7th Ave. “It’s not like Vietnam! It’s a different story here.” Maiello, who served in the army during the Korean War, said the U.S. has no business in Iraq. “Our boys are dying, and for what? They hate us there in Iraq.”

More than 6 in 10 Americans now say the Iraq War was a mistake, according to a July poll by Gallup, a figure that includes many veterans who have seen the U.S. through various wars. The upcoming Petraeus report will probably not change that sentiment. The report will be written by the White House, according to a mid-August L.A. Times article, which went on to say that Congressional legislation leaves it to the president to decide how to interpret the report’s data. A CNN poll around the same time found that 53 percent of respondents suspect the report will paint a rosy picture of Iraq.

In his speech, Bush continued to rationalize the war, saying that “If we were to abandon the Iraqi people, the terrorists would be emboldened, and use their victory to gain new recruits.”

This reasoning isn’t concrete enough for John Naranjo, 79, a retired bank investigator, who was also relaxing in the lounge at SAGE when he decided that he couldn’t “find anything that justifies the war in Iraq. All the tortures and massacres…. How can you justify that for nothing that is concrete?” Naranjo, who takes the ferry over from Staten Island every morning to be at SAGE, retired from the army in 1968. He is a registered Democrat but is wary about making hasty decisions in the upcoming presidential election.

A similar reaction from Naranjo and Maiello’s friend, Mike Daro, 75, confirms that Chelsea has war veterans who are not buying Bush’s statements. Daro, who served in the army in between the Vietnam and Korean Wars and used to work in real estate, said Bush “made more terrorists out of the Iraqis” by continuing the U.S. presence in Iraq.

“It’s a civil war. And you can’t win a civil war,” he said. Daro is quick to point out that most of the members of Congress don’t have children fighting in Iraq. But as for his own grandchildren, he says, “I worry that they’re going to be in this war when they’re 18.”

Dan Milner, 62, in a discussion right outside his W. 19th Street home this week, said that Bush’s analogy doesn’t hold: “Iraq is more important strategically because there’s oil there. That makes it a helluva lot more important than Vietnam. Vietnam was just a little corner of Asia.” Still, there was no need to invade Iraq, according to Millner, who served in the air force during the Vietnam War and currently works at the CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities. “We’re not the policemen of the world. Saddam Hussein brought stability to that part of the world. We didn’t have to go in and destabilize it.” This war has left Milner concerned. “My picture is very bleak. It was the stupidest thing to do, going in there. I couldn’t tell you what we should do now.”

Bush asserted that “our moral obligations and our strategic interests are one,” that “the shadow of terror will never be lifted from our world and the American people will never be safe until the people of the Middle East know the freedom that our Creator meant for all.” But not everyone is buying it, and if Bush is grasping at straws for something concrete, people have not been fooled.

Jerry Rizzo, 92, a veteran of World War II and retired high school English teacher, is “not too favorably impressed by Bush.” Rizzo, who has lived at 435 W. 23rd St. for more than 40 years, has seen many wars in his lifetime. Looking at the war in Iraq, Rizzo doesn’t see enough reason for it. For WWII, there was a “clear-cut situation. What the Nazis were doing…they had to be stopped. The right thing was pretty clear.” But as for this war, Rizzo does not see that the Bush administration has given enough justification for it. “There’s no conviction.”

Tom Signorelli, a Brooklyn resident who was visiting friends in Chelsea, never served in the U.S. military; in fact, he protested against the Vietnam War when he attended college at UCLA. His sentiments from the 1960s still hold today: “You can’t push an ideology on people, or a religion. Why are we trying to do that? So people can drive their SUVs?” Another issue he has with Bush’s Vietnam War analogy is that Bush was never in the war. “He never fought. Why should we go for him? He’s just trying to sound historical on something he knows nothing about. He had no real experience with the Vietnam War. And this war…there’s no reason to go at all.”

Signorelli also worries that his vote won’t count in the 2008 elections. It’s “those machines” that he’s fearful of. “I think the Republicans own some of the guys who work the machines. They could rip off the vote.”