GEORGE BUSH made the first visit by a Republican president to Vietnam yesterday and attempted to deflect comparisons between the war in Iraq and the US’s humiliating defeat by the communist Vietcong three decades ago.

“We tend to want instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is going to take a while,” he said, when asked if Vietnam offered lessons for Iraq. “It’s going to take a long time for the ideology of freedom to overcome an ideology of hate.”

Mr Bush will spend four days in Vietnam attending the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation Forum in the capital, Hanoi. He will hold meetings with the leaders of China, Japan, Russia and South Korea, and the 21-member group will discuss trade liberalisation, bird flu, climate change, international terrorism and the North Korean nuclear weapons programme. Whatever is on the agenda, the presence of a US Commander-in-Chief in Vietnam is an irony, especially after Mr Bush’s mauling in the midterm elections.

The US intervention on behalf of South Vietnam against the Vietcong began in the early 1960s and ended in 1975 when the final US personnel were airlifted from the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City.

Opponents of Mr Bush have made the comparison with Iraq — another war fought in the name of democracy against a militarily inferior guerrilla army which is costing unimagined numbers of American lives and provoking more public opposition.

Mr Bush did not address the comparison directly yesterday, but seemed to imply that the lesson of Vietnam is that a premature exit was a mistake.

“We’ll succeed, unless we quit,” the President said.

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