One of the rhetorical high points of Bush’s stump speech seeks to encourage voters to be patient with the lack of progress in Iraq and points to 1940s Japan as a key analogy. Here’s Bush on the subject, just last night:
“I believe in the transformational power of liberty. The wisest use of American strength is to advance freedom. One of the people with whom I’ve spent a lot of time is Prime Minister Koizumi, of Japan. We’re friends. We talk a lot. It’s amazing, though, to be having these discussions with Prime Minister Koizumi, because it wasn’t all that long ago in the march of history that we were at war with Japan. They were a sworn enemy. My dad, I suspect others’ dads and granddads fought against the Japanese.
“But because of people like Harry Truman and other Americans, after World War II, people who understood that liberty could transform an enemy into an ally, because they doubted — they overcame the doubters, because they worked to build a democracy in Japan, today I sit down at the table with Prime Minister Koizumi, talking about the peace. Liberty is powerful. Liberty can change nations. Some day, an American President will be sitting down with a duly elected leader of Iraq, talking about the peace and our children and grandchildren will be better off for it.”
As campaign rhetoric goes, this is pretty good stuff. As historical analogies go, it’s complete nonsense.
I realize the analogy is intended to inspire optimism for the future, but I suspect Bush doesn’t want us to a) check our history to see what happened after World War II, or b) think too hard about Bush’s point.
The truth is, as the New York Times’ David Sanger recently noted, there was no insurgency in Japan after the war ended.
In the aftermath of Japan’s surrender, there was no continuing insurgency. Instead, the emperor declared that the Japanese should cooperate with their occupiers — and they did.
Sound like Iraq right now? Not exactly.
Just as importantly, Bush conveniently forgets to tell audiences that it’s been 59 years since the war with Japan — and we’re still there. Is Bush prepared to take the Japan analogy forward and predict that U.S. forces will still be in Iraq in 2063?