The constant search for a historical parallel

March 6, 2006

For the better part of the last couple of years, top Bush administration officials, including the president, have tried to assuage discontent over the war in Iraq by drawing a parallel between the conflict and other, more successful, wars from our past.

The latest is Donald Rumsfeld’s attempt to compare Iraq with the Cold War.

[Speaking at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Museum and Library, Rumsfeld said] that America’s impatience and political division over the war on terror mirrors disagreements during the Cold War. He said that during the Cold War the nation was tired after World War II and not in the mood “for more global involvement.”

During the Cold War, he said, “the future then too was unclear, the tasks often seemed insurmountable, and it was difficult to view things with the perspective that only history can offer.”

He said President Truman and other American leaders pressed ahead in the confrontation against communism, bolstering democracies in Western Europe.

For those keeping score at home, that brings the total of comparisons between Iraq and other historic military campaigns, to six, following Korea, the Revolutionary War, World War I, the Civil War, and World War II.

It’s a debatable point, of course, but Rumsfeld’s latest may be the least sensible yet.

Rumsfeld said he sees “impatience and political division over the war on terror.” He’s mistaken; there’s impatience and political division over the war in Iraq, which didn’t have anything to do with fighting terrorism until the administration bungled the occupation. For that matter, the “political division” over the Cold War was practically non-existent among the two parties for the better part of two generations.

Without getting into a lengthy historical review of the Cold War, Rumsfeld’s analogy is a stretch. Regardless, this constant search for a parallel that will help change the public’s mood is rather silly. The war in Iraq is a disaster, filled with tragic incompetence, dishonesty, poor planning, and a foolish ideology.

If the administration is convinced a historical comparison is necessary, an unpleasant example comes to mind.

How about the war on christmas?
Iraq is yet another fairy tale explointation of the far right mythology… with fantasy feel good propaganda intended to mobilize their “base” for political gain.

  • Yeah, I have to agree with you CB. Perhaps when Rummy said, “that America’s impatience and political division over the war on terror mirrors disagreements…” perhaps he was thinking Vietnam but misspoke. Although I have to say that according to the polls, America isn’t as divided over the war in Iraq as Rummy would have you believe.

  • It’s strange… isn’t it? Six different wars used as a comparison, but somehow Vietnam isn’t among those six…

  • It’s kind of ironic since the neoconservatives were the impatient ones during the cold war.

  • Well, the Boer War might be another comparison. Or the USSR in Afghanistan might be another comparison.

  • We’re impatient with this Administration’s utter FAILURE to defend us against real terrorism, foreign (UAE, ports generally, bin Laden) and natural (Katrina). The conquest/crusade/quagmire in Iraq has nothing whatever to with defending us here at home.

  • You forgot one.

    Bush’s speech in Manila in October 2003 contained an implicit parallel between Iraq and the Philippine War of 1898-1902:

    “Democracy always has skeptics. Some say the culture of the Middle East will not sustain the institutions of democracy. The same doubts were proven wrong nearly six decades ago, when the Republic of the Philippines became the first democracy in Asia.”

    See Fred Kaplan’s article in Slate “From Baghdad to Manila” for a more detailed examination of why this parallel stinks and why Bush probably has not bothered to revive it since.

    http://www.slate.com/id/2090114

  • Rumsfeld’s on the wrong page. Who needs a historical
    parallel to justify the stunning success of the venture
    in Iraq? Just check out the transcript of Meet the Press
    yesterday, and see what the Chairman of the Joint
    Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace has to say:

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11654734/

    Here’s a gem from that transcript:

    “MR. RUSSERT: If you were to be asked whether things in Iraq are going well or badly, what would you say? How would you answer?”

    “GEN. PACE: I’d say they’re going well. I wouldn’t put a great big smiley face on it, but I would say they’re going very, very well from everything you look at, whether it be on the political side where they’ve had three elections, they’ve written their own constitution, they’re forming their government. You look at the military side where this time last year there were just a handful of battalions in the field, Iraqi battalions in the field. Now there are over 100 battalions in the field. They had no brigades—that’s about 3,000 men each. Now they’ve got about 31 brigades. No matter where you look at their military, their police, their society, things are much better this year than they were last.”

    So you see? No comparison necessary. Precedent here.
    A triumph of Bush’s preemptive war strategery. Glory be to
    the neocons. We’ve had it all wrong. Glad General Pace
    straightened us all out.

  • My favorite comparison is between the insurgency and the SS “Werewolves” that were more a figment of Himmler’s imagination and postwar novelists than any actual resistance to the Allies.

  • Future references Rumsfeld has planned:
    Galactic Civil War
    War of the Last Alliance
    War of the Ring
    Fourth Frontier War (Traveller geeks should get that)
    General War (for you Star Fleet Battle geeks)
    Psychic Wars
    House Harkonnen’s invasion of Arrakis
    GI Joe versus Cobra
    and, of course
    The Forever War

  • re: #9

    A topical toungetwister-

    Peter Pace Pitched a Prodigous Pile of Positive Pentagon Propaganda

    So How much Posititive Petagon Propaganda did Peter Pace Pitch?

  • 2Manchu, you forgot the comparison to the War of the Roses. You know the movie – everyone is irrational and unable to admit error, so in the end everyone dies. Hmmm. Maybe Rummy wont use that one after all.

  • For those keeping score at home, that brings the total of comparisons between Iraq and other historic military campaigns, to six, following Korea, the Revolutionary War, World War I, the Civil War, and World War II.

    How soon before they use the Spanish-American War as a comparison? Then after they use up the War of 1812, what will they have left? Grenada?

  • And the seldom mentioned numerous invasions of many nations in our hemisphere during the early 20th century, mostly to back up what pipsqueak regime was claiming dictatorial power at the moment.

    Trouble is, those were mostly successful (tempirarily). Irag has already been conquered (“Mission Accomplished” after 139 deaths). Our Crusade there is now past its 2,300th death and promises to be eternal.

  • Zeitgeist,
    Turner and Douglas were better in Romancing the Stone, I think.
    Also, I was in the 7th ID(L) for Operation Just Cause (“why’d we invade? Eh, just ’cause.”), and once Noriega got holed up at the Papal Nuncio, the fighting stopped.

  • Truely the “mother of all wars” is the war on democratic institutions which breeds a host of other wars to justify use of extraordinary means to trample our freedoms.

  • Zeitgeist,

    Panama! Right! On a more serious note, you know they are going to look for parallels in the War of 1812 or the Spanish American War…its bound to happen.

  • maybe the most apt war comparison is the War on Drugs: mainly political theater in terms of a methodology for actually addressing a problem; main result has been an extraordinary attack on civil liberties and personal privacy; measured in terms of the nominal substantive goal, the end is nowhere in sight and to date it seems clear the costs have outweighed the benefits; pushed hardest by hypocritical old white Rethuglican men who drink scotch all day and smoke nicotine sticks in clubby conference rooms, whose wifes were the ones the Stones were singing about using Mother’s Little helper, and who take campaign cash from the contractors bidding on the much-needed new state prison where all the low-quantity users will now be warehoused.

  • Zeitgeist,

    That certainly is the most apt comparison…of course that’s exactly why it won’t ever be employed. The War on Drugs is clearly a failure and Rove & Co. won’t do anything to reinforce that analogy, no matter what the facts are.

    Another parallel between those “Wars” is the unwise focus on Suply rather than demand. Attacking the supply is certainly a demonstration of our “hard” power where dealing with the supply would take focusing on our “soft” power. The War on Drugs truly is the best analogy.

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