K
Kickin' Ass and Takin' Names
Guest
Published on Thursday, August 23, 2007 by The Guardian/UK
Don't Know Much About History
Why is George Bush suddenly making parallels between Iraq and Vietnam?
Because he's preparing to shift the blame for another disaster.
by Matthew Yglesias
Today, it seems, was "Asian Wars Analogy Day" in the Bush
administration, as the president uncorked a whole series of odd
historical analogies in defense of his Iraq policy. "In the aftermath
of Japan's surrender," he reminded an audience of the Veterans of
Foreign Wars in Missouri, "many thought it naive to help the Japanese
transform themselves into a democracy. Then, as now, the argued that
some people were not fit for freedom."
In fact, it seems rather doubtful that any substantial body of opinion
actually did argue this about Japan.
Perhaps some people argued that it was more important to the United
States that Japan be a reliable ally against the Soviet Union than
that it be a democracy. Which, of course, is precisely what American
policy was. As former Tokyo CIA station chief Horace Feldman is quoted
in Tim Weiner's new book Legacy of Ashes "We ran Japan during the
occupation, and we ran it a different way in these years after the
occupation," ensuring the Liberal Democratic Party a basic monopoly of
political power in exchange for deference to American security policy
in Asia. Despite this meddling, Japan did emerge from the post-war
occupation with the basic scheme of a liberal democracy in place,
which was all to the good. Elsewhere in Asia, however, things didn't
work out so well, and countries like Taiwan, South Korea, and the
Philippines were subjected to America-friendly military dictatorships
that only became democratic decades later as a result of popular
protest.
One points this out not to condemn America's Asia policy of the 1940s
and 1950s, but merely to observe that democracy-promotion wasn't
especially high on the agenda. This serves, in turn, as a reminder
that the United States hardly invaded Japan (or Germany or Italy for
that matter) in order to build democracies. Rather, Japan launched a
sneak attack on American soil, Germany invaded Poland, both were hell-
bent on world domination, and the allies prosecuted World War II as a
fundamentally defensive measure. The contrast with Iraq could not be
more stark.
Nor, indeed, could the contrast between homogenous, resource-poor
Japan and heterogeneous, oil-rich Iraq be much greater. Indeed, though
leading war advocate Paul Wolfowitz demonstrated gross ignorance of
Iraq when he testified before congress that the country had no history
of ethnic strife, he was showing a keen awareness of the fact that a
history of ethnic strife would make the country an unpromising proving
ground for gunpoint democratization.
All this, however, was but the appetizer for a shocking embrace of a
historically illiterate account of the Vietnam war. "One unmistakable
legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid
by millions of innocent citizens," Bush said "whose agonies would add
to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps'
and 'killing fields.'" While it is of course true that people died in
South Vietnam following American withdrawal, millions died during the
United States' years of military involvement as well, a great many
killed by the American military at enormous expense and with no end in
sight. The killing fields of Pol Pot's Cambodia, meanwhile, were if
anything more a consequence of America's destabilization of the region
than of America's departure.
Unenlightening as Bush's analogies may be, they do serve as an
interesting sign of the times. For years, war-supporters derided any
efforts to draw parallels between Iraq and Vietnam as unwarranted, now
they're eager to draw them. The reason, most likely, is that while the
hawks lost the war in Vietnam and eventually even lost the debate over
the war, they believe themselves to have eventually won the larger
political battle as Ronald Reagan embraced Bush-style revisionist
accounts of the war in southeast Asia as part of his march to the
White House in 1980.
For months now, many conservatives have been fundamentally positioning
themselves for the post-war era, readying the arguments that will
blame the failure of the venture in Iraq on its opponents rather than
its architects. That Bush himself has chosen to join them is, perhaps,
on some level the clearest reflection of the reality that the
president knows perfectly well that the war is unwinnable, and blame-
shifting now the best hope for saving his historical legacy.
Don't Know Much About History
Why is George Bush suddenly making parallels between Iraq and Vietnam?
Because he's preparing to shift the blame for another disaster.
by Matthew Yglesias
Today, it seems, was "Asian Wars Analogy Day" in the Bush
administration, as the president uncorked a whole series of odd
historical analogies in defense of his Iraq policy. "In the aftermath
of Japan's surrender," he reminded an audience of the Veterans of
Foreign Wars in Missouri, "many thought it naive to help the Japanese
transform themselves into a democracy. Then, as now, the argued that
some people were not fit for freedom."
In fact, it seems rather doubtful that any substantial body of opinion
actually did argue this about Japan.
Perhaps some people argued that it was more important to the United
States that Japan be a reliable ally against the Soviet Union than
that it be a democracy. Which, of course, is precisely what American
policy was. As former Tokyo CIA station chief Horace Feldman is quoted
in Tim Weiner's new book Legacy of Ashes "We ran Japan during the
occupation, and we ran it a different way in these years after the
occupation," ensuring the Liberal Democratic Party a basic monopoly of
political power in exchange for deference to American security policy
in Asia. Despite this meddling, Japan did emerge from the post-war
occupation with the basic scheme of a liberal democracy in place,
which was all to the good. Elsewhere in Asia, however, things didn't
work out so well, and countries like Taiwan, South Korea, and the
Philippines were subjected to America-friendly military dictatorships
that only became democratic decades later as a result of popular
protest.
One points this out not to condemn America's Asia policy of the 1940s
and 1950s, but merely to observe that democracy-promotion wasn't
especially high on the agenda. This serves, in turn, as a reminder
that the United States hardly invaded Japan (or Germany or Italy for
that matter) in order to build democracies. Rather, Japan launched a
sneak attack on American soil, Germany invaded Poland, both were hell-
bent on world domination, and the allies prosecuted World War II as a
fundamentally defensive measure. The contrast with Iraq could not be
more stark.
Nor, indeed, could the contrast between homogenous, resource-poor
Japan and heterogeneous, oil-rich Iraq be much greater. Indeed, though
leading war advocate Paul Wolfowitz demonstrated gross ignorance of
Iraq when he testified before congress that the country had no history
of ethnic strife, he was showing a keen awareness of the fact that a
history of ethnic strife would make the country an unpromising proving
ground for gunpoint democratization.
All this, however, was but the appetizer for a shocking embrace of a
historically illiterate account of the Vietnam war. "One unmistakable
legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid
by millions of innocent citizens," Bush said "whose agonies would add
to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps'
and 'killing fields.'" While it is of course true that people died in
South Vietnam following American withdrawal, millions died during the
United States' years of military involvement as well, a great many
killed by the American military at enormous expense and with no end in
sight. The killing fields of Pol Pot's Cambodia, meanwhile, were if
anything more a consequence of America's destabilization of the region
than of America's departure.
Unenlightening as Bush's analogies may be, they do serve as an
interesting sign of the times. For years, war-supporters derided any
efforts to draw parallels between Iraq and Vietnam as unwarranted, now
they're eager to draw them. The reason, most likely, is that while the
hawks lost the war in Vietnam and eventually even lost the debate over
the war, they believe themselves to have eventually won the larger
political battle as Ronald Reagan embraced Bush-style revisionist
accounts of the war in southeast Asia as part of his march to the
White House in 1980.
For months now, many conservatives have been fundamentally positioning
themselves for the post-war era, readying the arguments that will
blame the failure of the venture in Iraq on its opponents rather than
its architects. That Bush himself has chosen to join them is, perhaps,
on some level the clearest reflection of the reality that the
president knows perfectly well that the war is unwinnable, and blame-
shifting now the best hope for saving his historical legacy.