Did He Really Just Say That?

By Christopher Allbritton

This week, President George W. Bush stood up before the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and unspooled a whole lot of odd analogies to make the case that we need to stay in Iraq for... well, forever, I guess. I've not been in Iraq for more than a year but it's still a central focus of my reporting here in the Middle East. So, this week, let's step away from Lebanon -- which is depressing anyway -- and focus on Bush and his fantasies about Mesopotamia.

Because some days he makes it just too easy.

Bush's VFW speech has received a lot of ink. Everyone's been reporting on it, but what's bizarre is that Bush was pointing to past wars in Asia -- World War II against Japan, Korea and, most enigmatically, Vietnam -- as lessons to learn from. For this White House, Imperial Japan was the al Qaeda of its day. The Korean War was a war to instill democracy on the Korean peninsula. And Vietnam was muffed up by Defeatocrats at home - pulling the plug lead to the deaths of millions.

"One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps,' and 'killing fields,'" the president said.

Really, it's hard to know where to start.

In his initial comparison, Bush describes Japan as a a nation run by a man who "despises freedom, and harbors resentment at the slights he believes America and Western nations have inflicted on his people. He fights to establish his rule over an entire region. And over time, he turns to a strategy of suicide attacks." Well, the war in the Pacific was primarily one of great powers jostling over economic interests, which is way more serious than most ideological struggles. Japan was oil-poor and had its eyes on the Dutch East Indies. The United States and the West had engaged in economic tit-for-tat with Tokyo since the 1937 invasion of China and by 1941, the United States had slapped an oil embargo on the Empire of the Rising Sun in the escalating trade battles. The Japanese Navy was certain any attempt to seize the Dutch colonies would bring the United States into the war, so they needed to neutralize the U.S.'s Pacific Fleet first. Hence, Pearl Harbor.

Bush's view of Korea is an even more interesting comparison: "Without Americans' intervention during the war and our willingness to stick with the South Koreans after the war, millions of South Koreans would now be living under a brutal and repressive regime," Hm, let's see. The Korean War started in 1950. Democracy came to South Korea in the late 1980s, mainly because the military governments -- which massacred democracy protesters in 1980 -- were supported by ... the United States.

But the Korea analogy is apt for reasons other than those Bush intended. Bush sees the Korean War as an example of the U.S. historical commitment to fight aggression and spread democracy. But the liberation of South Korea had been achieved by October 1950, four months after the war started, and the North Koreans had been pushed back. On October 19, United Nations and U.S. forces pushed north, past the 38th parallel and quickly triggered a Chinese intervention in the war. The coalition was rolled back and after three years and hundreds of thousands dead, a stalemate was achieved and an armistice signed with the original border in place. It was an outcome that could have been achieved in four months and many fewer people dead.

In short, invading Iraq in 2003 looks a lot like the decision to invade North Korea in October 1950: a monumental case of overreach. Don't his speechwriters check this stuff? Or do they just rely on the historical ignorance of many Americans?...[Open in new window]