Iraq Is Korea? Bush's latest appalling historical analogy

[babylonsister]

http://www.slate.com/id/2167362/pagenum/all/#page_start

Iraq Is Korea?
Bush's latest appalling historical analogy.
By Fred Kaplan


snip//

This is the implicit message of all the historical analogies Bush & Co. have palmed off in recent years—that, bad as things might seem, they're no worse than similar events seemed in the past.

When the insurgency first gained force in Iraq, Bush and his top advisers claimed similar guerrilla groups tried to disrupt the Allied occupation of Germany after World War II (though, in fact, this claim was mythical).

When the insurgency dragged on, Bush drew comparisons with the Philippines, which is now a thriving democracy (though he didn't point out that the counterinsurgency campaign in the Philippines was unacceptably brutal by today's standards and that it took 40 years longer to establish democracy).

When Iraq's constitutional convention was mired in conflict, Bush and his top Cabinet members noted that our own forefathers took eight years to get from the ramshackle Articles of Confederation to the Constitution we now cherish (ignoring the vast social, cultural, and political differences between federalist America and contemporary Iraq).

And time and time again, Bush has likened himself to Harry Truman, whose entire Cold War policy—not just his war in Korea—was unpopular in its day (though Bush has created nothing like the international agencies and alliances—NATO, the Marshall Plan, the Bretton Woods agreement, and so forth—that formed the Truman's postwar order).

To President Bush, history is not a complex record of the past, to be studied intensively for lessons. It's a grab bag of myths and half-truths, to be dredged for political effect—a device that provides rhetorical cover, and allows evasion of responsibility, in the face of gross and obvious failure.

[Xipe Totec]

1. You laugh now, but what about 9/11,

When the French flew zeppelins into the Chicago Sears tower and pelted the crowd with freedom fries?

[ixion]

2. *snicker*

:rofl:

[dave_p]

3. No, you're thinking of 1776

When Americans and their British allies won their freedom from the sinister French rulers who'd spread terror and distinctive cheese across the land, a feat repeated in 1917 and 1941. It takes a leader like Chimpy to remind Americans of the history the books left out.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. That last paragraph is so true

and ironically, Bush was a history major.

[gulliver]

5. Kaplan gets it right on the money.

The Korea Model stuff is just a rhetorical ploy by Bush and his co-idiots. They are trying to sneak out of blame for their failure.