Not his father's war
PRESIDENT BUSH does a disservice both to veterans of World War II and Americans who have served in Iraq by devising similarities between the two conflicts. Unlike the global struggle that ensnared the United States in 1941, Iraq is a discretionary war, one that has not engaged the full resources of the United States. It is being fought with inadequate manpower, and the outcome is far from clear.
Bush has compared World War II with the war against terror and the war in Iraq several times, most recently in a speech in San Diego on Tuesday commemorating the surrender of Japan. The analogy would provide the war in Iraq with powerful moral force -- if it were true.
In 1941 the United States was unambiguously attacked by Japan, followed quickly by a declaration of war from Germany. It had no choice but to fully mobilize. Sixteen million Americans were drafted or enlisted in the armed forces. Food, metals, and gasoline were rationed. When the United States attacked Iraq in 2003, Saddam Hussein, for all his oppression at home, was not a threat to any other country. The United States invaded Iraq without a full mobilization or any intrusion into civilian life beyond staggered National Guard and Reserve call-ups.
Had Saddam been a greater danger, the United States would likely have used more than minimal force in the invasion and would have followed up with a large occupation army, as was done after World War II. Despite Bush's triumphant speech on an aircraft carrier in 2003, Saddam's supporters have not been defeated. They and others are waging a terror war against Americans and Iraqis that is unlike anything the United States faced in World War II.
The better analogy is to Vietnam, except that the Iraq conflict is even more savage in its slaughter of civilians and more unpredictable in its attacks on US combatants. US servicemen face the stresses of uncertainty and a shadowy adversary that their grandfathers did not experience.
Bush wants to wrap Iraq with Osama bin Laden into an adversary on the scale of Germany and Japan. It's true that more people died on Sept. 11, 2001, than were killed by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but Bin Laden had little follow-up beyond a thwarted attempt to blow up a jetliner and no links to Saddam or any other nation state beyond pariah Afghanistan. Japan used its victory at Pearl Harbor to seize control of the western Pacific. Had Hitler won, he would have tried to dominate the world.
''Terrorists of our century are making the same mistake as followers of other totalitarian regimes made in the last century," Bush said Tuesday. ''They believe that democracies are inherently weak and can be brought to their knees." Because of the victories in World War II and the Cold War, the United States is not in mortal danger from any other nation or insurgent force in the world. It ought to choose its conflicts carefully. Misuse of the World War II analogy invites violence without end.
