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Iraq unlike other military conflicts

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Also by Bassey Etim:

Religion: Does it benefit society? (November 29, 2007)
Do Democrats take minority votes for granted? (November 15, 2007)
It's the media, stupid: Political coverage misleads (November 8, 2007)

by Bassey Etim

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

There's a new craze sweeping through Washington, and all the cool kids are playing. It's called "compare Iraq to things that actually went well." OK, so the name isn't exactly catchy, but the prizes include victory in the midterm elections and the sweet taste of a "history will vindicate me for everything I've screwed up" sundae. Mmm, now that's rich.

For over a year, the Bush administration has comically struggled to shift the terms of debate on Iraq. First, they went with pretending everything was awesome, which led to numerous press conferences in which President Bush had to explain that he reads the news and even pays attention to current events. Then tactics shifted to blaming the media for reporting the ongoing violence and the deaths of American soldiers instead of the daycare center that opened up in downtown Karbala. When internal polling indicated the killing of our troops is considered a newsworthy event, famed strategist Karl Rove decided the public needs a history lesson: there have been conflicts in American history that turned out OK.

Lately, the best defense of the war effort has come from Condoleezza Rice, who told Essence magazine, "There were people who thought the Declaration of Independence was a mistake," making it fairly obvious the administration is reaching just a bit.

While the administration equates the liberation of Iraq by force with the freeing of slaves in the South (See: the rest of Rice's interview), many conservatives decry the irrational, all-encompassing hatred of President Bush by some liberals. Yet by comparing opposition to the Iraq war and the appeasement of terrorists, the administration backhandedly suggests the resolve of liberals to kill the terrorists who perpetrated Sept. 11, 2001 has since been tempered by cowardice, that liberals believe the loss of American lives in conflict is too great a price for justice.

When the administration accuses veterans advocating redeployment like Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., of "cut and run," they seem to criticize the concept of unwavering dedication to rooting out the remains of al-Qaeda and the Taliban from Afghanistan. They suggest the notion that we can ill afford to be distracted from our immediate domestic security needs by a neo-liberal adventure based on a vague and untested philosophy that is unpatriotic. The strategic blunder of giving our enemy a new battlefield is the best a post-Afghanistan al-Qaeda could have dreamed of.

Lumping the war on terrorism and the Iraq war is little more than a political statement, unless the administration is willing to admit the invasion of Iraq has spawned more terrorists and thus has made us less safe. The president has shifted the rationale for this conflict from defending against immediate attack to fighting a broad struggle to destroy extremism. Using force to eliminate an ideology that has become part of the human condition in large areas of the world is a borderline insane notion.

The most obvious conflict with the pervasive World War II comparison is the simple fact that you can't equate a government using military force to dominate a region with local mullahs advocating guerrilla tactics hoping to establish an Islamic caliphate that has been politically unfeasible since the 1920's. These invalid historical comparisons represent the exploitation of our greatest fears and of the seminal moment in our generation. They also violate the first rule of all debate: the first person to reference Hitler loses. It is the ultimate sign of political desperation.

If we are truly fighting a war against "Islamofacists," what would the scope of such a conflict be? Do hard liners really believe a war of ideas can be fought on a battlefield, that the images of Americans killing Arabs being broadcast on Al-Jazeera and state-run enterprises throughout the Middle East every day are the magic bullet needed to promote freedom?

The administration admits there is no direct link between al-Qaeda terrorists and Saddam Hussein — in fact, he viewed terrorists as a threat. Why is pointing out basic facts to conservative power brokers labeled as a political ploy? Why is asking why we got into this war an invalid or defeatist question? With all this talk of learning the lessons of history by viewing this one through the lens of the past, why can't we learn from the mistakes of the Iraq invasion without being called unpatriotic, of failing to support the mission? A more valid allusion seems to be the justification given for Vietnam — stopping the spread of communism versus fighting terrorists in Iraq so we don't have to fight them here.

The greatest support we can give to the mission is to continue the actual mission and not get bogged down in side quests. I believe history can teach us lessons, but it is not a crystal ball. One lesson history should have taught us in Vietnam are the consequences of fighting elective wars.

The administration can compare the Iraq war to everything under the sun, but we must remember that anyone can fight the last war, the question is who has the creativity to win this one.

Bassey Etim (betim@badgerherald.com) is a junior majoring in political science and journalism.

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Anonymous (September 12, 2006 @ 8:50am):

Why does the White House have to convince us how important it is for our troops to remain in Iraq? Is winning the war on terror equivalent to keeping a civil war at bay? Did we keep the civil war in Northern Ireland at bay through military intervention? Is Belfast still a war zone? Did we win the war in the Balkans by keeping Yugoslavia intact?

Instead of the administration comparing this conflict to WWII, maybe they should look back only as far as the Clinton Administration for inspiration.

Anonymous (September 12, 2006 @ 10:34am):

The reason the Iraq war isn't going well is that we assumed that muslims were rational humans who want freedom and peace. The truth is, muslims are barbarians who only want to kill anyone who doesn't follow their specific view of islam. That is why the shiites and sunnis are killing each other. It's not Bush's fault that muslims are mindless terrorists who would as soon cut your head off as look at you. Maybe the solution is to nuke the whole damn region. Turn the entire middle east into a nuclear waste land and be done with the whole thing.

Anonymous (September 12, 2006 @ 11:10am):

Re: 10:34

It's encouraging to see that trailer parks now have access to the internet.

My friend, it might not be Bush's fault that "muslims are mindless terrorists," but that's the war and the battlefield he chose to fight. I did say "CHOSE." I guess Bush is pro-choice... for wars.

Anonymous (September 12, 2006 @ 2:28pm):

Right on Anon#2. Right on.

Anonymous (September 13, 2006 @ 10:42am):

When will Leftists get past their collective amnesia over that fact that FDR also "elected" to fight a 2 theatre war against the Axis Powers of WWII?

In 1941, FDR didn't merely fight Shinto-fascists over Yamamoto's infamous terrorist attack on Pearl Harbor. Can anyone guess why FDR was bogged down in a North African "quagmire" in 1942? Answer: He and Eisenhower were securing Middle Eastern oil from European-fascists who never attacked us at Pearl Harbor.

And what was FDR doing attacking Italy and the Phillipines, instead of taking the fight to the shores of Japan and Germany?

If you're too ignorant of history to understand today's Pentagon strategy (Bush didn't make it up) of securing strategic military footholds alongside the Iranian menace-- Iran has been in a state of declared (and prosecuted) war on America for 30+ years now-- then you really need to remove your Vietnam blinkers and smell the Islamo-fascist jihad.

In the meantime, keep studying and stop aiding and abetting our enemies by blaming (by proxy attacks on President Bush) our military command at the Pentagon-- who (you may recall) were the one's successfully targetted by Islamo-fascism 5 years ago.