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 ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in political science and journalism.
