What Is It That Historians ...

... are supposed to know, above all else?  I'll wait...

Give up?  The answer is "History."  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you John Kerry's personal biographer, Douglas Brinkley.

Nobody has accused Bush of flinching. After 9/11, he decided to circumvent the United Nations and declare war on Iraq.

Errr, no.  I'll quote the relevent section.

Determined to secure full compliance with its decisions,

Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations,

1. Decides that Iraq has been and remains in material breach of its obligations under relevant resolutions, including resolution 687 (1991), in particular through Iraq's failure to cooperate with United Nations inspectors and the IAEA, and to complete the actions required under paragraphs 8 to 13 of resolution 687 (1991);

2. Decides, while acknowledging paragraph 1 above, to afford Iraq, by this resolution, a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations under relevant resolutions of the Council.

That the UN, being the UN after all, was unwilling to back up failure to comply with the obligations in this "final opportunity" with the resolve required is not George Bush's fault.  This, however, is not the only area where Mr. Brinkley's memory lapses.

Already the United States has fought longer in the Iraq war than in World War II. As the death toll continues to rise, more and more Americans are objecting.

I'll first note that Mr. Brinkley doesn't give us the death tolls for the two wars, despite first drawing a comparison between the wars.  They are listed for each country involved in WW II in this convenient chart.  Maybe Mr. Brinkley didn't want to mention that the deaths in WW II dwarfed those in the Iraq war for US military personnel by about 150:1.

As for the "longer than World War II" bit, read Jay Tea's takedown of Michael Moore.

The US involvement in World War II did, indeed last 1,347 days, counting from the attack on Pearl Harbor until the surrender of Japan -- but that was the actual war-fighting. The "major combat operations." Because we were fighting three modern, industrialized, militarized nations, we had to crush each of them utterly. Italy fell when its own people turned on their fascist masters. Germany had to be almost literally bombed back to the stone age, then invaded and nearly every inch conquered. And Japan was bracing for a similar fate when they noticed that two of their cities had put up "gone fission" signs, and we were promising to continue doing that to more cities.

A truer comparison would be from the date of the US invasion (March 20, 2003) to the fall of Baghdad and the collapse of the Baathist government (April 9) -- three weeks.

Now, of course, Mr. Moore is conflating the major combat parts with the occupation and rebuilding. Since he brought up World War II, let's take a look at that.

Germany remained under Allied control until 1949, when the Western powers ceded their districts to the Federal Republic of Germany and the Soviets created their puppet regime of the German Democratic Republic. This partitioning remained until 1990, when the German people finally took their fate back into their own hands -- and got away with it, because the Soviets were far too busy worrying about their own rapidly-dissolving totalitarian regime. That brings the total time of "war and occupation" to about 49 years, give or take a few months.

Unless, of course, you count "occupation" as "having US forces still present." In which case, we come up to the present day.

In Japan, the official occupation lasted until 1952 -- ten years and change after Pearl Harbor. And as in Germany, US forces are still present, so it can be argued that we are still stuck in the "quagmire" of World War II.

Of  course, the other difference between WW II and Iraq is that in WW II both Democrats and Republicans worked together to win it, leaving only pacifists and communists to dissent.  (snark omitted).

For any "expert" in a field to maintain the respect that they've earned it is mandatory that at least your factual utterances be verifiable.  It is not a matter of opinion whether the US went to the UN giving Saddam Hussein one final chance to verifiably comply.  It is not a matter of opinion whether the cold war extended for 50 years after the partitioning of Germany, or whether over 400,000 Americans died in WW II.  He may, of course, hold the opinion that Iraq was a "war of choice" and that it's a failure.  What Mr. Brinkley may not do is alter known facts to support that opinion.

Comments

[Jay Tea]

Thanks again for the trackback. And I am still amazed no one has either groaned or complained about the "Gone Fission" line -- when I was writing that piece, that one line was the one I figured would provoke the most response.

Oh, well. Go figure.

And Brinkley... I hope he put more research into his doctoral thesis. But considering the state of modern liberal arts academia, they'd probably reject it if he got details like the one you cited correct. Mustn't be too right, in either sense of the word...

J.

[Giacomo]

Thanks for having a look, Jay. Personally I like really horrible groan-inducing puns. But, then again, no one's ever accused me of excessive good taste.

[Woody]

Good one. It seems the MSM/DNC cabal has little use for history unless it can be cherry picked to advance their political agenda, and since they control our educational system and 96% of the media, our society seems doomed to start repeating some history soon.

We lost over 19,000 soldiers (NOT including those captured or injured) at the Battle Of The Bulge and still we fought on! How did the average American keep their chin up after that? Were they a different breed? No, the difference is that our society then was stong and masculine, whereas now it seems weaker and feminine. Back then the news media reported facts of the war as facts, and people used their mind to analyse those facts. Today most Americans can't be bothered with facts and figures, they just follow their emotions whenever a decision needs to be made. Back then newsreels stuck to the big picture and told Americans to keep up the fight, now The Today show and Good Morning America would skip the complicated big picture to focus on heart wrenching stories about our individual fallen soldiers. The MSM/DNC cabal is a fifth column sapping the strength from our national spirit.

PS> Love the "gone fission" bit.