Less Historian Himself

George W. Bush may not be much of a president but his latest comments comparing his Iraq war to World War II indicate he is even less of a historian.

In a speech to more than 1,000 graduates of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Bush links the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to postwar Germany and Japan six decades ago. Also reported here.

“After World War II we helped Germany and Japan build free societies and strong economies (and) …today we must do the same thing in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Bush asserts. The flaw in this analogy is that it is Bush who is the aggressor in the Middle East, not the conquering liberator out to generously rebuild vanquished foes. Bush will go down in history with Germany’s Hitler and Japan’s Tojo as a war-starter, not as anybody’s redeemer. Besides, it’s hard to rebuild a country whose people keep shooting at your “liberators.”

Bush, the war-maker, lied to gain public support for his attack on Iraq just as Hitler lied to the German people when he attacked Poland.

After World War II, the peoples of Germany and Japan at least had the decency to acknowledge their responsibility for their slaughter of innocents. Yet Bush admits to no such crimes. It’s as though he didn’t start the war in Iraq that has turned the country into a killing zone and claimed perhaps 1 million civilian lives, wounded several million others, and forced two million from their homes, ad nauseum. It is as though he does not stoop to torture and murder.

Another tiny flaw in Bush’s analogy is that where the exhausted German and Japanese publics welcomed the American post-war occupation, the people of Iraq have overwhelmingly tell pollsters they want America “out.”

And where the U.S. actively helped Japan and Germany rebuild their economies after World War II, Bush is out to plunder Iraq’s oil reserves. He is, according to some reports, having the devil’s own time getting the Iraqi government to sign over their oil resources to Western oil companies at bargain prices.

As for rebuilding, Bush’s hand-picked, no-bid contractors, at best, have done shoddy work; billions of dollars for reconstruction have mysteriously disappeared; and Bush is now saying let the Iraqis pay for rebuilding their own country as if he wasn’t responsible for making the war in the first place.

In his talk to the airmen, Bush said, “These (rebuilding) efforts took time and patience, and as a result Germany and Japan grew in freedom and prosperity and are now allies of the United States.” Yes, such close allies they refuse to commit any substantial force to the Iraq war. After all, their leaders know they will be driven from office if they do, just as Tony Blair was ousted by the British public.

In a memoir, reported in Yahoo News, that will be published this coming Monday, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception,  Scott McClellan (the veteran campaign and White House aide to George W. Bush) portrays his former boss and those around him as permanent campaigners who frequently sacrificed the good of the country to achieve dubious political and policy goal. He also state that 

“History appears poised to confirm what most Americans today have decided: that the decision to invade Iraq was a serious strategic blunder,” 

“No one, including me, can know with absolute certainty how the war will be viewed decades from now when we can more fully understand its impact. What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary."

Accusing the president of engaging in “self-deception” when it came to the facts from the Middle East, McClellan explains that Bush “and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war.”