The party of inappropriate analogies

Thrashing around for some grounds of hope for the survival of the neocon strategy in Iraq in which he still wholly believes, Victory Hanson writes at The Corner:

For all the sorrow in Iraq, that vision is not over, and can still be realized if we stay calm and unyielding. I was reminded of what real woe was from reading today of Churchill in May-June 1940 learning that France was lost, Belgium lost, Holland lost, an entire British army trapped in Flanders and Dunkirk, told that there were no more RAF reserves, and about 200 tanks in all of Britain-and in great spirits eating breakfast at 4am, with cigar, trying to lecture the above, strengthen those at home, and without doubt of eventual victory.

It’s hard to imagine what the dark days of World War II have to do with the situation in Iraq. Yes, things were going very badly for Britain in June 1940, and Britain ultimately survived; and things are going very badly for America’s involvement in Iraq in December 2006. But other than that, is there any resemblance between the two situations from which a rational person could find comfort? Look at Randall Parker’s latest articles on the sectarian civil war that’s going on in Iraq, with the supposed government being one of the parties to the civil war (here and here), and ask yourself how Churchillian defiance would help us with that.

Monty Python had a sketch about the Ministry of Silly Walks. I propose that the neocons be renamed the Party of Inappropriate Analogies. It’s because neocons don’t think, they just come up with bone-headed and stunningly ignorant historical comparisons on which they build and justify the most disastrous policies in the world. Don’t worry about Hispanic immigrants, they’re just like Italians. Muslims can assimilate into America because my grandparents did. We can save the Muslim world from despotism just as we defeated Soviet Communism. We can democratize Iraq because we democratized Germany and Japan. Yes, things are going badly in Iraq but, hey, it took America 13 years after Independence to create the Constitution. True, Iraq has a sharia constitution, but in America women didn’t have the vote until 1920. Things look dark in Iraq, but if we keep up our courage like Churchill we will prevail.

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Spencer Warren writes:

This is another example of Hanson’s unpublishable scribblings that only would be published at the Corner. For a Ph.D. who has written well-regarded (or so I understand) scholarly books, this is amazing. It obviously is just dashed off from the top of his head without any thought, like most journalism, but worse at NR.

Britain was mobilized for total war in spring 1940, or in the process of doing so. It had a clearly defined enemy to destroy and a clear understanding of what it was fighting for—British and Christian civilization. It did not face the task of finding water in stone, as we are trying (ineptly) to do by creating democracy in Iraq. The U.S. is not mobilized for the war and to this day our forces (not to mention the Iraqi Army on which we have pinned our hopes) lack needed equipment, especially armored vehicles to protect against the main cause of casualties, the improvised explosive devices. Further, the US cut taxes and the entire country is untouched by the war, except for those unfortunates (and their families and friends) who have found their lives placed at the mercy of the judgment of George W. Bush.

Typically, Hanson does not appear to have considered anything beyond his shallow slogans. His worthless, over-generalized discourse belongs on cable “news” or the Sunday talk shows.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 30, 2006 12:13 AM | Send