• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

We’re not going back!

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

A consequence of cucumbers

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Nikki Haley, who can’t acknowledge ‘slavery’, is a pathetic shill.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. don’t touch it.”

Nothing worth doing is easy.

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Never forget that he train is barreling down on Trump, even as he dances on the tracks.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

If West Virginia and San Francisco had a love child.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Mobile Menu

  • Four Directions Montana
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • COVID-19 Coronavirus
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • 2024 Elections
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • Targeted Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Enough about Vietnam. What About Bush’s Japan Reference?

Enough about Vietnam. What About Bush’s Japan Reference?

by John Cole|  August 24, 20077:41 pm| 27 Comments

This post is in: Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.

FacebookTweetEmail

Also wrong. Who would have thunk it?

A historian quoted by President Bush to help argue that critics of the administration’s Iraq policy echo those who questioned the U.S. effort to bring democracy to Japan after World War II angrily distanced himself from the president’s remarks Thursday.

“They [war supporters] keep on doing this,” said MIT professor John Dower. “They keep on hitting it and hitting it and hitting it and it’s always more and more implausible, strange and in a fantasy world. They’re desperately groping for a historical analogy, and their uses of history are really perverse.”

***

Dower was decidedly unhappy with his 15 minutes of fame. “I have always said as a historian that the use of Japan [in arguing for the likelihood of successfully bringing democracy to Iraq] is a misuse of history,” he said when notified of the Bush quote.

He immediately directed me to a November 2002 New York Times op-ed where he outlined 10 reasons why “most of the factors that contributed to the success of nation-building in occupied Japan would be absent in an Iraq militarily defeated by the United States.”

Eunomia elaborates:

Helping to rebuild a constitutional representative government (which is what we’re actually talking about) in a place that has already had one is immensely easier than laying a foundation on the sand of a political culture unsuited to such government. The social, political and economic structures of modern Japan made it vastly different from Iraq, c. 2003, and made it much more able to resume its constitutional parliamentary government. Japan’s cultural and ethnic homogeneity, its long history as a unified state, and the unifying symbol of the emperor all combined to make postwar Japan as unlike Iraq as could be imagined. So many of the conditions that explain Japan’s success after the war do not exist in Iraq. It is simple realism to acknowledge that two radically different societies are, in fact, radically different, and the development of democratic institutions in one may be impossible while it is possible in the other.

We are rapidly approaching the point that when the President addresses the nation, the only accurate and honest portion of the speech is when he states ‘Good morning.’ And since he is still in charge of things, even that is debatable.

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « An Award Winning Administration
Next Post: Open Thread »

Reader Interactions

27Comments

  1. 1.

    myiq2xu

    August 24, 2007 at 7:48 pm

    Bushite Rule #42 Making stuff up is easier than good research.

  2. 2.

    jake

    August 24, 2007 at 8:09 pm

    Dower is an egg-head professor at an elitist eastern university that is located at ground zero of the Marriage and Civilization Destroying Maelstrom that will overtake us…any minute now. Really.

    He must be an islahomofascistcommie trying to sell his latest book of perverted ideas and we won’t get into his views on evolution. Naturally the President had to protect the American people by garbling Dower’s hypothesis. The professor should be honored. Or at least quiet.[/wingnut]

    We are rapidly approaching the point that when the President addresses the nation, the only accurate and honest portion of the speech is when he states ‘Good morning.’

    If we are it’s because we’ve gone past it and are once again approaching it from the other side.

  3. 3.

    KCinDC

    August 24, 2007 at 8:31 pm

    “I happen to have Marshall McLuhan right here.”

  4. 4.

    Incertus (Brian)

    August 24, 2007 at 8:40 pm

    No, see, an offshoot of making their own reality is that they get to make their own history too. Don’t you get it?

  5. 5.

    CaseyL

    August 24, 2007 at 8:41 pm

    Seems to me the only people who take anything the twit says seriously are the MSM, because they’re paid to, and people who either know nothing about the last 75 years or only know what they read on wingnut blogs.

    The flacks and the willfully ignorant, in other words. Which, come to think, pretty much sums up anyone who’s still pro-war and pro-Bush.

  6. 6.

    Tsulagi

    August 24, 2007 at 9:00 pm

    Bushite Rule #42 Making stuff up is easier than good research.

    Yes, but rarely do they get to that truism in #42 since Rule #1 works so well and is always in play. Steps for #1…

    1. Say whatever serves your self interests. There are no truths or lies, we make our own reality.

    2. If called on bullshit/lies, repeat step 1

    3. Keep the cycle going until they move on to something else. If you don’t, the Democratic terrorists have won.

  7. 7.

    Dug Jay

    August 24, 2007 at 9:16 pm

    Here’s the Link that Pb asked for in an earlier thread.

  8. 8.

    PaulW

    August 24, 2007 at 9:41 pm

    At some point can the historians Dubya keeps quoting wrong sue him for misrepresentation?

  9. 9.

    incontrolados

    August 24, 2007 at 9:45 pm

    I will go back and read everything, but thank you George W. Bush for giving me sarcastic ammo in the meeting I have next week about sources.

    Bravo! My boss will love my premeditated quip and I’ll likely be punished for yet again (I am currently on probation for getting into it with a prof at my university) bringing up the GWOT, but what the hell.

  10. 10.

    incontrolados

    August 24, 2007 at 9:47 pm

    Sorry, my sin? As an anti-war pacifist ninny I hurt the feelings of a war mongerer — and almost lost my job. Which btw is income producing at my university.

    up is down.

  11. 11.

    JWW

    August 24, 2007 at 9:54 pm

    Do any of you wake up and see the sun? There may, at some point and time, be a reason for looking up instead of down. If you decide that all has failed, it will, in your mind.

  12. 12.

    JWW

    August 24, 2007 at 9:58 pm

    Why don’t you ever search for the truth, instead of a way around it.

  13. 13.

    srv

    August 24, 2007 at 11:11 pm

    Let’s see. In Japan, we – literally – had God (Hirohito) and his representative Jesus (MacArthur).

    Seems like a big delta from Iraq.

    Not that VDH or acolytes would understand.

    Duh.

  14. 14.

    Anne Laurie

    August 25, 2007 at 1:09 am

    At some point can the historians Dubya keeps quoting wrong sue him for misrepresentation?

    At some point can the nations whose history Dubya keeps misrepresenting lodge an official complaint? Or, in the case of Japan, at least send him a big box of whatever Poppy was chowing just before his infamous Barf-on-the-Ambassador incident?

  15. 15.

    TenguPhule

    August 25, 2007 at 1:14 am

    And since he is still in charge of things, even that is debatable.

    Debatable, nothing.

    When he says good morning, I’ll give you odds its going to be a bad day.

    At this point, when Bush claims something and teh Iranians say something else….I believe the Iranians first.

  16. 16.

    Pb

    August 25, 2007 at 1:21 am

    Dug Jay,

    Ah, a link to Red State, thanks. Now here’s what my link was.

  17. 17.

    Aaron

    August 25, 2007 at 2:52 am

    Dont blame me, I voted for Gore, Kerry, and competance.

  18. 18.

    rachel

    August 25, 2007 at 5:20 am

    More wingnut koans from JWW; well, my day is made.

  19. 19.

    laneman

    August 25, 2007 at 6:10 am

    More wingnut koans from JWW

    You actually understood what he said? I certainly didn’t

  20. 20.

    rachel

    August 25, 2007 at 7:27 am

    The point of a koan is that you don’t understand it; its purpose is to jam up the process of logical reasoning allowing intuition to bring enlightenment–or the feeling that your head’s been hit repeatedly against a wall, in the case of JWW’s offerings.

  21. 21.

    jake

    August 25, 2007 at 8:05 am

    or the feeling that your head’s been hit repeatedly against a wall

    Or the feeling you want to hit someone else’s head against the wall…

  22. 22.

    Kirk Spencer

    August 25, 2007 at 8:43 am

    JWW

    A man sat in a burning building, unmoving, suffering the flames and smoke, staring at the door engulfed by flames. The woman next to him asked why he wasn’t fleeing.

    “This is truth,” he said. “Why don’t you ever search for the truth, instead of a way around it.”

    The woman shrugged and went through the open window to safety.

  23. 23.

    Bob In Pacifica

    August 25, 2007 at 9:41 am

    Speaking of the Republican Crime Syndicate, did Bush go into MacArthur’s work with the Yakuza and fascists/criminals like Kodama?

  24. 24.

    laneman

    August 25, 2007 at 12:23 pm

    I was thinking a koan was more along the lines of an info stream from somewhere else … mine bad

    I am a simple person (if I wish to be) — so, a giant clusterfsck of stupidy. Or, pretty much business as normal.

    … the feeling that your head’s been hit repeatedly against a wall

    I have a headache.

  25. 25.

    The Other Andrew

    August 25, 2007 at 2:46 pm

    Judging by JWW’s first post, I’d have to say that the new war PR strategy is “Think happy thoughts!”

  26. 26.

    JGabriel

    August 25, 2007 at 8:32 pm

    “We are rapidly approaching the point that when the President addresses the nation, the only accurate and honest portion of the speech is when he states ‘Good morning.’”

    Approaching?

    We passed that point years ago. The only real argument is whether we passed it in 2002, or during the 2000 campaign season.

  27. 27.

    Chuck Butcher

    August 28, 2007 at 2:08 am

    I wonder that nobody bothered to mention that in Japan we had nuked them twice, with the implicit promise that more were going to fall. That kind of shit tends to get your attention…

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

Recent Comments

  • jonas on I Am All For This! (Apr 17, 2024 @ 5:02pm)
  • rikyrah on I Am All For This! (Apr 17, 2024 @ 5:01pm)
  • rikyrah on Arizona In The Crosshairs (Apr 17, 2024 @ 5:00pm)
  • rikyrah on I Am All For This! (Apr 17, 2024 @ 5:00pm)
  • zhena gogolia on I Am All For This! (Apr 17, 2024 @ 5:00pm)

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Balloon Juice Meetups!

All Meetups
Talk of Meetups – Meetup Planning
Proposed BJ meetups list from frosty

Fundraising 2023-24

Wis*Dems Supreme Court + SD-8
Virginia House Races
Four Directions – Montana
Worker Power AZ
Four Directions – Arizona
Four Directions – Nevada

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
Positive Climate News
War in Ukraine
Cole’s “Stories from the Road”
Classified Documents Primer

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Mailing List Signup
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)

Fix Nyms with Apostrophes

Balloon Juice for Ukraine

Donate

Twitter / Spoutible

Balloon Juice (Spoutible)
WaterGirl (Spoutible)
TaMara (Spoutible)
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
ActualCitizensUnited

Political Action 2024

Postcard Writing Information

Balloon Juice for Four Directions AZ

Donate

Balloon Juice for Four Directions NV

Donate

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2024 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!