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.”
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.
myiq2xu
Bushite Rule #42 Making stuff up is easier than good research.
jake
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]
If we are it’s because we’ve gone past it and are once again approaching it from the other side.
KCinDC
“I happen to have Marshall McLuhan right here.”
Incertus (Brian)
No, see, an offshoot of making their own reality is that they get to make their own history too. Don’t you get it?
CaseyL
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.
Tsulagi
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.
Dug Jay
Here’s the Link that Pb asked for in an earlier thread.
PaulW
At some point can the historians Dubya keeps quoting wrong sue him for misrepresentation?
incontrolados
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.
incontrolados
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.
JWW
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.
JWW
Why don’t you ever search for the truth, instead of a way around it.
srv
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.
Anne Laurie
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?
TenguPhule
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.
Pb
Dug Jay,
Ah, a link to Red State, thanks. Now here’s what my link was.
Aaron
Dont blame me, I voted for Gore, Kerry, and competance.
rachel
More wingnut koans from JWW; well, my day is made.
laneman
You actually understood what he said? I certainly didn’t
rachel
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.
jake
Or the feeling you want to hit someone else’s head against the wall…
Kirk Spencer
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.
Bob In Pacifica
Speaking of the Republican Crime Syndicate, did Bush go into MacArthur’s work with the Yakuza and fascists/criminals like Kodama?
laneman
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.
I have a headache.
The Other Andrew
Judging by JWW’s first post, I’d have to say that the new war PR strategy is “Think happy thoughts!”
JGabriel
“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.
Chuck Butcher
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…