Please, don't compare Iraq war to World War II

from The Pocono Record
Please, don't compare Iraq war to World War II
June 10, 2008

President Bush, some other leading politicians, journalists, and even talk show hosts cite the fervent and enduring public support for our struggle against the Axis Powers in WWII in an attempt to shame Americans who are tired of sacrificing more lives, keeping much of our global ground forces tied down, and spending hundreds of billions of dollars we cannot afford in Iraq. We will surely hear more of this sort of rhetoric as election campaigns heat up. This comparison, however, simply does not hold water.

Those who believe the Iraq War is similar to our great crusade in WWII either have forgotten their history after more than 60 years or are trying to re-write it. Unlike WWII, the Iraq War was a war of choice, sold to patriotic Americans using flawed or hyped intelligence and a non-existent connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda—possibly even 9/11. Key figures in Washington also went so far as to plan to exploit the Iraq war to change the face of much of the Middle East, revealing their woeful lack of knowledge concerning that complex region. By contrast, WWII was a defensive war forced on the United States by sudden, savage Japanese attacks in the Pacific and declarations of war against the United States by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy several days after Pearl Harbor.

The international community has long known the difference between wars of choice and struggles like WWII. In fact, two of the four counts in the indictment in the Nuremberg trials following WWII addressed this issue head-on. Count #1 made a criminal offense of participating in a "common plan or conspiracy" to wage aggressive war (a war unprovoked and viewed as unjustified by responsible nations around the world). Count #2 was actually going ahead and waging such an aggressive war and thereby committing "Crimes Against Peace." By raising the Nuremberg experience, I am not trying to brand U.S. leaders like President Bush "war criminals," as have some others. I am merely illustrating why much of the international community did not support the war in Iraq. Also, when key governments around the world do not believe a war is justified, they become that much more unsympathetic when things go wrong.

Afghanistan was a just war by anyone's standards, with Americans united behind it and with NATO at our side from the beginning. The brutal Taliban regime there not only provided al-Qaeda with its principal base, but fully supported it and used al-Qaeda fighters as elite shock troops in the Taliban's ruthless struggle against fellow Afghans. Consequently, the Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies felt the well-deserved post-9/11 wrath of the American people, as well as that of America's friends around the world.

Many Americans—rightly or wrongly—have criticized the Iraq War, not because they are unpatriotic, do not have to send their relatives off to foreign battlefields because we have a volunteer military, or because they do not support our troops. Many of them simply came to recognize that the war's justifications were largely false, appalling errors of policy and command were made, promises of success went unfulfilled for four long years, and the belief that much of the war would fund itself from Iraqi oil quickly faded.

One of the great dangers frequently associated with wars of choice are that they have a tendency to produce consequences far different than the original aims of those who planned them. The Germans and Japanese learned that lesson after their spectacular early triumphs began to go sour in late 1942 — ultimately leading to the destruction of much of those two countries and the deaths of millions of their citizens. And this X-factor also has come into play in the Iraq War. Practically no-one back in March 2003 could have imagined the bloody, dismal and prolonged slog that we have witnessed over much of the past five years.

Let us hope that we are finally on the right course in Iraq, and after all the sacrifice that important Middle East country will be stabilized and the last remnants of al-Qaeda in Iraq eradicated (its creation yet another unanticipated consequence of this war of choice). Unfortunately, the complexity of the situation in that tortured country leads me to believe that we are still a long way from anything that could realistically be called victory.

Wayne White, an adjunct scholar at Washington, DC's Middle East Institute, is a retired Deputy Director of the U.S. State Department's Near East and South Asia Intelligence office. He has lived and worked in Niger, Haiti, Egypt, Israel and Iraq. In 2000, he received the National Intelligence Medal for Outstanding Achievement and in 2005 the Secretary's Career Achievement Award from Secretary of State Powell. His essays have appeared in newspapers. He lives in Canadensis.