The Administration is comparing Iraq and Fascism. Images of World War Two are used, but not Vietnam. Communism is mentioned, but the fact that the world's most populous nation is also a Communist state, slips most people's minds. We are busy making sure we are in good standing with the biggest nation, let alone the biggest Communist nation, that we no longer say that "Communism doesn't work."
Why is this relevant? Well, the Administration is talking about how the United States fought Fascism and Communism. It declares victory.
We are told we have to fight the terrorists "over there," otherwise we'll have to fight them "over here." This used to be called the "Domino Theory" during Vietnam. If we let Vietnam fall, we'd be soon fighting Communists at home. Instead we're importing Communist goods and setting up factories in Communist China.
No longer do we hear slogans about how Communism doesn't work and that we're fighting Communism. The war against Communism is largely forgotten, except for Cuba and Korea.
More to the point, Rumsfeld and the rest of the Administration have it wrong about World War Two. Why doesn't the current Administration look at Lyndon Johnson's War in Vietnam? The comparisons are striking beyond the Domino Theory. In the 1960s, Americans were also told to "stay the course" insofar as Vietnam and that "victory is just around the corner," and "we're seeing light at the end of the tunnel."
Today's pundits blame Democrats for being "soft" on national security. Most are too young to recall the slogan, "The Democrats are the party of war and the Republicans the party of depression." Many people fail to remember that World War One and World War Two were fought during Democratic administrations. The standoff during the Cuban Missile Crisis was under a Democratic Administration. This is not to say Republicans are weak despite the stalemate in Korea and Nixon's pull out in Vietnam.
Author Tammy Bruce, a once progressive convert to Reagan, gives a lesson about how World War Two happened and she advises that "Mein Kampf" tells the story, but those who have actually read it find its is largely an anti-Semitic tract. Yet the United States declared war on Japan, not Germany, after Pearl Harbor. It was the Germans who declared war on the United States through a Japanese-German Treaty because America had declared war on Japan. America was not a member of the League of Nations and Americans did not broker much, if anything, in Europe during the Hitler's rise to power or the carving up of Europe.
It was Zbigniew Brzezinski who said,
I am also somewhat inclined to feel that their criticism of our hysterical approach towards Iraq, viewing Iraq as another Nazi Germany, Saddam Hussein as another Hitler is not without merit. I think we have lost our sense of proportion.
Surely we should stop terrorists, but miring America's Army in an overseas civil war is not going to stop, for example, British citizens from plotting to blow up planes. Using the name of Hitler and the Domino Theory has little to do with the real threats.
The best comparison to a war of the past is America's involvement in Vietnam ... a Civil War where the enemy blends into the populace, where raw military force cannot crush the opposition, where we are told to "stay the course" and told that if we don't, the Domino Theory will mean we end up fighting them here.
And yet, history has proven that staying the course did not win us anything and yesterday's enemies, Communist or not, are our big friends.