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"... downhill all the way"

Posted by Paul Brennan in Main

August 27, 2006 8:08 AM

Permalink | Comments (2)

With the first anniversary of the nightmarish devastation of the Mississippi Gulf Coast and New Orleans by Hurricance Katerina (with the assistance of the Bush administration) looming, and the major news media already gearing up for their fifth anniversary of 9/11 extravaganzas, the UK newspaper The Independent directs our attention to another black mark on the calendar.

A miserable milestone was passed the other day. America's (and Britain's) disastrous war in Iraq has now lasted longer than the US involvement in the Second World War. Yes, this conflict has outlasted a war that ended with total victory over Nazi Germany. Hitler declared war on the US on 11 December 1941. Exactly 1,244 days later, on 7 May 1945, Germany surrendered. The US invaded Iraq on 19 March 2003, and this weekend it is 1,267 days later, with no end in sight.

Sticklers among you will have noted that the interval between the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Japanese surrender on 2 September, 1945 was 1,364 days. But even that record will tumble at the start of December. And if you do measure Iraq against the longer American war with Japan, the contrast is even starker. Victory in the Pacific was even more conclusive than in Europe. It produced no post-war entanglement with the Soviets and no Berlin airlift. The Iraq war unfolded the other way round: Baghdad fell barely three weeks after the invasion. Since then, however, it's been downhill all the way.


Read the rest here.

 

Comments (2)

  1. substitute says:
    August 27, 2006 22:08

    There's no point in marking that anniversary before the V-J day anniversary. Leaving out the last 1,364 days and those who had to endure them is just the kind of conveniently insensitive showmanship that we despise in the people running the current war.

  2. Paul Brennan says:
    August 28, 2006 07:08

    You'd have a point about there being no point if the administration's talking points about Iraq had compared Saddam to Tojo, but they didn't-- the comparison was always to Hitler. As for the people who fought in the Pacific to the end, somehow I doubt that they are such delicate flowers that pointing out these comparative lengths before December will deeply wound them. Now, if upon further reflection, you think it is insensitive to use the US involvement in WWII, the shortest of any of the major combatants, instead of, say, the length of the English involvement, 1939-1945, as a comparative measurement, you should take that up with the Englishman who wrote the story. (Odd how you weren't sensitive enough to worry about the sensitivities of the millions who fought WWII before the US became involved. How insensitive!)

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