Worst. Analogy. Ever.
With Mike Gerson gone, I think the historical analogy department on the White House speechwriting staff is losing the plot: "President Bush praised Hungary's bloody 1956 uprising against communist rule on Thursday and said the country's eventual success in ousting authoritarian rule was a shining example for Iraq to follow."
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The man is astonishing. He was weirdly conflating two entirely separate events and processes, but I would imagine any Iraqi with a sense of history would themselves conflate the 56 uprising with the inaction of Bush's father.
I would also imagine the Hungarians...never mind.
June 23, 2006 11:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Um, considering there's just the one superpower left standing and it's currently in Iraq, I am a little uncomfortable with who this makes us in his analogy.
Much as I dislike Bush, he's no Stalin. And while it's not perfect, America is light years from the horror show that was the Soviet Union.
Is it that he's too stupid to know he hates America, or too stupid to realize he's saying that he hates America? Which is worse?
June 23, 2006 12:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
MY, ok
a) did you steal this item from Sailer or
b) did Sailer steal this item from you or
c) do you and Sailer just think alike?
June 23, 2006 12:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wow. Wouldn't the better analogy be between the 1956 Hungarian uprising and the 1991 Shiite uprising?
The U.S. in both cases (1) encouraged the revolt, (2) sat on its hands after the revolt, and (3) watched the Forces of Evil destroy the revolt.
June 23, 2006 12:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
I fail to see why it is a bad analogy. In both cases, the transition to democracy has been a difficult process. Seems a perfectly apt analogy.
June 23, 2006 1:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have a less-than-perfect grasp of the history in question, but it seems to me that the analogy would have made a lot more sense (in the way Bush meant it to) if Iraqis had done anything resembling an uprising to get Saddam out.
Instead, we came in and did the bloody uprising for them.
The only thing the analogy can possibly mean for Iraq now is that they ought to get US armed forces out -- which they probably should do, and which, indeed, many of them are doing, with just as much bloodshed as any Hungarian could ask for.
mike
June 23, 2006 1:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
The only thing the analogy can possibly mean for Iraq now is that they ought to get US armed forces out
But that makes no sense, since if the US armed forces left, Iraq would be LESS free, not more. And Bush's analogy was all about working for freedom.
June 23, 2006 2:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I guess it goes like that: now we can leave Iraq, and either the Freedom will win -- great, or the axes of Evil or dead-enders will win, in which case we wait some 30 years, give it or take, and voila: Freedom!
June 23, 2006 3:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
RogerGathman
I'll take the devil's position about the Hungarian uprising. Hungary in 1956 was far from having a popular democratic movement. In fact, the most popular democratic movement in the forties was the fascist one, and the Hungarians were exemplary collaborators with the Germans in making Budapest Judenrein. Until Rwanda, the murder of the Budapest Jews did hold the worlds record for most civilians slaughtered in the quickest time.
So, who was involved with the Hungarian revolt against the Soviets? Was it, perhaps, remnants of the same political grouping that were much less enthusiastic about revolting against the Nazis - who, in fact, embraced the Nazis during Horthy's last, ridiculous phase of power?
David Irving's celebration of the 1956 revolution - reviewed here - http://www.fpp.co.uk/reviews/UR/Mink1.html -- does reflect the strong anti-semitic strain in the events of that time. While it would be unfair to tar the revolutionaries with Irving's own anti-S penchant, there are certain details that are left out of the heroic account of throwing off Soviet tyranny. Irving writes of the taking of the communist party headquarters:
"The mob rage was primeval, primitive and brutal. It was the closest that the uprising came to an anti-Semitic pogrom, as the largely Jewish ÁVH officials were mercilessly winkled out of the boltholes where they fled," Irving writes on the lynchings."
The similarity between the Hungarian uprising and the "liberation" in Basra might, indeed, be closer than Bush might think.
June 23, 2006 3:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
"if the US armed forces left, Iraq would be LESS free, not more."
Bwahahhahahahah! Good one...
Oh, wait, you weren't being funny?
June 23, 2006 8:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think this is actually a fairly important point -- and one I believe Matt may have made -- so I'll go ahead and press it, even if I am feeding the trolls.
As long as we stay in Iraq, the powers vying for control will have to define themselves in opposition to US power in their bids for legitimacy. This means more violence, which means increased likelihood of violence from said groups in the future, even if the US isn't there, which also means continuing escalation.
Of course, that's a minor concern in comparison to sectarian violence -- which we have absolutely no control over. We simply don't have the ability to do a damn thing about the underlying problems there.
And until those problems are resolved, "freedom" is a fantasy.
mike
June 23, 2006 11:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Of course, that's a minor concern in comparison to sectarian violence -- which we have absolutely no control over. We simply don't have the ability to do a damn thing about the underlying problems there."
As long as we have a troop presence in Iraq, it's MUCH harder for one faction to engage in Bosnia- or Rwanda-style organized "ethnic cleansing" where large numbers of the opposition are rounded up and shot en masse. Which is what I imagine would happen if we pulled out completely.
"5-50 people murdered every day by suicide bombers" is a far better outcome than "hundreds of people murdered every day in open civil war." And if we have to maintain some kind of troop presence forever to maintain that situation, it's the price we deserve to pay for being stupid enough to invade Iraq in the first place.
June 24, 2006 8:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Harder" isn't a meaningful measure. The constant torture, murder, etc., is proof that we're just not doing significant good there. We've all read the story about people stopping buses and purging them of people with Sunni/Shiite names, right?
I don't see any evidence that we're significantly helping with that problem.
Meanwhile, we're killing people and getting ourselves killed, providing an incentive to escalate violence (a bid for legitimacy, as I described above) and also inhabiting a country that doesn't want us.
What of significance are we doing right here?
mike
Edit -- this is meant to be in reply to Jimbo X above. Sorry.
June 24, 2006 3:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
First of all, we don't KNOW that if we pulled out there WOULD be "Rwanda-style" ethnic cleansing. The Sunnis aren't exactly helpless, and I doubt most of the Shia population would acquiesce in such an ethnic cleansing on religious grounds. I don't see Sistani approving that sort of thing (I could be wrong, but I doubt it.)
Such an ethnic cleansing might also serve as justification for a further UN-sponsored or Arab-states-sponsored invasion, as most of the surrounding states except Iran would not accept wholesale execution of Sunnis - and Iran wouldn't accept wholesale execution of Shia.
As for comparing the current homicide rate vs civil war, that is again speculative. We KNOW the current rate and it is likely to continue forever. At least a civil war would run its course, probably fairly quickly in comparison to our remaining in Iraq "forever".
Again, you haven't proven that no matter WHEN the US leaves, it won't happen anyway.
And the notion that the US should spend $5-10 billion a month forever as "punishment" for what our moron Prez did is an insult to the taxpayers - even if fifty five million of them were moronic enough to elect this dolt twice.
Besides which, the longer we stay the more civilians WE are killing needlessly - which means you are advocating war crimes forever. That is unacceptable.
June 24, 2006 3:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
But, hey, to follow Bush's own analogy, after a few more decades of brutality, the Iraqis are in for some halfway decent lives.
If only he'd used this analogy before the war so that we all knew what he meant and could properly steel ourselves for the decades of war to come.
June 26, 2006 4:09 PM | Reply | Permalink