Limited Edition, Special Debate Time-Compare/Contrast WWII to Iraq

The title says it all...First up, anyone who wants to explore the similiarities and differences between Iraq and WWII are invited to in this thread, without worry of taking another off topic.

But stay focused, try not to get personal, and NO FLAMING please.

 

Are there really that many similarities between the two conflicts, besides the basic aspects of all modern wars fought by the United States?

 

That's what we are about to find out. I bet it's got you on the edge of your seat...

 

Vezner and Janson have been chomping at the bit to do this, with the former suggesting he has some huge store of secret evidence that's just going to put all naysayers to shame. So i'm quite interested to see how this all plays out, as it may be the greatest play at "PPOR" we've seen in a long time.

 

I would love to see this evidence too.

I'm not saying that there are no similarities, as both Hitler and Saddam are sons of ******* who the world is better off without.

However, the claim that the war in Iraq is analogous to the second World War is just a ploy at inflaming people's emotions into a knee-jerk agreement with the war in Iraq.

The Situations:

In Germany, the Treaty of Versailles was debilitating for Germany.
In Iraq, sanctions were debilitating for Iraq.

Okay so far. But this is where it starts going sour.

In Germany, no one was real interested in enforcing the Treaty of Versailles.
In Iraq, the United States, the only superpower in the world, continued to enforce the sanctions.

Now it's getting interesting.

In Germany, because no one enforced the Treaty, the Germans were able to rebuild and rearm their military.
In Iraq, because the United States enforced the Sanctions, the Iraqis were unable to rebuild and rearm their military.


To compare Iraq to Germany is nothing more than a veiled attempt on the part of the pro-war crowd to make people to be afraid of opposing the war. In the Iraq thread, we have seen from J-rod what happens when you do oppose the war: You are compared to Neville Chamberlain (totally ignoring the history of Chamberlain of course). You are labelled an appeaser, someone who wants to give in to the terrorists. Of course, it's not just people on the internets, it's our esteemed Secretary of Defense.

Not to be too rude, but those trying to use WWII as justification for Iraq need to put up or shut up.




Don?t Ask, Don?t Tell: Weak on Defense

 

Comparisons between Saddam and Hitler need to start by addressing the matter of the vast difference in scale. Not including Chinese and Japanese civilian and military deaths during ww2, Hitler gets shouldered with the direct and indirect blame for about 50 million deaths, including of course 6 million Jews, 20 million Soviets, several hundred thousand Americans, and the millions of additional German military and civilian war dead, French and Italian deaths, other camp victims like homosexuals and Jehova's witnesses and the Roma people, etc., etc.

Saddam Hussein: 800,000 Iraq-Iran war dead. 1,000 Kuwaitis during the Iraqi invasion of that country. Many thousand military and civilian deaths as the result of Desert Storm, possibly 200,000 killed by Saddam's terrorism against his own people through gulags, torture, executions, etc. Add to that thousands of deaths caused by hardship imposed by UN sanctions.

Saddam is a monster. He seems to have enjoyed killing people himself at a very personal level and could and did pull the trigger when it came to his enemies. Hitler was squeamish. Something of a sissy. Liked the theory, but wouldn't have enjoyed the details of killing Jews. That was what his Jew-killing bureaucracy was for. The only person Hitler seems to have ever shot was himself.

The differences between Hitler and Saddam as dictators is "merely" a matter of scale. But the scale difference is huge.

The appeasement argument is a non starter - too ignorant to address further, so I won't.

 

I'd say that linking Saddam and Hitler is ham-fisted and crass. It's a vain, anti-intellectual attempt to link the most evil man in history with a tinpot dictator to make an increasingly difficult-to-justify-in-hindsight war palatable, despite the massive differences (I mean, the US didn't sit the first two years of the Iraq war out, profiteering heavily whilst Allied soldiers died only to emerge from the war making films that portray WWII as a conflict of America vs the Axis... )

Sorry, but it's an insult to the memory of WWII and an unneccessary boost to Saddam's ego to compare the two; not to mention an intellectually dishonest red herring.

E_S

 

I would submit that there is a significant difference between comparing Saddam and Hitler, and comparing the Iraq War and WWII. You can compare the leaders without comparing the wars, and you can compare the wars without comparing the leaders.

For example, the other day, Gonk pointed out that the Iraq War has now taken longer than the US's involvement in the European theater of WWII, and that come December it will have taken longer then the Pacific theater. (I notice that JFT didn't complain about that comparison between Iraq and WWII.) Is that not a valid comparison?

You can compare all sorts of other things, including casualties, tactics, reconstruction (for example, how long it took to turn full authority back over to Japan and Germany), etc, without ever comparing Saddam and Hitler.

Kimball Kinnison

 

Perfection. Right on.

 

If you want to compare Hussein to a WWII-era dictator, go with Stalin. The two are more similar than Hitler and Hussein.

The Vietnam war took far longer than either theater of WWII; so did the Philippine-American War and the American War for Independence. Are they comparable to World War II?

 

Honestly, I had not seen this comment. If we're talking opening shot to ending shot, I might disagree with the comparison. After all, WWII had a clear ending of hostilities, whereas Iraq's ending is vague ("Missions Accomplished?"). A timeframe for pulling out troops could be used, but since we're still in Germany and Japan...well, that'd be a tough one. Maybe when certain milestones (free elections, adoption of a constitution, etc.) took place, but there's no way to compare the impact/viability of those milestones in Iraq. Some might say "There were elections in Iraq faster than there were in Germany/Japan," but that's easily countered with "Faster isn't better if the government is ineffectual."

So I guess I'd have to say that Gonk's comparison is a false one.




Don?t Ask, Don?t Tell: Weak on Defense

 

I don't know, Kimball; I can't see any instances of the US sitting out of a compelling and deadly conflict until it was absolutely necessary to intervene, profiting from arms sales to the Allies and then leaving a vainglorious and sanctimonious impression of their involvement in the minds of subsequent generations.

It's disrespectful, dishonest, irrational and emotive to compare the two.

E_S

 

Oooops, looks like I posted this in the wrong thread.

Reposted for fun!

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Anyway, show me some real ways that Saddam and Hitler are alike. And please make them reasons that legitimizes the war, not just stuff that amounts to "Saddam is a bad guy."

Hold on now. Don't misunderstand me. I have never said Saddam=Hitler. The situations are very simular, but involve different men. Hitler didn't tolorate differing points of view and was motivated by racism. Saddam, on the other hand, didn't care so much about race or theology. He just wanted total loyalty.

The simularities, however, exist along the lines of a desire for conquest and how the world responded to that stated desire. This time, unlike pre-WWII, the US didn't just sit back until it was too late. We handled the man while he was manageable.

 

Did anyone see Keith Olberman last night? Talk about pissed off about this topic. And no offense to the Moderators who have been more then fair and balanced lately but only now do we get to discuss fascism and Hitler in correlation to current goings on? Only after it becomes a rather blanketed Republican talking point?

 

Yeah, in 1991. Saddam, unlike Hitler, wasn't initially allowed to annex neighboring territories.

 

Ender, to be fair, I think you're being unduly fair to the American legacy in WWII. Yes, they greatly overplay their roles as "heroes." But I think you're a bit on the whole "War-profiteering" angle as well. I think you'd agree that A)there were tremendous domestic pressures towards isolationism that made it difficult for American politicians to push for greater involvement at an earlier stage of the conflict and B)the Allies were in need of the munitions that were sold to them. Again, I agree that there is more to be criticized in the US performance than is often aired. But reading you're posts, you'd think the US was run by some amalagm of Machiavelli, Metternich, and the greatest of the robber barons, switching between their stock market tickers and reports of the body count with an ever-more frenized glee as the two soared to previously unimaginable heights, until they'd drained every last drop from the conflict.

 

Actually, Napoleon's Occupation of Spain is much more comparable to Iraq than WWII.

 

I don't understand why people who are so eager to bring in WWII comparisons get so upset at Vietnam comparisons for being on a totally different scale than Iraq.

 

Because WWII =

Vietnam =

 

Jabba, I appreciate the US contribution but mainly, and I feel as a citizen of nation that started fighting in 1939, justly annoyed by the revision of WWII as America v the Axis. Furthermore, making crass comments abotu WWII to devalue the scope puts the whole Iraq - WWII into context...

That is, there's no value, no merit, in ramming your agenda onto the past..?

But I feel, honestly, the reason comparisons are made have lots to do with a general ignorance about Saddam's Iraq. It's almost as if the people who make these comparisons only know Iraq is evil because the Pres and media said so; otherwise, they could point to Saddam's shortcomings as sufficient evidence of depravity.

It's like they know they should find Saddam's Iraq "Evil", but they don't know why.

E_S

 

There's a difference, imo, between saying that Iraq is just like World War II and saying that there are some things that can be viewed as common to both.
It seems a little blind, to me, to say that because there were some differences, including some big ones, that one can't say that there are lessons we should have learned from history and be putting into play now. I would say that you clearly can't call Iraq the next WWII any more than one can call it the next Vietnam, but that doesn't mean that we can't apply things we learned from both of those engagements into the current situation in Iraq.

And re WWII, if the criticism of the US is that the US took too long to get involved, because it waited until popular support was for the war, then does that give the OK to discount popular opinion regarding Iraq?

 

This is a desperate measure by the Bush Administration to try to salvage the Houses and avoid impeachment. What the hell else could it be? Hussein is more like Atterchuk then Hitler. Ahmadinejhad has got issues but fascist? And what part of WWII is anything like the Iraq War? Tactically? No. Size? No. End Game? I dont know - America started the War in Iraq and I havent heard a good reason for it yet, or a potentially good outcome - although Im sure one could be achieved if more competant people take the reigns. Genocide? Maybe, although we didnt seem to give two craps when it was actually happening. Christ - we have a PM in Iraq that wont publically denounce Hezbollah or recognize Israel as a state. We had better control over Hussein. This a purely political manuever by the White House and Rumsfeld, brought up to politically captilize on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, and I really dont see where its going to work.

 

Sweet thread! I don't have time to get into the discussion in depth right now but I fully intend to do as soon as possible. Right now I'm working on an assessment for a managerial position that I'm applying for and also writing a 3000 word paper for my MBA. Such is the life of a full time working student, husband, and father.

 

One facile comparison is that prewar Britain justly feared Hitler's Germany because it was strong and growing stronger, whereas the Bush administration attacked Iraq precisely because it was weak, and Saddam was an easy target.

 

Because I was at a show last night for the Phenomenauts (My ears are still ringing), I missed Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Thanks to the power of the internets, I got to watch this little gem.

Keith Olbermann on Donald Rumsfeld's comments.

While not completely germane, it does touch on the comparisons of facism and appeasement to the current situations.




Don?t Ask, Don?t Tell: Weak on Defense