Compare And Contrast
Victor Davis Hanson has a column up over at Real Clear Politics that compares and contrasts Pearl Harbor and America's response and September 11th and America's response. There are great similarities in what Hanson calls, "Our Pearl Harbor," but there are real differences, too.
It's been five years since Sept. 11. After such a terrible provocation, why can't we bring the ongoing "global war on terror" – whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere – to a close as our forefathers fighting World War II could?
Is our generation less competent?
Not really. The United States routed the Taliban from Afghanistan by early December 2001. America's first clear-cut victory against the Japanese, at Midway, came six months after Pearl Harbor.
Do we lack the unity of the past?
Perhaps. But we should at least remember that after Pearl Harbor, a national furor immediately arose over the intelligence failure that had allowed an enormous Japanese fleet to approach the Hawaiian Islands undetected. Extremists went further – clamoring that the Roosevelt administration had deliberately lowered our guard as part of a conspiracy to pave the way for America's entrance into the war.
Are we in over our heads fighting in both Afghanistan and Iraq?
Hardly. Within days after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. found itself in a three-front war against Germany, Italy and Japan – an Axis that had won a series of recent battles against the British, Chinese and Russians.
But there are significant differences between the "global war on terror" and World War II that do explain why victory is taking so much longer this time.
The most obvious is that, against Japan and Germany, we faced easily identifiable nation states with conventional militaries. Today's terrorists blend in with civilians, and it's hard to tie them to their patron governments or enablers in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Pakistan, who all deny any culpability. We also tread carefully in an age of ubiquitous frightening weapons, when any war at any time might without much warning bring in a nuclear, non-democratic belligerent.
As always, Hanson is worth reading as much for the history lesson as for the analysis. There are serious differences in our response these days. Some of that has to do with internal divisions, both political and ideological. People's world views differ wildly right now. So do people's level of understanding of history and historical context. In many ways, as I have mentioned many times before, reasoning by historical analogy is very tricky and very imprecise. Yes, in number of days we have been in Iraq longer than we were in World War Two. But the situations are not the same.
