Oh No! Do Not Compare Iraq to Okinawa!

They keep doing it. And it won’t fly. As the number of American soldier deaths in Iraq crept closer and closer to 2000, the neocons and Iraq war apologists’ cant became more shrill and more illogical. Now this morning, an NYT Op/Ed column by Victor Davis Hanson (“2,000 Dead, in Context”) once again raises the argument that all wars cause deaths and the deaths during World War II were much higher than the deaths in Iraq. Hanson says, “The battle for Okinawa was an abject bloodbath that took more than 50,000 American casualties”. While it’s true that 405,399 Americans lost their lives in WWII, let’s make one important distinction. World War II was not an unnecessary, needless war started by the US to further its plans for global supremacy. That’s the difference, you idiotic, witless, irrational morons, with your specious arguments. If there is a comparable to Iraq in American history, then it’s William Randolph Hearst’s promotion of the Spanish-American war in 1898 in order to sell newspapers. That war, which lasted four months and was characterized by Teddy Roosevelt as “a splendid little war” killed 460 American soldiers. So if you want to play the comparable deaths game in unnecessary wars, there were “only” 196 deaths of American soldiers in the first four months of George Bush’s splendid little war in Iraq. Which would make it a better unnecessary war than the Spanish American war, if the war in Iraq had lasted only four months. But the unnecessary war in Iraq has lasted two years and seven months. And as of yesterday 2006 American soldiers have died in Iraq. Ergo, the war in Iraq is the most egregiously unnecessary, stupid, needless war in American history and it can be compared with absolutely nothing whatsoever.