Misuses of History. The Politico: "A historian quoted by President Bush to help argue that critics of the administration’s Iraq policy echo those who questioned the U.S. effort to bring democracy to Japan after World War II angrily distanced himself from the president’s remarks Thursday. 'They [war supporters] keep on doing this,' said MIT professor John Dower. 'They keep on hitting it and hitting it and hitting it and it’s always more and more implausible, strange and in a fantasy world. They’re desperately groping for a historical analogy, and their uses of history are really perverse.' Dower was decidedly unhappy with his 15 minutes of fame. 'I have always said as a historian that the use of Japan [in arguing for the likelihood of successfully bringing democracy to Iraq] is a misuse of history,' he said when notified of the Bush quote. He immediately directed me to a November 2002 New York Times op-ed where he outlined 10 reasons why 'most of the factors that contributed to the success of nation-building in occupied Japan would be absent in an Iraq militarily defeated by the United States.'”

Posted by Laura at August 24, 2007 09:49 AM