Robert Shaffer: Misleading Analogies and Historical Thinking: Iraq War as a case study
[Robert Shaffer is associate professor of history at Shippensburg University.]
Students come into our history classes well versed in the mantra that “those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it,” that history is “useful” in teaching lessons for today. Whether they truly believe this idea is a separate question, and many of us devote a lot of energy trying to make our lectures, discussion questions, and reading assignments “relevant” to the present. But the quest for “relevance” has its own pitfalls, in the overly simplistic analogies that students—and policymakers—make between past and present. Indeed, one of the textbooks that I use when I teach “Theory and Practice of History,” a required course for history BA majors at my university, states boldly in its opening chapter: “Many who believe the proposition that history is relevant to an understanding of the present often go too far in their claims. Nothing is easier to abuse than the historical analogy or parallel.” Authors Conal Furay and Michael Salevouris want students to understand instead that “[g]ood history, on the other hand, can expose the inapplicability of many inaccurate, misleading analogies.”1
For the past five years, I have used a brief article, “Lessons from Japan about War’s Aftermath,” an op-ed piece published in October 2002 by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian John Dower, to help students see the practical—and even tragic—consequences of applying simplistic and misleading “lessons of the past” to current events and policies.2 I have used the article not only in “Theory and Practice of History,” but also in my classes on U.S. diplomatic history, U.S. military history, and others. I ask students to read and discuss the article on the first or second day of class, as its main points are easily accessible and get students talking, and it provides a wonderful opportunity for students to grapple with the contested nature of the meaning of history and to see how a respected historian used his expertise to try to affect current policymaking.
Dower, the preeminent American historian of postwar Japan and an indispensable authority on U.S.-Japanese relations, responded in his essay to those in and close to the Bush Administration who, in building their case for war against Iraq, put forward the notion that, after an easy military victory over Saddam Hussein’s government, the United States would be able to guide Iraq toward a peaceful and democratic reconstruction along the lines of the post–World War II recovery of Japan. As his essay was a brief, newspaper op-ed, Dower did not provide footnotes or specific references, but news reports on October 11—the day after Congress had voted to give the president the power to initiate war—had indicated that the White House was “developing a detailed plan, modeled on the postwar occupation of Japan, to install an American-led military government in Iraq if the United States topples Saddam Hussein.” Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, who favored the invasion, reported on these plans the following week, and added that the “labor-intensive tasks” of the occupation—by which he meant the stationing in Iraq of 100,000 American or other foreign troops—should be completed within a year or two.3
Dower called “the occupation of defeated Japan … a remarkable success,” creating a viable democracy and ending militarism, despite the predictions of many in 1945 that “the Japanese people [were] culturally incapable of self-government.” Nevertheless, he continued, “most of the factors that contributed to the success of nation-building in Japan would be absent in an Iraq militarily defeated by the United States.” Dower then went through about a dozen of the differences between Japan after World War II and what he anticipated the situation would be in Iraq after a prospective war with the United States. A few examples will suffice. While the U.S. retained Emperor Hirohito in office, and he “gave his significant personal endorsement to the conquerors,” nothing similar could occur in Iraq. American planning for occupation in Japan had been ongoing since 1942, and was relatively popular in Japan because it reflected New Deal goals of land reform and encouragement of trade unions; nothing similar could be imagined in a hastily planned occupation of Iraq by the Bush administration. While not minimizing competing political allegiances in Japan, Dower noted that “Japan was spared the religious, ethnic, regional and tribal animosities that are likely to erupt in a post-war Iraq.” Japan’s position as an island shielded it from nations that might resent American occupation or who would wish to intervene for other reasons, while Iraq “shares borders with apprehensive and potentially intrusive neighbors.” Dower concluded strongly: “While occupied Japan provides no model for a postwar Iraq, it does provide a clear warning,” as even in Japan reconstruction was difficult. “To rush to war without seriously imagining all its consequences … is not realism but a terrible hubris.”...
Read entire article at Perspectives, the magazine of the AHA
Students come into our history classes well versed in the mantra that “those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it,” that history is “useful” in teaching lessons for today. Whether they truly believe this idea is a separate question, and many of us devote a lot of energy trying to make our lectures, discussion questions, and reading assignments “relevant” to the present. But the quest for “relevance” has its own pitfalls, in the overly simplistic analogies that students—and policymakers—make between past and present. Indeed, one of the textbooks that I use when I teach “Theory and Practice of History,” a required course for history BA majors at my university, states boldly in its opening chapter: “Many who believe the proposition that history is relevant to an understanding of the present often go too far in their claims. Nothing is easier to abuse than the historical analogy or parallel.” Authors Conal Furay and Michael Salevouris want students to understand instead that “[g]ood history, on the other hand, can expose the inapplicability of many inaccurate, misleading analogies.”1
For the past five years, I have used a brief article, “Lessons from Japan about War’s Aftermath,” an op-ed piece published in October 2002 by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian John Dower, to help students see the practical—and even tragic—consequences of applying simplistic and misleading “lessons of the past” to current events and policies.2 I have used the article not only in “Theory and Practice of History,” but also in my classes on U.S. diplomatic history, U.S. military history, and others. I ask students to read and discuss the article on the first or second day of class, as its main points are easily accessible and get students talking, and it provides a wonderful opportunity for students to grapple with the contested nature of the meaning of history and to see how a respected historian used his expertise to try to affect current policymaking.
Dower, the preeminent American historian of postwar Japan and an indispensable authority on U.S.-Japanese relations, responded in his essay to those in and close to the Bush Administration who, in building their case for war against Iraq, put forward the notion that, after an easy military victory over Saddam Hussein’s government, the United States would be able to guide Iraq toward a peaceful and democratic reconstruction along the lines of the post–World War II recovery of Japan. As his essay was a brief, newspaper op-ed, Dower did not provide footnotes or specific references, but news reports on October 11—the day after Congress had voted to give the president the power to initiate war—had indicated that the White House was “developing a detailed plan, modeled on the postwar occupation of Japan, to install an American-led military government in Iraq if the United States topples Saddam Hussein.” Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, who favored the invasion, reported on these plans the following week, and added that the “labor-intensive tasks” of the occupation—by which he meant the stationing in Iraq of 100,000 American or other foreign troops—should be completed within a year or two.3
Dower called “the occupation of defeated Japan … a remarkable success,” creating a viable democracy and ending militarism, despite the predictions of many in 1945 that “the Japanese people [were] culturally incapable of self-government.” Nevertheless, he continued, “most of the factors that contributed to the success of nation-building in Japan would be absent in an Iraq militarily defeated by the United States.” Dower then went through about a dozen of the differences between Japan after World War II and what he anticipated the situation would be in Iraq after a prospective war with the United States. A few examples will suffice. While the U.S. retained Emperor Hirohito in office, and he “gave his significant personal endorsement to the conquerors,” nothing similar could occur in Iraq. American planning for occupation in Japan had been ongoing since 1942, and was relatively popular in Japan because it reflected New Deal goals of land reform and encouragement of trade unions; nothing similar could be imagined in a hastily planned occupation of Iraq by the Bush administration. While not minimizing competing political allegiances in Japan, Dower noted that “Japan was spared the religious, ethnic, regional and tribal animosities that are likely to erupt in a post-war Iraq.” Japan’s position as an island shielded it from nations that might resent American occupation or who would wish to intervene for other reasons, while Iraq “shares borders with apprehensive and potentially intrusive neighbors.” Dower concluded strongly: “While occupied Japan provides no model for a postwar Iraq, it does provide a clear warning,” as even in Japan reconstruction was difficult. “To rush to war without seriously imagining all its consequences … is not realism but a terrible hubris.”...