Bush’s Decisions Are Being Shaped by WWII Lessons : History: ‘We are not about to make that same mistake twice,’ he says, recalling failure to stop aggression in the 1930s.
WASHINGTON — Forty-seven years ago, fresh out of prep school, recently engaged and full of cheerful optimism, 18-year-old George Bush pinned pilots’ wings to his Navy uniform and headed for war.
Now, as he presides over the first major long-term commitment of U.S. military forces abroad since Vietnam, Bush’s decisions and the counsel he receives from his small inner circle of advisers are being powerfully shaped by their memories and experiences in World War II, Administration officials and Bush associates say.
In Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, Bush sees a clear analogy to Hitler’s march across Europe. “If the lessons of history are not learned, we are doomed to repeat them. That’s his text, that’s what he sees,†said Bush’s longtime friend and college classmate, former Congressman Thomas Ashley.
But while the metaphor of World War II provides a powerful rhetorical justification for Bush’s policy, historians warn that the use of the analogy poses many dangers.
“It’s almost an article of faith among professional historians that these metaphors are more likely to lead you astray than anything else,†said Yale diplomatic historian Gaddis Smith. Even if Bush and his aides are, for now, using World War II images as a public analogy only, Smith said, the records of past administrations show that “what starts as a public relations device often gets ingrained.â€
“The most vulnerable audience for any propaganda is the author,†Smith said.
The crisis in the Persian Gulf is, in large part, about oil and economics. But oil, alone, does not explain the vehemence of Bush’s response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait or the speed with which the crisis has moved to the edge of war.
The United States did not send troops to the Middle East in 1973, when Saudi Arabia led the members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in an embargo of crude oil sales to the West. And when the Iran-Iraq War threatened to spill into the Persian Gulf and disrupt tanker traffic, then-President Ronald Reagan responded with a limited use of naval escorts to protect tankers. More drastic military measures were quickly ruled out.
This time, Bush and his top advisers believe, far more is at stake.
With the Cold War ended, Bush has more freedom than any of his predecessors in recent decades to move internationally without tremendous fear of a Soviet response. And in speeches this year, Bush repeatedly has talked about the opportunity that the end of the Cold War has created for world leaders to construct a new international order.
In the current Persian Gulf crisis, with a clear enemy, an important economic resource at stake and widespread international support, the Administration believes it has a perfect opportunity to demonstrate how, with American leadership, that new order can work.
In the 1930s, Bush believes, the United States and its allies failed to stop aggression when it started. Because of that failure, a “generation of Americansâ€--his generation--â€paid an awful price, a horrible price,†the President said in a speech last spring.
Bush personally saw friends and roommates killed, others maimed for life. He only narrowly escaped death himself after parachuting from a burning plane near Iwo Jima. Now that he is President, “We are not about to make that same mistake twice,†Bush said in a speech Wednesday at the Pentagon.
The analogy between the confrontation with Iraq and the crises of the 1930s was established early on, during the first day of the crisis. A few hours after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Bush left Washington for a previously scheduled meeting with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was in Aspen, Colo., to give a speech to the Aspen Institute. At a ranch near Aspen, the President and prime minister met for roughly two hours.
Iraq’s invasion, Thatcher said, was a clear challenge to the West. World leaders, she argued, faced the same choice as in the 1930s: “the rule of law†versus “the law of the jungle.â€
That argument has become an often-used justification for the Administration’s policy. Giving in to Iraq now would set a precedent just as powerful and dangerous as the one set in 1937, when European leaders agreed at Munich to allow Germany to take over the western part of Czechoslovakia, officials have said repeatedly. Senior Bush aides use the Munich analogy to justify the Administration’s refusal to open any negotiations with Iraq until after Hussein withdraws his forces from Kuwait.
Critics, however, argue that the analogy is misleading. A comparison between the current situation and the crises of the 1930s “is simply misplaced,†argued Robert H. Ferrell of Indiana University, a biographer of President Harry S. Truman and historian of U.S. foreign policy.
Hitler posed the most direct and implacable challenge possible to American interests. He led one of the world’s leading industrial powers and was determined to conquer all of Europe, a continent crucially tied to America’s economy. In addition, his attacks were directed at democratic nations that were U.S. allies as well as at millions of Jews and others he sought to eliminate.
In contrast, although Hussein is a brutal leader who has used chemical weapons and has sought to develop atomic ones, he still leads a relatively impoverished nation in a part of the world that, despite its oil, has never been at the center of U.S. interests. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, while friendly to the United States, are certainly not democracies.
To compare the two situations “is not leadership, it’s obfuscation,†said Ferrell.
In the eyes of many critics, the analogy to the 1930s is merely a cover for the Administration’s real interest--oil.
And there is no doubt that simple economics have played a major role in bringing the United States to the edge of war in the Persian Gulf. Had oil not been involved, had Saddam Hussein’s aggression been directed at his neighbor and enemy, Syria, for example, rather than petroleum-rich Kuwait, there would be almost no chance that the United States would have sent troops, analysts say.
Indeed, the last time Iraq did attack a neighbor, Iran, the United States backed Saddam Hussein.
The willingness to fight over oil already has sparked criticism that could become far more widespread if the gulf conflict begins to take American lives. Gasoline prices are lower, and consumption higher, in the United States than in any of the other major industrial nations. This summer, in fact, before the crisis began, the price of gasoline in the United States was, when adjusted for inflation, lower than at any point in more than two decades.
Those low prices have slowed efforts to reduce energy use, and American dependence on imported oil has steadily increased in recent years.
But Bush aides play down that argument. Even if the United States did not need oil imports, Western Europe and Japan do, and the economies of the industrial nations are so intertwined that a collapse overseas would be equally catastrophic here at home, they say.
And Bush, guided by the experiences of his youth, has elevated the conflict far above the level of a mere fight about money, setting the stakes about as high as a President can.
The battle with Hussein, he said in his speech Wednesday, is about “our jobs, our way of life, our own freedom.â€
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