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Historical Parallels Gone Wild
We were just watching Sen. Joe Lieberman's (D-CT) talk at the American Enterprise Institute, when our collective jaw dropped as he set off on a death-defying string of historical analogies. It seems that his ability to survey our times with Churchillian clarity short-circuited:
Here's the transcript as I could best transcribe it:
There are people who have spoken of this moment in history as if it were the 30’s, and there are some parallels, I fear, there. People say the war in Iraq is comparable to the Spanish Civil War, and the war in Iraq, to the larger war against Islamist terrorism, comparable to the Spanish Civil War, to the Second World War, the late 30’s and the failure to grasp the growing threat of fascism in Europe until it was almost too late. The painful irony of this moment in our history, is that while in some senses it is comparable to the 1930’s, it’s also already 1942. Because Pearl Harbor [9/11], in this war, has already happened.
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Since he's perdicting the future now, I wonder what his stock picks are.
(So I can short them, of course.)
January 5, 2007 2:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
When I discovered Lieberman was speaking I changed the chanel. Why you found it necessary to listen to him is mind boggling. Let the people of Connecticut be bored to death with his babbling
January 5, 2007 2:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Since the terrorists don't have a state apparatus to use to futher their aims, they want to appear larger than they. So Lieberman is helping them out by saying these sorts of things. By extension so are all of the folks playing chicken little with respect to terrorism.
Overestimating your enemy can be just as damaging as underestimating. The "visionary" thinkers that set up the Iraq invasion didn't envision an insurgency. It think that's partly because they overestimated Saddam's power and assumed he'd mount a conventional battle in Baghdad. Overestimating the threat posed by Al-Qaeda likewise leads us to assume it must be faced primarily with military power.
January 5, 2007 2:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am doing my very best here but cannot fathom how any analogy to the Spanish Civil War fits. I hear about the WWII analogies, and can see how wing-nuts, in their own deluded minds, can stretch some sort of historical analogy. You know, Saddam was Hitler and all of that. To be sure, it's crap, but at least I can understand where the crap comes from.
But the Spanish Civil War? Who gets to be Franco?
January 5, 2007 2:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
they are pulling out all the stops and recalling all the dictators gone past that "Should've been stopped."
Lieberman gets all funky with the Spanish Civil War because Franco was a Fascist.
Greenbaum makes more than passing mention of her own dictator litany and WWII allusions.
I think it may be a new meme they are trying to insert into the mix.
Lieberman at the American Enterprise Institute. How pathetic for the Liebercats.
January 5, 2007 3:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
No, No, Joe. A far more precise historic parallel is between the War of the Roses and Napoleon's invasion of Russia. And if this is the Spanish Civil War, who are we? Franco? The Nazis?
January 5, 2007 3:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Will Joe EVER stop conflating 9/11 and Iraq? There is clearly a greater similarity between Iraq and Vietnam than there is between Iraq and the Spanish Civil War and 1942! When are we going to realize that it makes NO sense to listen to a man (or woman) who has been wrong about almost everything regarding Iraq most of the time? Joe has actually BECOME "Deputy Dog." He's a caricature of a caricature; a cartoon; he is not worthy of any serious consideration!
January 5, 2007 3:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think I get it now after reating Attaturk's post on Eschaton.
"Iraq War has the next relationship to the next war as the Spanish Civil War had to World War II."
So, just as Spanish Civil War was the beginning of fascist aggression, portending the fascist aggression of the Nazi's, the Iraq war is to a coming greater war.
Or something.
January 5, 2007 3:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
So, can we get the US troops out and substitute the Abe Lincoln brigade volunteers. Could Jonah Goldberg volunteer and become eligible to be the next "Hemingway"?
Tough questions for Joe...
January 5, 2007 3:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Paul,
One minor correction: Lieberman is not "(D-CT)". He's been slung from the party like the monday-morning trash. And good riddance.
January 5, 2007 3:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Lieberman's apparent analogy is backwards. Bush is Franco. World War II(III) will come when the rest of the world has to gang up on the US to get rid of the Fascists who are controlling it.
Our only hope to avoid that is for the people of the United States to regain control of our government, throw the Fascists out (including Lieberman) and revise our foreign policy to promote peace and cooperation through diplomacy instead of War.
January 5, 2007 4:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am so sorry folks. As a liberal I try to be open and base my judgements upon the weight of the evidence... but ANYONE from, or speaking to the AEI just does not warrant my attention.
I try to chose reliable, intelligent sources for analysis and AEI's track record is so poor I just can't bring myself to taking anything they have to say seriously.
AEI should have gone the path of PNAC... a dead website and a full e-mail box.
January 5, 2007 4:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
joe has the same doctor as did renquist, only joe is being treated for delusions now, and no one is asking his doctor the right questions.
what are you on Joe? the comparisons you are making show that your pal george is acting exactly as did hitler and mussolini to muzzle the truth, and then spew their own version
got you where you are huh joe?, using the holocaust for everything you have ever earned. and now you are so mentally challenged to see that you are one of the war criminals.
and your state re elected you as senator? what a shame they didn't know you were a nazi. this will help them understand.
hey joe, what's this talk about a new election to get rid of you?
January 5, 2007 4:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
I fear this "51/49" Democratic majority in the Senate is a sham. To me, it always seemed a 50/50 split with Lieberman winning the election.
Comparing 9/11 to Pearl Harbor? Well, I suppose that could be the case... but the correlation would only be better served if we had declarded war on, oh, I don't know, BOLIVIA at the start of our involvement in World War II.
January 5, 2007 4:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
And here I was taught that the militaristic (fascist) conquests in the period preceding WW II started with the Japanese seizure of Manchuria and was followed by the Italian rape of Ethiopia.
And that simpering fool (Lieberman) could not even get the dates right, either.
dumasmud
January 5, 2007 4:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Allow me to post the snarkist comment here:
Joe and John went to AEI to show off their Ginormous War Boners, slapping them right on the podium for the world to see. Let's hope the neocon Viagra wears off soon, I'm tired of getting chased around the couch by these two horndogs.
I really mean it.
January 5, 2007 5:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Randron said:
"Will Joe EVER stop conflating 9/11 and Iraq? There is clearly a greater similarity between Iraq and Vietnam than there is between Iraq and the Spanish Civil War and 1942!"
I couldn't agree more. Joe's words are pretty much sound and fury, signifying nothing. He just hopes the un-informed will nod along and not check facts.
January 5, 2007 5:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Is this man really representing people? What an ignorant! Before he comments on the similarity of the Spanish civil war and Iraq he should learn better the history of both countrys.
January 5, 2007 6:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
My dad was in the Lincoln Battalion, and had to hike over mountains in the dead of night to join, because the US Govt would not allow direct transport to Spain. The US and British Governments embargoed the Spanish Republic from receiving supplies and arms, while major US/UK corporations continued to supply the fascists. When Dad came home, he was drafted in 1941, but was not able to get to Europe until late '44, because he was considered a premature anti-fascist. Exactly which part of this is being echoed in Iraq, other than people dying?
January 6, 2007 1:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
The good senator must have gotten it or he wouldn't have said it, right? You got it - translated at least. I don't get it at all.
Thanks to all of the commentors for their true discourse and hilarious analogies. What were the citizens of CT thinking? Joe's been sworn in - are the voters sorry yet?
January 7, 2007 1:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
hey.. You know what this means...right?
Liberman is at least admiting that the situation in Iraq is civil war.... :)
That's a big step!!! lol
January 7, 2007 5:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
9/11 was more like 1933 - the Reichstag Fire. And I agree a lot with the opposite of what Lie-berman is saying - it is the US that is the fascist imperialist threat to the planet.
January 7, 2007 8:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
He's clearly lost it.
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