Iraq War: Longer than World War II?
The “Iraq War” has now officially lasted longer than World War II, I learned today from a WV Gazette editorial. Here’s an excerpt from the editorial, which I can’t seem to find online:
Last week, historians noted this comparison: The “big one” started for America on Dec. 7, 1941, when Japan bombed the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor. The Europeon phase of the war ensued for 1,248 days, until VE (Victory in Europe) Day on May 8, 1945. The Pacific phase continued three months longer, until Japan surrendered in mid-August.
Bush’s Iraq invasion was launched March 19, 2003, and the conflict passed its 1,248th day Friday. There’s little doubt that it will continue three more months — or maybe three more years. Thus its length will excede the cataclysm that shaped the lives of most older Americans.
Never mind the fact that this editorial is apparently three months early (the title and the lede, which I didn’t excerpt, both imply that the Iraq War has already lasted longer than America’s involvement in WWII), and that the method of determining the “length” of WWII is apparently designed to deceive (I think it’s a stretch to say the war started when Japan attacked us and ended when Germany surrendered, even though the war with Japan was still going strong at that point). I can’t imagine why the Gazette would bother running this editorial now, especially since no one believes that the war will be over within three months, and they know they’ll be able to run this editorial when the Iraq War actually has exceeded the length of WWII*.
Isn’t the length of time that a war lasts a pretty silly way to measure this anyway? Let’s look at some numbers that are more important:
WWII American Military Deaths: 407,300 (source)
American Military Deaths in Iraq: 2600 (source: The WV Gazette’s editorial page, 8/21/2006, “Iraq War: Longer than World War II”)
WWII German Casulties (civilians and military): 7,500,000 (including 160,000 Jewish Holocaust victims) (source)
WWII Japanese Casualties (civilians and military): 2,600,000 (same source)
Iraqi Casulties (according to the Gazette): ~100,000 (I’m not sure about the source of this, but I remember seeing a lot of controversy over a report that set the number of Iraqi casulties this high… for the sake of argument, though, we’re accepting it as true)
I don’t particularly care for these comparisons, because I don’t like dealing with the deaths of all these people and treating them as nothing but numbers, but it annoys me even more when the Gazette (among others) treats these numbers as somehow less important than time.
* Though, to be fair, the argument could be made that the war against Iraq ended with President Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech, and that we’re currently not battling Iraq so much as we’re occupying it while we’re rebuilding. A more fair comparison might be to measure it against not only the war in Japan, but also the post-war occupation, which didn’t end until April 28th, 1952 (3,430 days from the start of the war).
[...] A bit more from yesterday’s Gazette (yesterday’s post), this time from the “Readers’ Voice” segment, featuring small quotes from readers who’ve called in to offer their opinions on various tidbits. Based on the topics covered in the Voice, I’m guessing that something over the weekend put people’s minds on smoking, because that’s what seemed to come up a lot. [...]
I think your footnote is the biggest point that needs to be addressed by the writer. You have to measure both wars using the same criteria.
The problem is that you could create criteria that would make America’s involvement in WWII go from Dec. 7, 1941 through VJ day (instead of through the end of our occupation) without limiting the “Iraq War” to the day of the “Mission Accomplished” thing.
In Japan, when the government surrendered, the fighting was essentially over. There were no foreign powers with any great interest in fighting us in Japan (the way that various terrorist organizations are in Iraq), and the Japanese weren’t really prone to fighting us for various reasons. Their culture would’ve seen it as a great disgrace to go against the emperor and not accept the surrender, plus we’d pretty much destroyed their will to fight, I think, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In Iraq, the government didn’t so much “surrender” as “get completely obliterated”, there are foreign powers fighting us on Iraqi soil, and we have been extremely careful about avoiding civilian deaths. (Which may not be an entirely good thing, since what we’re effectively doing is making war less horrible, which makes it more likely that our enemies would want to risk war — I’m reminded of the Star Trek episode, “A Taste of Armageddon”.)
measuring wars is silly and disrespectful.
I don’t think that it is silly or disrespectful to measure how long a war lasts. That is just history. The silly and disrepectful part is determining the merit of a war by comparing its length to that of another war. There is so much more involved that just an elapsed time.
Which, of course, was more or less my point with this post.