Dohiyi Mir
In Which NTodd Says His Peace
Worst. Best. (And Scariest). Analogy. Ever.
NYTimes:
President Bush told the Congress of this former American colony on Saturday that Iraq, like the Philippines, could be transformed into a vibrant democracy.
...
While the administration often speaks of the occupations of Japan and Germany after World War II as rough models for the effort to rebuild Iraq, Mr. Bush used the visit here to make a less explicit analogy to the American administration of the Philippines, which also led to the formation of a democracy. But the comparison has less power to reassure, given that the Philippine government did not gain full autonomy for five decades.
And the Philippines were a freaking colonial holding! So, are we finally admitting that Iraq is a fiefdom in the renewed American empire?
ntodd
[Update: upyernoz has some analysis over at Rubber Hose. Here's a snippet that he posted in the comment thread here:
actually the philipines analogy works. we seized the islands after fighting a war with spain that was based on a lie (i.e. that the spanish attacked the u.s.s. maine), the u.s. occupation was plagued with local uprisings, which americans brutally suppressed. not only wasn't autonomy granted to the filipinos for 49 years, but when they finally got independence, it was under u.s-backed dictators. that only ended in the 1980s, 90 years after the u.s. occupation began. today the philippines is a poverty-striken weak democracy whose government does not control the southern portions of the country. in the south there is an violent islamic fundamentalist movement, abu sayyaf, which has ties to al qaeda. bush's comparison may be accurate, but it does not bode well for the american occupation of iraq.
I originally was thinking that this was not the analogy Bush wanted to make because, as the NYTimes article observed, automony took a long time. However, this likely was an (inadvertantly?) accurate analogy on Bush's part, given what we hear about the PNAC agenda. We are in there for the long haul, no matter what BushCo says publicly at home. Translation: we're royally screwed. Anyway, read what upyernoz has to say...]
