The Bad Science of War Metaphors

Note: I didn’t live through either of the conflicts I discuss, and this is a rant not a research paper, so I might have some historical inaccuracies. Feel free to point them out.

One of the things that really bother me about both sides of the war argument is their reliance on analogies that just don’t fit. Hawks tend to focus entirely on World War II, doves on Vietnam.

I don’t know where pro-war people would be without World War II, quite frankly. It’s the one war in history that everyone will agree was a just war (and it was the last time our territory was physically threatened – terrorism is a problem, but it is not an invasion). Instead of considering it the exception, however, hawks use it as justification for any kind of combat. Americans take a great deal of pride in World War II because we remember that we truly were liberators. We were on the side of angels. We were selfless, we gave American blood so that those of other nations might know freedom, we asked for nothing in return. Never mind the enormous loss of life, never mind that we made some decisions that unnecessarily cost a huge amount of life (The necessity for Nagasaki is up for debate, the necessity of Dresden is not).

World War II is trotted out for a number of reasons, usually to justify preemptive action or swift retribution on the grounds that appeasement of Hitler was a dismal failure. Allow Iraq to stockpile weapons, the story goes, and Hussein would soon pick off Arab neighbors, one by one, until he ruled the world. Hussein’s genocide against the Kurds also makes for a convenient parallel with Hitler’s ultimate solution for the Jews.

The problem, of course, is that World War II is still the exception. World War II was a unique combination of events that has never been duplicated. Things like an international governing body even more impotent than the UN, a supreme desire to avoid another Great War that we cannot fully comprehend, a leader clearly intent on increasing his territorial grasp, and more. So many of these things do not exist today. The United Nations, while still largely impotent, still has some claws. Iraq had a strong but hardly dominant army and has not exhibited desire to conquer neighboring territories in some time. The countries of the world not run by Texans and Southerners still avoid conflict when possible but act when necessary. And, most importantly, America is enmeshed in world affairs and our military superiority, based on spending more than the next 15 nations in the world combined on “defense,” means Iraq can be contained at any time, there is no domino effect if we decide there shouldn’t be one.

Hawks invoke World War II as a way of justifying intervention anywhere, because tolerance of any single act of defiance of world law from any country can be labeled appeasement, which apparently automatically means we travel down the slippery slope to World War III.

The fact of the matter is, World War II is a horrible analogy for any conflict. The fact that hawks must go back 60 years to find a war they like to use and ignore Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War (détente, of course, being out of style) or other wars that did not involve us like the Russian invasion of Afghanistan or the Iran-Iraq war, is, in my eyes, supremely damning of their choice. Reliance on a single supporting example out of countless contradicting ones is bad science.

However, the doves are also guilty of relying too much on a single war analogy: Vietnam. Again, the Vietnam conflict was so incredibly different from the conflict in Iraq that it is disingenuous to use it as a reason not to go to war (beyond the examples it provides of the horrific nature of war, which could be drawn from other examples that are more applicable). The doves invoke Vietnam because it is still a fresh wound, it is America’s “one military failure,” it is a cautionary tale of national hubris and a belief that technological (and moral) might will always prevail. It is an example of the “Q word” – quagmire.

Vietnam, of course, differs from the current conflict in several ways. It was a conflict against a populist uprising, not against a leader. Thus we faced a citizenry that intended to fight us. In Iraq, we knew the citizenry hated their leader and might grumble at our occupation but would not die for Hussein. The terrain of Vietnam was not easily navigated, Iraq is in a desert. And finally, there was no real evidence that the Vietnamese communist forces posed any kind of threat to world stability. Despite Hussein’s apparent lack of WMD, he certainly can be viewed as a destabilizing influence. Finally, we have learned many lessons from Vietnam (for example, avoiding mission creep), and have applied them in subsequent military activity.

Thus, the Vietnam example is also suspect. There are other examples that could be used that are more applicable, including the first Gulf War (often used to claim that civilian casualties will be enormous), but Vietnam seems to be the one that people use the most.

As Mr. Jackson told me recently, “All analogies are inherently false.” But both sides can do a better job of picking analogies that get us closer to reality. Instead, they rely on the basic emotional responses of pride and fear that World War II inspires, and the fear that Vietnam inspires. That's good politics, but bad science.