Defense Sec. Rumsfeld wants the American people to be patient. He chooses to underscore it, however, through a strained and specious comparison with a very different war in a very different era:
“Consider some historical perspective:
- After the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, it took four months before the United States responded to that attack with the Doolittle raid of April 1942.
- It took eight months after Pearl Harbor before the U.S. began a land campaign against the Japanese — with the invasion of Guadalcanal in August of 1942.
- The U.S. bombed Japan for three-and-a-half years — until August 1945 — before we accomplished our objectives in the Pacific.
- On the European front, the allies bombed Germany continually for nearly five years — from September of 1940 until May of 1945.
- It took 11 months to start the land campaign against the Germans — with the invasion of North Africa in November of 1942.
- It took the United States two years and six months after Hitler declared war on us before we landed in France on June 6, 1944.”
DoD News
William Saletan thinks the press is to blame for putting the impatient spin on things. Journalists’ reports of skepticism and frustration are a “self-escalating cycle” of “vicarious doubt.” For example:
- The fallacy of subjectivity — seeing the Taliban mind only from the outside but the American mind from the inside, the press can highlight the doubts and reassessments only of the latter. Our enemy always seems more resolute.
- The war’s progress “falling short of expectations” is often seen as an indicator it is not viable to continue, but Saletan argues “the public’s lowered expectations make the war on terror more sustainable, not less.”
- The side with the coalition of necessity has the more ‘fragile coalition’ than the side without one.
- A stalemate is inevitably interpreted as a victory for the defense (them) rather than the offense (us).
- Because journalists demand news, “If the United States fails to provide news in the form of measurable success, journalists will make that failure itself the news.”
Slate
