The road to Hail ...

... is paved with good intentions, so the saying goes.

For the US, the road to Iraq was paved with bad Second World War analogies. Bush's favorite historian, our friend Victor Davis Hanson, is the generally-acknowledged master of the hack historical analogy.

So here's another Second World War analogy, considerably better grounded than the typical neocon version. It's from Gen. William Odom (ret.), who was director of the National Security Agency (NSA) 1985-88, in the quaint days when they still thought it necessary to follow the law about getting warrants to spy on Americans. Odom writes in the print edition of the January 2006 Current History about the Iraq War:

"Staying the course" may make a good sound bite, but it can be disastrous for strategy. Several of Hitler's generals told him that "staying the course" at Stalingrad in 1942 was a strategic mistake, that he should allow the Sixth Army to be withdrawn, saving it to fight defensive actions on reduced frontage against he growing Red Army. He refused, lost the Sixth Army entirely, and left his commanders with fewer forces to defend a wider front. Thus he made the subsequent Soviet offensives westward easier.

To argue, as some do, that the United States cannot leave Iraq because "we broke it and therefore we own it" is to reason precisely the way Hitler did with his commanders. Of course America broke it! But the Middle East is not a pottery store. It is the site of major military conflict with several different forces that the United States is galvanizing into an alliance against America [especially by the Iraq War]. To hand on to an untenable position is the height of irresponsibility. Beware of anyone, including the president, who insists that this is the "responsible" or "patriotic" thing to do.

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