NEW YORK — Many commentators have invoked historical analogies for U.S. President George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq and its still unfolding aftermath, with some saying, correctly, that no exact historical analogies are possible for anything, the least of all this damnable war.
Still, I was reminded of an action that the U.S. Occupation took after Japan's defeat and the long shadow it has cast when a dispute recently erupted over the disbanding of the Iraqi Army not long after America's "liberation" of that hapless country. The dispute was touched off by Robert Draper's account of the Bush presidency, "Dead Certain," in which Bush is quoted as saying, "Yeah, I can't remember. I'm sure I said, 'this is the policy, what happened?' "
By "this," Bush meant keeping the Iraq Army intact. Its dismantlement has since been judged to be one of the biggest blunders in this war — except of course for the war itself.