Historian calls B*sh's use of his quote: "Perverse"!

[npincus]

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0807/5499.html

Chimpy's speechwriter lifted a quote from historian John Dower's "Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II", to compare the notion of democracy in Post-war Japan to planting democracy in present day Iraq. Unfortuantely, Mr. Dower doth protest the mis-use and innacuracy of applying his words to B*sh's abomination in Iraq.


http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/712Q8EQ5W7L._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.gif



“They keep on doing this,” said MIT professor John Dower. “They keep on hitting it and hitting it and hitting it and it’s always more and more implausible, strange and in a fantasy world. They’re desperately groping for a historical analogy, and their uses of history are really perverse.”

<snip>

Dower was decidedly unhappy with his 15 minutes of fame. “I have always said as a historian that the use of Japan is a misuse of history,” he said when notified of the Bush quote.

He immediately directed me to a November 2002 New York Times op-ed where he outlined 10 reasons why “most of the factors that contributed to the success of nation-building in occupied Japan would be absent in an Iraq militarily defeated by the United States.” http://middleeastinfo.org/article1629.html

In March 2003, Dower wrote an essay for Boston Review, entitled “A Warning From History: Don’t Expect Democracy in Iraq.http://www.bostonreview.net/BR28.1/dower.html ”

And what about the specific quote Bush used – that experts on Japan were wrong about the country’s capability for democracy?

“Whoever pulled that quote out for him is very clever,” Dower said, acknowledging that “if you listen to the experts prior to the invasion of Japan, they all said that Japan can’t become democratic.”

But there are major differences, Dower said. “I’m not being misquoted, but I’m being misrepresented.”

[ChicagoRonin]

1. Dower's right on the money

BTW, be sure to read Dower's book WAR WITHOUT MERCY. It was required for my college Intro to East Asian History course.
It covers the propaganda wars of both the US (and Allies) and Japan during WWII. Truly fascinating in light of recent events.

http://www.amazon.com/War-Without-Mercy-Power-Pacific/dp/0394751728/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-6321637-1980413?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1187971708&sr=8-1

[tanyev]

2. Georgie, if you want the historians to preserve your legacy, you need to stop

quoting them out of context and pissing them off. But even that may not be enough.