I’m going to call bullshit on that right now. I bet no more than 25% knows where Iraq is now.
I’ll make a similar bet that at no point has knowledge of Korea’s location or ruler reached over 30% saturation.
Americans don’t know shit about the world. Using our awareness as part of an argument against an analogy is both stupid and useless.
I agree that the analogies are not necessary. I also think you’re nitpicking the details of the analogies because you personally don’t like them. The point of them, however imperfect, is to show that a false connection was made, along with other lies, and we attacked a country that had not attacked us. Most analogies are not intended to be perfectly aligned but make a larger point.
Just to be clear, are you talking about John Kerry’s anti-war protesting or Hugh Carey’s term of office as New York’s governor?
:dubious: You bet that no more than 25% of American’s know we have troops in Iraq?? And you are serious??
Horseshit. The analogy doesn’t work…period. And part of why it doesn’t work is because no American’s knew or cared about Korea prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan. Whereas (despite your hopefully whimsical and tongue in cheek assertion) a large percentage of American’s knew Saddam and were aware of our history of conflict with Iraq going back over a decade prior to our invasion there. They had been prep’ed for animus towards Iraq, had seen Saddam demonized by politicians and media both for over a decade.
Invasion of Korea would have been not only out of left field but pretty much out of the universe. Invasion of Iraq, while stupid, was not a complete surprise…in fact the ground work had been done for literally years ahead of time. An attempt to invade Korea would have basically had the American people and the Congress going ‘huh?’…whereas in back in the real world an invasion of Iraq had a large percentage of the population (as well as the House and Senate) fired up, or at least acquiescent.
Seriously, what’s the point of trying to make these stupid analogies fly? Why does invading Iraq have to be like the US invading Korea or Brazil or some other totally off the wall nation? It’s the equivalent of trying to justify the war with tales of WMD still hidden out in the desert…the assertion is so ridiculous and over the top that it derails the discussion and makes dismissal easy.
-XT
Um , not what he said really, or didn’t you notice?
He may be mistaken but at least get what he said right.
So am I to understand that you believe that 95% of Americans can actually recite the entire text of the Iraq constitution by heart? I’ll take you up on that bet!
You are right…he said don’t know where Iraq is. So…I misunderstood his misunderstanding of my original point. For my part I’ll apologize though…I DID misunderhear what he was saying.
He’s still wrong…more than 25% of American’s know where Iraq is by this point.
Um…to be sure. Whatever you say chief…
-XT
I’m sure more than 25% would say, the Middle East, but beyond that I wouldn’t be to sure.
Let’s be reasonable here…people have been seeing maps of Iraq, news about Iraq, video from Iraq, etc etc for over 19 years! I don’t care how stupid you think American’s are, it’s unreasonable to think that after all this time it hasn’t been ingrained into their brains by now.
Even assuming for a moment though that American’s really are as stupid as this would indicate though, the Korea analogy STILL makes no sense and doesn’t work. America had no history with Korea, American’s had pretty much zero exposure to Korea, American news hadn’t focused on Korea or Korea’s leaders (hell, I’m fairly well educated and I have no idea who WAS running Korea prior to WWII…I only have a general idea of what kind of government they had then and only the vaguest idea of Korea on the world stage at that time). There would have been approximately zero motivation for Roosevelt to invade Korea, and less than zero motivation for the House and Senate to approve such an invasion…and somewhere around a snowballs chance in hell the American people would have supported such an invasion at that time. Heck, it took the bombing of Pearl Harbor to get us off the neutrality dime in the first frigging place!
It’s…a…bad…analogy. And it’s a silly and stupid analogy that has no bearing on the US invasion of Iraq and instead distracts from the discussion. As I said earlier, a better analogy (though still flawed) would have been Japan attacks the US and the US invades Germany…since most American’s DID know who Hitler was at the time, HAD seen Germany in the news, HAD seen American propaganda begin to be directed against Germany, and of course Roosevelt was really trying to maneuver the US into war with Germany all along (very similar to Bush trying to maneuver the US into war with Iraq).
Of course, why an analogy is needed at all is beyond me.
-XT
I seriously doubt that this figure has improved in the 3 years since this study was done, since Iraq is out of the news cycle these days.
I also doubt that it would markedly improve much if you included those over 24.
If anyone has any better cite, have at 'er.
And this all ‘proves’ what, exactly? Does it make the analogy work some how?
-XT
People are not only dumber than you imagine, they are dumber than you can imagine.
I don’t believe it’s possible to be that dumb…not after years of being bombarded with Iraq news. Hell I could probably find Iraq if I was blind folded in a snow storm and had to read the map in brail.
And it’s beside the point. If somehow people really are that stupid it matters not…the analogy still doesn’t work.
Ah well…I think this dead horse has been lead to midstream and beaten to death…no debate here. Carry on…
-XT
Most Americans can’t even find their own state on a map. A depressing number don’t know what continent they live on. Americans are shockingly ignorant of geography. I’d be willing to bet that 25% of the Americans currently IN Iraq still couldn’t find it on a globe.
I think Miss Teen South Carolina was actually onto something underneath all her babble when she said that “US Americans” are probably so geographically ignorant because they don’t own maps or globes anymore, and never look at them (other than googlemaps).
Let’s talk about being reasonable. Do you really think that video from Iraq informs people about where Iraq is geographically? So if we see video of people running down a Baghdad street that tells people where Irag and Baghdad are located on the globe? I don’t call that a reasonable assumption.
News agencies showing a map of Iraq and the major cities is more informative but it doesn’t necessarily help people learn where Iraq is in relation to other countries and the world in general. Then you’d have to consider how many people are paying attention and trying to retain that type of information. Add to that that 19 years is an exaggeration IMO. Desert Storm lasted less than a year and ended in Feb of 91. We’ve hardly been bombarded with news about Iraq between early 91 and 2002 when Bush began rattling his saber.
I get it that you don’t like the analogy. It doesn’t matter. I don’t need one. I still happen to think you are needlessly nitpicking details to find fault with it. Whether Americans knew where Korea or Iraq was seems nearly irrelevant to the point the analogy is making, but you go ahead and think whatever you like. It really doesn’t matter and doesn’t deserve any more bandwidth.
You mean along with the little map thingies they put on just about every news cast I’ve ever seen during the story? Yeah…I think it does.
Well, it is for anyone who has, you know, actually watched the news. Ironically I’m watching a news cast right now that has a story on Iraq and lo! It has a MAP…right there on the screen! Imagine that…
Of exaggerations…of maps? Of geography? Did the evil old administration (including Clinton since we are going back 19 years) distorted…maps? The rat bastards! Yes, I see…
You don’t recall ever hearing about Iraq or that Saddam guy through the entire Clinton regime? I seem to recall one or two stories at least…
Which is one or two more stories than I’m guessing American’s heard about the evil Koreans during the Great Depression.
Just because the analogy bears zero relevance? Yeah, just nitpicking. Of course, you COULD explain why you think there are any similarities (besides the obvious ones where Iraqi’s are humans and Koreans are humans too of course). You do know what the word ‘analogy’ means, right? The whole ‘similarity’ thingy, ehe? So…what’s similar between our actual invasion of Iraq and this theoretical invasion of Korea in response to a bombing by Japan? Iraq and Korea both have the letters ‘a’ and ‘r’ in them…Koreans and Iraqi’s are both humans…there are dogs in both countries…people in both countries eat food and have sex… … …
Um…what else?
-XT
So it’s the maps and not the video. I guess you’re agreeing I’m correct.
Ya see, here’s a CNN reportwith plenty of video from Iraq with no map.
Here’s another with plenty of video from Iraq but no maps.
Another
Here’s another this one is interesting because they’re making the comparison between the rhetoric concerning Iraq before we invaded and the rhetoric about Iran. No map of either place though.
Just so ya know. These were the first ones I clicked on. I didn’t have to sift through a lot of videos of news reports to find some with no maps. All of the ones I clicked on had no maps. I’m sure some do but that puts serious doubt pn you "just about every news cast doesn’t it? Unless you’re counting the map showing the outline of Iraq. That hardly tells anyone where it is does it?
Yeah, is that the Iraq outline map? We are talking about people knowing where Iraq is in relation to world and regional geography. That map doesn’t help.
Never said anything like this. Doesn’t help your argument. The exaggeration is your indication that Iraq has been in the news and educating people about it’s geography for 19 years.
Also not at all what I said. Try to stay relevant and not waste time by misrepresenting people’s arguments.
As I said, I don’t care about your feelings about the analogy or that you don’t seem to understand how analogies work. I’ve already explained and you obviously missed it. It doesn’t matter. Keep your irrelevant sarcasm to yourself.
Korea was a colony of Japan before and during WWII. I can’t believe no one has mentioned that. Comparing invading Korea to invading Iraq is like comparing DDay to Iraq because France never attacked us, so obviously invading there was a misdirection. Korea was directly controlled by Japan, and had been for years. Even if attacking it did not make strategic sense (like it did for the Soviets, perhaps) it would have been much more justifiable than Iraq.
I think a better analogy would be that invading Iraq 18 months after 9/11 is like invading Spain 18 months after Pearl Harbor. You have the iconic, disliked leader in Franco, the fascist political ideology that seemed to place him in close ties with the Axis powers, the donating of troops to the Russian front on the Axis side on the down low, the recent conflict that involved a world coalition and a lot of Americans that gave it a lot of press, the put-down local minorities that might be persuaded to rise up, and so on and so on. It would have been really stupid (we had a thread discussing it a while back) like Iraq, also.
Obviously, there is a lot wrong with that analogy, (like, Hitler and Mussolini being right there) but it is certainly better than Korea, or Brazil, for that matter.