Victor Davis Hanson channels Sam Cooke: “Don’t know much about history. . .”

Neocon Hanson in his latest editorial in the increasingly pathetic WS Opinion Journal. Arguing that Reality-based insistence on holding BushCo accountable for the faulty judgments which led us into the Iraq war, and the incompetent post-war occupation which now prolongs the conflict, is playing into the enemy’s hands and damaging the war effort:

The second-guessing of 2003 still daily obsesses us: We should have had better intelligence; we could have kept the Iraqi military intact; we would have been better off deploying more troops. Had our forefathers embraced such a suicidal and reactionary wartime mentality, Americans would have still torn each other apart over Valley Forge years later on the eve of Yorktown–or refought Pearl Harbor even as they steamed out to Okinawa.

Got that? The gist is that is that if the “Greatest Generation” which fought World War II had continued to focus on the errors which led to the defeat at Pearl Harbor as our troops steamed towards Okinawa, we could never have succeeded in our war effort.

Similarly, critics who point out that Bush cherry-picked evidence to promote an unnecessary war to destroy WMDs Saddam didn’t have, and then handed over Iraq to a bunch of screw ups who botched the occupation and precipitated the tragic state of current Iraq, are aiding the enemy, will be responsible should Bush’s ill-conceived and incompetently executed PNAC venture fail.

A nifty argument, assuming there were any parallels between World War II and Iraq which rendered the latter more defensible, except for this: In between the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the time of the successful conclusion of the attack on Okinawa, the United States conducted no less than EIGHT separate investigations into the Pearl Harbor attack:

The Knox Investigation
Dec. 9-14, 1941.

The Roberts Commission
Dec. 18-January-23, 1941

The Hart Investigation
Feb. 12-June 15, 1944

The Army Pearl Harbor Board
Jul. 20-Oct. 20, 1944

The Navy Court of Inquiry
Jul. 24-Oct. 19, 1944.

The Clarke Investigation
Aug. 4-Sep 20, 1944

The Clausen Investigation
Jan. 24-Sep. 12, 1945

The Hewitt Inquiry
May 14-July 11, 1945

The invasion of Okinawa commenced on April 1, 1945. Planning operations commenced October, 1944.

Quite literally, when the ships began “steaming toward Okinawa,” in October 1944, there were at least 2 ongoing Congressional investigations of Pearl Harbor, of the six investigations that had been commenced during the war, five of which were authorized by and made reports to Congress.

By mid-March, nearly 1,300 ships had gathered from places all over the world for the invasion. By the time the invasion commenced, the 7th investigation of Pearl Harbor, conducted by Lt. Colonel Henry Clausen at the behest of the Secretary of War, had been underway for several months, and the 8th investigation was commenced after the invasion started but before the campaign finished.

The notion that, in a democracy, holding political and military leadership accountable for their errors or deceptions during wartime constitutes a form of abetting the enemy is puerile and contrary to fact. In the case of Pearl Harbor, there were nearly continuous investigations into the failures of command — including failures in Washington (see the Army Board report to Congress), from December 9, 1941 until the cessation of hostilities in August, 1945. Some were flawed, others were incomplete, but all were conducted during the gravest national crisis and threat of the last 140 years, and none were treasonous. Obviously, none prevented a nation as great as America from prevailing in the conflict.

The insistence by charlatan-Bush supporters like Hanson that Imperator Bush and his administration be immune from investigation and criticisms for their grave mistakes during the last 5 years is, if anything, that which threatens to undermine our democracy, and our nation’s war effort. Nothing could be more ruinous than protecting those responsible for such monstrous failure, especially when they, like Hanson, who show little sign of appreciating the scope of their mistakes, and demonstrate only the likelihood that they will continue to commit similar errors.

Or perhaps Hanson is confusing the norms of American governance during wartime, with that of ancient Sparta. Clearly, he exhibits little understanding of how American democracy functions during wartime.
(hat tip to Rob at Lawyers, Guns & Money)

A great observation by Sifu over on poorman, responding to ProteinWisdom’s echo of Hanson’s argument that investigatoin into the conduct of the war undermines the actual effort:

Republicans attach incredible importance to media criticism of the war, because they genuinely believe that the war is won and lost IN THE MEDIA. The American media, that is. Their partisan selves are so thoroughly embedded in the culture-jamming electioneering of the Rovist personality cult the GOP has become that they genuinely don’t recognize the difference between actually achieving peace and a non-doomed secular democracy in Iraq, and just being able to plausibly claim that peace on American TV.