Since Andrew Sullivan's on vacation I'll take a potshot at Mickey Kaus (for some reason there's no option to link to the specific post).  He writes:

Edward Luttwak notes that

6,821 Americans ...died to conquer the eight square miles of Iwo Jima.

That's more than twice the number of Americans who've died in the entire Iraq war. ... [Rationalization?-ed Perspective.]

It's certainly perspective, but I don't see why it's useful perspective.  If there are people laboring under the misunderstanding that Iraq is one of the bloodiest wars of all time, or that American casualties are astronomical compared to previous American wars, I suppose cluing them in to US military history and the world's sad record of violent death and mayhem is important.  But what's the point of bringing up Iwo Jima in a discussion of Iraq?  If this war wasn't necessary, or if the costs of fighting it are massively greater than the likely costs of avoiding it, then no amount of "perspective" about previous blood-lettings is relevant.  If Kaus wants to defend the war by arguing that the price we and Iraq have paid is acceptable given the gains we're likely to make down the road, he should have at it.  But pointing out that it's not the worst thing that's ever happened, like World War II was, is beside the point.

It's also an argument that quickly becomes offensive.  Maybe it's tempting, out in Los Angeles, to roll your eyes at the ignorant anti-war poseurs in your midst and point out that more Americans died at Iwo Jima than have died in Iraq.  But you'd have to be a harder person to make light of Iraqi civilian casualties in the same way (e.g., "Let's have a little perspective here—about 18,000 innocent Iraqis have died this year, but what's that compared to the 100,000 innocents who died when the US firebombed Tokyo?").  And you'd have to be someone who doesn't value a place in polite American society to turn the argument around and say, "What was the big deal about Sept. 11?  Almost 400,000 innocent people died during the Rape of Nanking, let's have a little perspective about 3,000 people killed in New York and Washington."  People don't (or shouldn't) say things like that because it belittles human suffering and replaces authentic historical perspective with a snide game of "Can you top this?"

Unless you're literally talking about the worst thing that has ever happened you can always be lazy and beside the point by bringing up some previous calamity that dwarfs the one under discussion.  But, for not-so-mysterious reasons, a guy like Kaus—who's still agnostic on whether Iraq will end up being worth it—is happy to trot out Iwo Jima to minimize the bloodshed here but did not minimize Sept. 11 in the run-up to the invasion in 2003.  The thousands of Americans who died on Iwo Jima gave their lives destroying a regime responsible for the Rape of Nanking, a slew of other atrocities, and numerous unprovoked invasions (of China, of the Philippines, of southeast Asia, etc.).  It was a regime that killed millions.  It sought (and at one point largely possessed) imperial control of east Asia and the Pacific.  It was formally allied with Nazi Germany in a war against Britain and the United States, the only surviving liberal democracies with enough men and enough money to stave off the global triumph of genocidal fascism.  What the scale of that conflict has to do with the scale of the conflict in Iraq escapes me, but maybe I just lack the proper historical perspective.

 

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