I saw some of the House debate on the resolution that condemns the addition of 21,500 troops to the forces fighting in Iraq. Representative Randy Forbes (R) from Virginia made the analogy that has been used over and over again with the Iraq war anytime the war has been criticized. Forbes and others said, basically, “if you crazy critics had been in charge during world war 2, Hitler would have won.” There are too many logical flaws with this argument to go into, so I’ll just pick two:

(1) That argument could be invoked anytime anyone wants to go to war with anyone for any reason. Say I’m the president and I decide that we must invade, oh, I don’t know, Canada. My reasons are that we must make a preemptive strike because I am convinced that Canada is about to become a grave threat to the United States. People rightly criticize this argument for war. I can simply say, “people didn’t want us to invade Europe during world war 2 either, and think what would have happened if we hadn’t.” The Normandy analogy has the same legitimacy in this ridiculous scenario as it does for the Iraq war: none at all.

(2) In world war 2 we were in a state of war with other countries. Today we are not. We are not at war with Iraq. Or any country.

There was one argument made against the resolution that, while I don’t agree with it, was at least a rational and reasonable argument against it. It was made by Jim Marshall (D) from Georgia’s 3rd congressional district, and he is voting no because the congress does not have power or authority to manage the operation of the armed forces, and as a purely symbolic gesture he worries that it might have a negative impact on some of the armed forces while having no impact on the administration’s execution of the war.