Bush's Revisionist Historians

There have been some strange appropriations of phrases by the Bush White House recently: discussing the distribution of the monetary benefits of tax cuts across income groups is class warfare, and seeking the truth about Saddam's WMD programs is revisionist history. Judging from Opinionjournal.com today, it now appears that our conventional history of World War II was also put together by those pesky revisionist historians, and thankfully these guys are here to set us straight.

Today's update opens with a standard Opinionjournal tactic: when the Dear Leader has been totally busted on something, they launch into a long tirade about a seemingly unrelated matter, and by the end we are supposed to see the link to vindication of the Infallible One. In this case the argument is something about how the Democrats failed to make the Iran-Contra scandal stick, so they are on a loser about the WMDs as well. By the way, their analysis of why Iran-Contra didn't stick neatly skips over the endless stonewalling by the Reagan administration, up to and including possible lying by Reagan and his Vice-President, whose name escapes us right now.

But leave all this aside and look at their concluding paragraph:

Rumsfeld is exactly right [on how 9-11 affected view of Iraq], and the Democrats will self-destruct unless they grasp the political ramifications of the national epiphany that was Sept. 11. The response that "Iraq had nothing to do with Sept. 11," though possibly accurate, is beside the point--the equivalent of arguing in 1942 that Germany had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor. FDR and Truman knew who America's enemies were, but many of their heirs seem not to.

There is so much insanity here, we're not sure where to begin. Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11 is only a possibly accurate statement? And the Pope is possibly Jewish too. But it's the World War II "history" presented here that's most bogus. The supposed analogy is that Pearl Harbor = 9-11, and yet the US also made war against Germany = (Iraq) even though Germany (Iraq) and Japan (al Qaeda) were not connected.

Let's have some facts now:
1. The US didn't declare war on Germany following Pearl Harbor. Germany declared war on the US.
2. Germany and Japan had an explicit alliance, dating from 1940. It's called the Tripartite Pact, and it'll be covered in any decent (but now revisionist?) history of WWII.

In short, America's enemies had made themselves gleefully, and collectively, clear. No lies were required. Finally, note the return to one of Opinionjournal's favourite tropes, 9-11 as an epiphany. Once again, we refer one and all to the meaning of this word.