In today’s commencement address to recent graduates of the Air Force Academy, President Bush sought to make his modern-day War on Terror analogous to the heroic fighting of World War II. And in the grand tradition of Bush’s prior usage of black-and-white absolutism, the speech framed the current struggle in the Middle East in terms of very clear and sharp contrasts: right and wrong, good and bad, democracy and fascism, father and son, etc.
His speech was notably short on specifics, however. Admittedly, his communications director Dan Bartlett is probably very overworked right now, having to fend off an increasingly combative press and increasing dissension in the ranks of the Bush White House, so we thought we’d help and compile this list of additional WWII analogies Bush might have invoked this afternoon, had his writers and researchers been given more time.
| World War II | War on Terror™ |
| United States criticized for being a bit late to begin fighting | United States criticized for being a bit, well, early to begin fighting |
| Fighting against the Axis Powers | Fighting against the Axis of Evil |
| The Germans? Not so cooperative. | The Germans? Not so cooperative. |
| The French? Pussies. | The French? Pussies. |
| Franz Ferdinand? So three decades ago. | Franz Ferdinand? So three months ago. |
| Born from the ashes of the first W.W. | Born from the loins of the first H.W. |
| Band of Brothers | Band on the Run |
| Greatest Generation | Greatest Generation (of capital for Halliburton and Bechtel) |
| No gay soldiers | No gay soldiers, save for those who coordinated massive pile-ups of Iraqi prisoners and photographed their bare asses |
| A president confined to his wheelchair | A president confined to Crawford, Texas |
| Green camouflage, and great uniforms | Tan camouflage, and not enough Kevlar jackets |
| The War to End All Wars | … |
