The slow but steady comments have been on Blogs, mainline magazines, and nightly newscasts. Critics of the war are making more and more comparisons between previous U.S. conflicts and the current Iraq War, none of which are flattering. Their goal is to besmirch the current US Administration for its ineptitude, and call attention to the US’ immoral war. Their folly lies in their misuse of facts, and misunderstanding of the nature of this conflict. And the timidity of the world is blame for any extended duration of this conflict.

On October 26, Terrence Hunt of the AP remarked how the U.S. involvement in Iraq will soon have lasted longer than our involvement in World War II. Ari Berman of The Nation made the same claim more than a month ago. And Rupert Cornwell of The Independent stated way back in August that “America’s (and Britain’s) disastrous war in Iraq has now lasted longer than the US involvement in the Second World War.” Each author uses the most convenient date for ‘beginning’ and ‘end’ of US involvement in World War II to make their point, but the actual length is not important for them. Many others have also chimed in, all painting a picture of overwhelming despair because of the suffering of this conflict.

The forgotten facts are too numerous to recount, but humor me with just a few. First, World War II really began in the early 1930s when the Japanese invaded Northern China, and started their Pacific expansion which eventually led to the conquest of the entire Pacific Rim. Our entry into the conflict did not begin until 1941 only because of our blindness to the growing aggression of the Japanese, and we (and the rest of the Far East) paid a dear price for our unwillingness to stand up to the growing bully. Second, official conflict on the European front started on September 1, 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. This was not the real start of hostilities (ask the Czechs or the Jews), but Europe was ‘officially’ at war by the fall of 1939. And yes, you critics out there are correct in deducing that America did not enter the European fight for more than two years, but ask Poland, Belgium, France, Holland, Britain, parts of Africa, Middle East, and the Soviet Union if the world was at war, and they will mock your isolationist ignorance. Lastly, the major hostilities of World War II ended with the treaties signed on VE and VJ days, but the conflicts were far from over. German guerrilla groups continued to kill Americans, and any Germans that cooperated with the Allied invaders. All of Europe took billions in US capital via the military, the Marshall Plan and US charitable organizations to get it back on its feet after more than a decade of Hitler’s evil and the rest of Europe’s denial and then retribution.

The personnel and body count differences between the two conflicts make any comparison of suffering seem silly. Low estimates of World War II deaths are as high as 50 million, with higher reports climbing to nearly 100 million. American deaths were a mere 418,000 citizens, while Poland lost 16 percent of its population. Compared to that kind of suffering, the current Iraqi conflict is painful, but not even on the same level as World War II.

Militarily, The United States landed over 156,000 soldiers on the beaches of Normandy in 1944 and suffered over 10,000 casualties in those first few days. While our casualty count in Iraq is now higher than the D-Day invasion, the extreme nature of the suffering in such a short amount of time overwhelms any comparison with today’s conflict. Our highest troop levels in Iraq have hovered right around the total D-Day veterans’ total (with our country’s population roughly twice the WW II size), making the current conflict significantly less of a strain on the US and its resources than World War II.

Various pundits have used other conflicts for comparisons with Iraqi Freedom (Vietnam), but World War II is the best comparison to make my point—Iraqi Freedom, however devastating it is, is no where near the tragedy and personal loss experienced during World War II. This war could drag on another 10 years (heaven forbid), and the pain would still not equal the 10 million US servicemen drafted during WW II, the MILLIONS killed, the TRILLIONS spent, and the overall lives ruined by WW II. War is never a joyous moment. In armed conflict, nobody really wins. But sometimes that suffering is required to prevent future, greater suffering at the hands of emboldened, ruthless thugs who have no timeline, and who think as little about 3,000 lives as they do about 100 million.

The timidity for real conflict in today’s discourse is the root cause for the extended duration of the current conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan, and indeed the rest of the world. We fight a ruthless, barbaric enemy who values his lust for power more than he values his own sons, and yet we refuse to call him an enemy, refuse to crush him, and assume that he can be reasoned with. Our current enemy respects brute force, and continues to sacrifice its own children in the murder of soldiers, women and children. Until we respect him as an enemy and not as a neighbor, we will never see peace.

Comparisons help us develop yardsticks for how we are doing. But poor comparisons to prove an otherwise poor point only muddy the waters, and trivialize the suffering of both current and previous conflicts. One comparison with World War II is critical, however. The West’s unwillingness to tackle the problem of Islamic-Fascism head on ensures that we will some day reap results similar to the suffering of the World War II generation. That is one comparison I hope we can avoid.