Coalition Schmoalition

Mark Levin commits the classic historical error in his column:
Compare the current situation to an older situation, which has been misrepresented by history, and then apply the misrepresentation to the current situation.
Mr. Levin takes the current war coalition, where the US contributes 84.3% of the troops, and compares it to the Korean War, where we contributed 89.8% of the troops (the current coalition also contains twice as many countries (32 cf. to 16).

His conclusion?
"The fact is that President Bush has built a real and impressive coalition in Iraq."

No, Mark, the fact is that we didn't have much of a coalition in Korea. It was a US action under the pretense of the United Nations, not a great coalition.
In contract, we did have a reasonable coalition in the first Gulf War, with over 300,000 troops from other countries cg. to our 540,000 (we were ~ 64.3% of the force), and as I recall, a lot of financial help.

Deroy Murdock attacks those who question our "coalition" by shifting the argument:
"None of America's 33 partners ever had to send so much as a Q-Tip to support Operation Iraqi Freedom. The fact that any nation assigns even one citizen to fight shoulder to shoulder with U.S. GIs should elicit celebration and gratitude,"

Well. let's deal with this; yes, Murdock is right that we should be grateful for even one soldier (which is what many of the countries are sending).
But it is ridiculous to pretend that this is a "real coalition," just as it is preposterous to think that Ross Perot's 1992 campagin was funded by a "coalition" of donors, because some of his supporters sent him a few bucks each.
An inability to get a coalition is not, of course, in and of itself, an argument against the war. If the war was necessary, then we should have done it even without any allies if that had been required.
However, to claim that we have assembled a "real and impressive" coalition is nonsense. We have built an American occupation force with assistance from the British, a little bit of help from the Netherlands, Italy, and Poland, and token support from 27 other countries.

Bush, when faced with this question, will retreat to his defense of naming all of the contries that have sent token forces, and his lap-dogs like Andrew Sullivan will act as if this is a devastating critique of the argument that we don't have much support. I remember a particularly obnoxious talk-radio host (I think it was Dan Pierce) who, when a caller brought this up, played back a tape of Bush listing the countries in the coalition. The fact of the matter is, is that our coalition contains little more than token support from most of the countries.

When Dick Cheney basically said that terrorist atacks would be more likely if Kerry were elected, the otherwise somewhat loopy Adam Yoshida brought up a good point to counter all the huffing and puffing that this was beyond the pale of discourse: "But is it True?"
Bush's response to Kerry's charges that we don't have much of a coalition is to accuse him of discouraging our soldiers. I present the same question to Bush as Adam presented to Kerry supporters: "But is it [i.e. Kerry's criticism] true?"