With the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq under way seven years after they were "greeted as liberators," it seems a proper time to review the country's recent wars through the original -- and troubling -- writing of historian John W. Dower.

"Embracing Defeat," his previous book, won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for its thorough and original account of Japan's remaking following World War II. The book is notable for its author's knowledge of that country's visual media and popular culture as he focuses on the uses of images and symbols as political tools.

As he points out, the retention of Emperor Hirohito as a symbol of continuity and heritage was crucial to the effective American post-war occupation of Japan.

Mr. Dower seizes upon the many symbolic meanings of "Pearl Harbor" in light of the surprise attack on America Sept. 11, 2001.

"The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century happened today," President George W. Bush wrote in his diary on the evening of the terrorist attacks.

Newspaper headlines following 9/11 echoed President Franklin Roosevelt's famous phrase, "day of infamy," in their coverage.

Just as Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II, Sept. 11 was used in the same way as the justification for the Bush administration's overthrow of Iraq, Mr. Dower writes.

"History has a funny way of deciding things," said Bush adviser Karl Rove. "Sometimes history sends you things and 9/11 came our way."

But there were signs in the months before that day in September that something threatening was on the way, and like Pearl Harbor, those signs went unheeded, again ignored for the same reasons -- an inefficient turf-protecting bureaucracy and American ignorance about their attackers.

"I never thought those little yellow sons-of-bitches could pull off such an attack. ...," disgraced Pearl Harbor Adm. Husband Kimmel said.

The background of the Iraq invasion has been extensively studied in a spate of books, but Mr. Dower re-emphasizes the troubling nature of that background, from a preoccupation with Saddem Hussein before 9/11 to the various false reasons for the invasion.

Running with the Pearl Harbor imagery, Bush officials pointed to the orderly occupation of Japan as a model for its post-invasion program in Iraq, even though they had none, Mr. Dower points out.

Refusing to conduct "nation building," dirty words to the neoconservatives running the president's foreign policy, Bush officials like Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld rejected concrete proposals and "winged it" once the Hussein regime was toppled.

The result was bloody chaos, forcing Mr. Rumsfeld to quit. In Japan, nation-building produced an orderly, effective transition in the face of widespread destruction, including the dropping of two atomic bombs, that could have sparked deep hatred of their conquerors on the part of the Japanese.

"Hiroshima" and "Ground Zero" are Mr. Dower's other prime images invoking the terror of mass destruction from the air. Osama bin Laden used Hiroshima as a code word for America's mistreatment of others while later employing the same word to describe the Sept. 11 attacks.

Ground Zero, first applied to the epicenter of the atomic blasts, now refers to the World Trade Center site in a reversal of its original meaning.

"Unlike the atomic bombs, which marked the closing pages of a merciless war ...," Mr. Dower writes, "9/11 inaugurated a seemingly interminable struggle ... ."

Nine years later, thousands of U.S. soldiers still remain in a violent Iraq despite the pullout, while in Afghanistan the Taliban remains strong.

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