The problem with our national analysis of the war on terror is that most of us don’t know much history, according to Jonah Goldberg. So we go cherry-picking where we already know there are cherries.
One of the main reasons we leap to analogies about World War II and the Cold War is that it’s the only history most of us know.
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If Iraq is Vietnam, we allegedly have no choice but to accept the futility of our presence there and depart. If the war on terror is like the Nazi menace, it’s time to wax Churchillian.
It’s true that the analogy of Ahmadinejad to Hitler is pretty strained.
Iran is an economic and military weakling... [whereas] Der Fuehrer [had] a strong economy and an enormous military to accomplish his objectives.
The difference, of course, is nuclear weapons. A military weakling like Iran looks a lot different with the destructive power of nuclear weapons.
Or does it? It is, after all, telling that the US and the Soviet Union never used nuclear weapons during the cold war. How seriously should the world take Iran and North Korea—with or without nuclear weapons?
The problem is: We don’t know. “[H]istory may be offering us a blank page.” And that is why everyone disagrees about what kind of a war we are in. If we are in a war.
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