The real parallels

The trouble with arguing historical analogies:

But Mr. Bush's statement also revived a perennial question. Whenever a public officials starts to say “the lesson of,” is that a cue to stop listening?

“It is great for sound bites but it is completely misleading,” said Jeffrey Record, a professor of strategy at the United States Air Force's Air War College in Montgomery, Ala. He wrote a nine-point rebuttal to the analogies in Mr. Bush's speech. “Reasoning by historical analogy is inherently dangerous,” Professor Record said. “It is especially dangerous in the hands of policymakers whose command of history is weak and who are pushing specific policy agendas.”

In a way, it was intriguing to see the president drag out Vietnam, since it turned the Democrats' favorite analogy back on them, but it wasn't exactly edifying. As Mr. Record indicates, the problem is that politicians aren't really interested in learning from history. They just want to cherry-pick it to support their positions. There are, unfortunately, plenty of wars from which to choose in order to support or attack any policy.

The real lesson we can learn from Vietnam is about domestic politics. The parallels between the two wars -- the arc of public support, the role of the media, the tactics of the supporters and the opposition -- are striking.