'Mike Yon, Sunday'
Kevin gave me a heads up that Michael Yon will be on WRKO's Pundit Review on Sunday at about 9:20 p.m., to talk about his latest trip to Iraq. ... Speaking of Iraq, Tufts' Daniel Drezner has some thoughts. I'm not big on his suggestion that history may be repeating itself in terms of the 'surge.' It's too historically neat and tidy. But Dan's views are always insightful -- and I've been proven wrong on a lot of things on Iraq. The president has threatened to pull out if Iraq's government doesn't get its act together. ... FYI: I'm just generally tired of all the historical analogies. The Iraq War should be remembered as the Worst Historical Analogies Ever War -- with constant comparisons to Churchill, Munich, WWII, the Civil War, Vietnam etc. etc. I've been guilty of it too. ... Michael Totten is writing up a storm about Lebanon. Seeing his photos of smashed Hezbollah bunkers, I now have a good idea how tough the fighting there was for the Israelis. They won't make the same mistakes next time. And I do believe there will be a next time. ...

Update - 01.14.07 -- Charles writes in:

I'm with you on all of the historical analogies. Victor Davis Hanson is probably the worst offender. If the writer is an actual historian I might take an analogy seriously for a moment, but one must always remember that the interpretation of both the present and the past is being put in service of an ideological argument. Non-historians are even worse. They suffer from two handicaps: first, they don't understand the present day and second, they don't understand history, which makes whatever they write suffer from the "bullshit multiplier effect" (which I just Googled and found one use of, so I'm claiming it as my own). ...

BTW: I tinkered with the post above. The word I was looking for was 'analogies,' not 'metaphors.'  ¶ 4:33 PM