One of the sadly long-running jokes in my professional circles is the propensity to invoke "The Next Hitler" or "They're Like the Nazis" in the course of making arguments about foreign policy. I blogged about the Fallacy of '39 here, and publicized the "Raico Reversal" to the Fallacy here.
Meanwhile, via American Footprints, the Cunning Realist has done the work I haven't had the patience to, and chronicles the many and bizarre invocations of the Hitler analogy made by our current defense secretary.
More problematic, I think, is that the only historical analogy Americans seem to remember is the appeasement of Hitler. The American public's knowledge of international politics only includes events that involved the United States and, if we're lucky, stretches back to 1938. If I had to pick one twentieth century analogy that guided the American public's understanding of international affairs, I think I'd pick the Great War. It might get us farther than invoking the remarkable moral horror and genuine threat to our security that was the Third Reich, and seeing the face of Hitler behind every two-bit despot this side of Burma.
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