September 23, 2006
George Packer and Historical Analogies Posted by Fredric Smoler at 08:30 AM EST George Packer, the author of The Assassin’s Gate: America in Iraq, just spoke at my college earlier this week, on foreign policy and the upcoming election. Packer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, was calm, careful, and painfully honest, which are qualities as rare in campus discussions of Iraq as they are in other venues. One question from the audience was admirable for its modesty and clarity. A colleague on the left, unlike my other colleagues on the left a former naval officer, asked Packer what he should say to acquaintances who described my colleague’s antiwar position as “appeasement” and made the Munich analogy. Packer’s answer was that the Munich analogy is generally used as a bludgeon, and is an attempt to shut down discussion. He advised my colleague to ask his interlocutors to leave off talking history and instead talk about the future of the United States and Iraq. In addition to being particularly skeptical about the Munich analogy, Packer seemed generally skeptical about the value of historical analogies. I think that while there is some wisdom in that, there are also a number of problems with Packer’s response. First of all, while the shortcomings of historical analogy are legion, those analogies remain invaluable: if we abandon them, we deprive ourselves of any possibility of historical perspective on current dilemmas. I once discussed this question for American Heritage with Yale’s Donald Kagan, who had just published a book analogizing the Peloponnesian War to the First World War, and the Second Punic War to the Second World War, and was quite aware of the objections to historical analogies. He conceded their shortcomings and then spoke of their practical necessity. He said, “There’s no escaping history. No matter what people say theoretically, in their daily lives they take note of the past and make judgments about the likelihood of its recurrence. The drunk husband coming home at 2:00 A.M. knows from past experience to be very, very quiet. That is the study of history in its most simple sense, and people couldn’t live from day to day without doing a fair amount of it, which reveals something about history in the larger sense: Everybody knows perfectly well that there are constants in human behavior as well as discontinuities, and if this weren’t true, our capacity to function in the world would disappear entirely.” The analogy between the dangers posed by Islamist terrorists and radical nationalist states on the one hand, and Nazi Germany in 1938 on the other, has obvious problems. The most obvious is that neither Islamists nor radical nationalist states possess the equivalent of what would become the 1939-1941 Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht, nor are they planning to invade (most of) their enemies’ home countries. Insofar as Iran, say, develops nuclear weapons, or North Korea retains them, or Pakistan fails to control or actually uses them, the analogy’s problems in one respect may diminish very fast indeed. But even under the circumstances that prevail right now, people who speak of appeasement may mean something that compels our attention. So we should ask ourselves not only why the analogy is vastly imperfect, but why it seems plausible to some people, not all of whom are villains or fools. The appeasers believed that Nazi Germany had legitimate grievances—many of them resulting from the Versailles treaty—and they had a case. They believed that many, perhaps most, people are less aggressive when their legitimate grievances are met, or even partially met, and they again had a case. They finally believed that appeasing grievances is better than war. That sounds appealing, but in the event, the appeasers made concessions that failed to appease, and got war anyway, one they fought from a position of relative weakness, at extraordinary cost. The appeasers failed to realize that Hitler could not in fact be appeased, that his demands were extreme, and that he was capable of lying about their nature, although not capable of lying with perfect consistency. Some of the people who deprecate various concessions to Islamists and radical nationalists as appeasement have the sense that the ultimate demands of those parties are also extreme. Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian government, and the Syrian government periodically demand the destruction of one of our allies. If we are willing to do that, Al Qaeda also demands Andalusia. Islamists demand the censorship of the European and American press—remember those Danish cartoons? Islamist demands include the maintenance or restoration of sexual regimes which range from the grindingly oppressive to the murderous. People who deprecate appeasement are often told that the highest priority is lowering tensions by achieving mutual understanding, and mutual understanding remains a commendable goal. It should probably start with understanding who our enemies are, and what they truly want of us. It is possible that we have no perdurable and implacable enemies in the Islamist and radical nationalist camps. It is also extremely unlikely. I am sure Packer knew this; I am not sure his questioner could have realized that Packer knew this, given Packer’s answer. As it happens, Packer went on to deprecate as equally unhelpful the Vietnam analogy posed by opponents of the Iraq war. I do not expect most of those who abominate the Munich analogy to drop the Vietnam one. Packer seemed to be an unusually, even peculiarly, honest man.
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