In times of uncertainty, people reach for historical analogies. After 9/11, George W. Bush administration officials invoked Pearl Harbor as a standard comparison in processing the intelligence failure that led to the attack. Secretary of State Colin Powell referred to Imperial Japan’s attack in making the case that Washington should deliver an ultimatum to the Taliban, saying, “Decent countries don’t launch surprise attacks.” And as officials in the Situation Room tried to assess progress in Afghanistan and, later, Iraq, another analogy came up more than a few times: U.S. President Lyndon Johnson’s disastrous reliance on body counts in Vietnam. Even if history doesn’t repeat itself, it sometimes rhymes.
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