The Great Game

"Beyond the futility of armed force, and ultimately more important, is the fact that war in our time inevitably results in the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of people. To put it more bluntly, war is terrorism. That is why a "war on terrorism" is a contradiction in terms."

Howard Zinn

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

Hanlon’s Razor

Matt Yglesias has written an excellent analysis of use of the analogy of Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler by the pro-war-with-Iran propagandists. The conclusion is below.

So the "lesson" people want to draw from the 1930s isn't that we should take people's statements more seriously. Rather, the "lesson" they've learned is that we should always adopt the most alarmist possible interpretation of every given situation. But, of course, they never put it that way. Why don't they? Well, because when you put it that way it sounds like a stupid lesson. Which, obviously, it is. If you want to draw lessons from history, you need to really look at history as a whole. Have countries, as a general matter, been well served by adopting maximally alarmist interpretations of events abroad? I don't think that's a remotely justifiable view. If anything, history teaches the reverse lesson.

Sounds pretty stupid when you put it that way doesn't it.