It occurs to me that this debate about WWII (and WWI, necessarily part of the discussion) gains energy from the fact that advocates of this or that intervention constantly hurl references to Chamberlain’s umbrella and Lindbergh in lieu of analysing the present situation with care. For some interventionists, its Groundhog Day, 1938, every day, and until the eloquent bulldog Churchill came aboard to right the ship, Britain was ruled by limp-wristed Germanophile toffs who were taken in by, and refused to stand up to, Hitler.Those who support a bit of prudence and caution are simply Nevilles without the accent.

The rhythmic repetition of this claimed analogy can easily lead anti-interventionists to question not only whether today’s jihadis equal 1938′s Nazis, but whether the reduction of pre-WWII politics to the image of a Neville and his umbrella is historically accurate, and whether one can imagine alternate histories based on different strategies.

In the end, of course, everyone lost WWII, except the Americans, who kept their powder dry the longest, and perhaps the Soviet nomenklatura, whose country was shattered but came to dominate Centural Europe for 44 years.

For me, it’s easier to make Woodrow Wilson the villain of the piece who set the dominoes falling in the name of his absurd idealism. It’s easy to denounce Wilson. Understanding 1938 and all that requires nuance.

Perish that thought.

Those who want to throw stones at the idea of anti-anticommunism, for example, should ponder what that kind of thinking must mean for conservatives who object to the more reckless aspects of modern anti-jihadism. There is a sober sort of anticommunism that informed the “doctrine” of containment, and then a more reckless sort that saw the fall of South Vietnam as integrally linked to U.S. national security. Likewise, I think there can be sober anti-jihadism that recognises the reality and evil of the threat without jumping on board with every call for intervention in the Near East or elsewhere.

Also, what can it mean to call John Lukacs a “crank”? If he’s a crank, God knows what that makes the rest of us.

Just for the record, I do not agree with John Lukacs 95% of the time. 20% of the time might be more accurate. The finest conservative analysts of my life have been Pat Buchanan and Sam Francis, each of whom I have been privileged to have as a friend. I thus regard critical reviews of Buchanan somewhat differently than I would critcal reviews of someone I do not know.

Of course, Buchanan and Francis each have supported populism, nationalism, and anti-Communism, and thus, according to Lukacs’ taxonomy, are not really conservatives at all. Needless to say, I disagree with Lukacs here too.