The Wrong History Lesson

Not content merely to repeat the mistakes of the history it never learned, BushCo. now sinks to new lows of learning lessons from the wrong history.

The half-century US military presence in South Korea may be a model for a future in which US forces play a support role in Iraq rather than a frontline combat role, the White House said Wednesday.

No matter how long our military is in Iraq (or Afghanistan), they will never recreate the North-South Korea dynamic in the Middle East. There are no defined boundaries to turn into DMZs. There are no Cold-War-Style militaries staring each other down. There will never be a 50-year cease-fire.

As always, no matter what they try to do, this administration does it wrong.

Don't look to Korea, don't look to the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe for lessons. Look instead to the French in Indochina. Look to the US in Vietnam. Look to the Russian experience in Afghanistan. Those are the times and the places to learn from. And they all teach the same lesson: a "superpower" can never defeat an insurgency.