After all, the past is our only real guide to the future, and historical analogies are instruments for distilling and organizing the past and converting it to a map by which we can navigate.
The war on terror, I believe, will be waged by effective intelligence and police work and cruise missiles.
If architecture is, as is sometimes said, music set in concrete, then football and basketball may be said to be creativity embodied in team sports.
While analogies are useful, however, they can also be misleading. They smuggle in assumptions that can be wrong.
In truth, every American administration since that of Franklin D. Roosevelt has maintained close ties with the Saudi rulers, and for a single, simple reason: oil.
The United States plays, for the most part, a constructive global role, and to the extent that that role shrinks, other countries, even those most critical of what America does abroad, will suffer.
