It Takes a Historian to Find the Right Language

Yesterday Julian Zelizer, Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University, filed a Commentaries piece on the CNN Opinion Web site. He used a phrase that has dared not speak its name since the dark days of Vietnam. His article was about the danger of "mission creep" in Iraq. He cited its past history in Vietnam but also argued that the concept stretched back to the Korean War (for which a peace treaty has never been signed). Unfortunately, even in the White House, it appears that understanding the past has little to do with how actions are taken in the present.