Strange Women Lying in Ponds returns from vacation with an insightful post about Churchill as the hinge of history in the 20th century:

It is perhaps easy to view Churchill's staunch leadership through WWII as an inevitability; as a case of the right man being in the right place at the right time, etc. This is Churchill the Noble, the Invincible, given moral authority by his role as leader of an island nation that was Europe's last bulwark against the successful establishment of a Nazi empire throughout the Continent. Here he is a symbol of courage under fire, of a morally ascendant Great Britain defying an evil and militarily superior invader.

The irony is that, had history turned out as Churchill would have liked, this image of him never would have come to pass.

SWLIP reminds us that in order to avoiding repeating history, we have to know and understand it. Think about this in the context of today's war on Islamofascism and the abuse directed at Bush and Blair. And bear in mind that Churchill had no historical precedent for a so-called "pre-emptive" war, which really is a misnomer anyway. Just like with Saddam's Iraq, Hitler's Germany broke treaty after treaty during the 1930s, any one of which could have been a perfectly acceptable casus belli.

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