As long as we are being all "historical"...

Analogies are dangerous, I know... but this one sticks in my head. Bear with me a moment.

Last night, Jambo and I were discussing what has already been posted here, and I spent some quiet time before the fireworks display last night pondering them. In doing so, I was driven to do some more looking at historical examples of Islamic regimes from the most recent history that I could find, and I got home and started looking at my collection of WWI resources.

I was initially looking for information about the Ottomans, but I got a bit side-tracked and started looking into the coalition government that Asquith led the UK into World War One with. Several things struck me as very topical...

Asquith was a raging Liberal, and while the Liberal Party of the first decades of the Twentieth Century is a far cry from those we see today... they were still Liberal, by any definition of the word. Asquith shared his authority with a quartet of the most capable members of Parliament... Churchill (First Lord of the Admiralty), Kitchner (Head of the War Office), Balfour (a Conservative-member of the coalition who replaced Churchill in the Admiralty) and Bonar Law (another conservative, placed as Secretary of the Colonies).

This "dream team" falls apart quickly, though. Churchill lands himself in hot-water over his support for the Gallipoli Campaign (crushing failure from the start) and resigns. Kitchner dies on a trip to Russia. Tensions in Ireland were sky-high, and taking much needed support for the government away in great chunks. To "beef up" the coalition, Aquith places Lloyd George as Secretary of State for War, and the Liberal agenda begins to fall apart quickly.

The problem that Great Britain faced more than any other was that they needed early and measurable successes to drum up much needed support for the war, because the war was NOT popular with the British people... at least, not as much as the government felt it needed to be. The Liberals didn't have the budget to spend excessively, and bonds simply weren't selling the way people needed them to. The Liberals in control seemed to think that keeping military authority in the hands of "liberal" leadership was the best way, so Haig and Robertson were left in charge of strategy (both Liberal supporters), and history begins to show just how dangerous it is to place politics before national strategy.

The analogy goes further, but I think I have outlined enough here to show that Obama seems hell-bent on following Asquith's example and making as much dissent and partisan politics as possible in dealing with any national crisis that might pop up. When he has entire States of the Union (and their Governors) bad-mouthing him on national TV all hours of the day, and his senior military men questioning his abilities in the national media, while at the same time alienating other States and Governors (namely Arizona and Louisiana) for trying to fix what the Fed won't or can't... we suddenly see that the years leading up to the end of the "Rule Britannia" era are remarkably similar to what we are living in now. I take comfort in the fact that England did win the war, and did live through the end of the Empire-period... but it wasn't an easy transition.

Am I reaching, or is this a sound analogy?