Munich, Yalta or Cambodia: What year is it? [audio 60min]

If war in the Middle East is a battle for the control of images, right now in the US it's a battle for control of the analogy. Ross Douthat, in an August 2006 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal [available free online here], took on the unenviable task of wading through yards of commentary -- on Lebanon, on Iraq, on the UN, on Iran -- to discover not what pundits think we should do but what year in history pundits believe the present most resembles. According to Douthat's research, the 1942ists think we're at the beginning of a long war; 1938ists are thinking back to original appeaser Neville Chamberlain; 1948ists are chastened by Iraq but hope to stand resolute for the long struggle of containment; 1972ists believe we're engaged in fruitless illegal wars (like the secret bombing of Cambodia) that are only making things worse; and Douthat himself leaves open the possibility that it's actually 1914. So what year is it?