Patrols by ‘History Police’ Urged : Some scholars say a watchdog group is needed to set the record straight when politicians draw bad analogies from the past.

Sick and tired of politicians playing fast and loose with history, some historians are toying with the notion of forming a rapid-response team of “historical-analogy police” to patrol the public discourse.

The group would operate like “truth squads” that monitor campaign rhetoric, but its targets would be weak historical reasoning, irresponsible use of evidence and “dangerous analogizing.”

Is it accurate, for example, to compare allowing gays in the military to the earlier racial integration of the armed forces? Was Saddam Hussein another Adolf Hitler? Did the Gulf War have the makings of another Vietnam War?

“It’s downright embarrassing to a historian to have to watch policy-makers flail around in bad history lessons,” grumbled Otis L. Graham Jr., a professor of history at UC Santa Barbara who said he is intrigued by the idea.

The idea of creating historical-analogy police is proposed in the current issue of the Public Historian, the leading journal of the so-called public history movement, which promotes the practice of history in public arenas such as government and business.

In the article, historian James M. Banner Jr. suggests that since the use of historical knowledge in public life “is appallingly bad,” an independent committee of historians should, when necessary, set the record straight.

His proposal is rooted in the belief that the mangling of history leads to errors in judgment, and that society would be better off if historians weighed in more often on matters of public concern.

But some historians suspect the idea would fail, in part because historians can not agree among themselves on what is true.

“The whole question of objectivity has become exceedingly controversial,” said John Higham, a retired professor of history at Johns Hopkins University. “Any watchdog group . . . would in my opinion be howled down by too many historians as a kind of Establishment . . . conspiracy.”

Historians have long been edgy about the misuse of history in policy-making, and research suggests that bad analogies have in fact made for bad policy.

The most famous study of the subject is “Lessons of the Past,” a 1972 book by Harvard University historian Ernest R. May, which traced how policy-makers had used and misused history.

One example historians cite is how the memory of the carnage of World War I prompted the policy of appeasement toward Hitler in the 1930s, and how the failure of appeasement was used as an argument to meet aggression with force in the Vietnam War.

May also found that the Vietnam War policies of the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administrations were influenced by fear that the “loss” of Vietnam to the Communists would hurt the Democrats in the 1960s the way the “loss” of China had in the 1940s.

May concluded that policy-makers tend to use history badly: They seize upon the first analogy that comes to mind and, from then on, see only the facts that conform to their preconceived notions.

Many others have come to share that view. “I think there’s a lot of bad history in Washington,” said Donald Ritchie of the Senate’s historical office. “ . . . Once you get locked into a bad analogy, it can blind you to the reality of the time.”

In his article, Banner suggested that the independent group of historians he proposes could use press releases, news conferences and editorial pieces to stem the tide of “weak historical reasoning, the irresponsible use of evidence, dangerous analogizing and missing historical facts.”

“The group would have to act like the rapid-response team of a medical or fire corps,” wrote Banner, who directs academic programs for the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation in Washington. “To be effective, its actions would have to be swift, its critiques sharply pertinent, its views clearly stated.”

Historian William E. Leuchtenburg says the misuse of historical knowledge comes both as simple misstatements of fact and murkier matters of misinterpretation.

He recalled hearing former President Gerald R. Ford misstate the date of the end of World War II. “Things of that sort are indisputably wrong,” said Leuchtenburg, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Other matters are more subtle and not all historians would agree.

“What was the appropriateness of the Vietnam analogy to the Gulf War, for example? That was a much trickier matter. That’s the sort of thing I think historians would want to talk about before they got too far into this.”

That analogy, used widely in Congress in late 1990 by those who opposed the use of military force, may have initially seemed fitting: Iraq was rumored to have amassed a formidable army; as in Vietnam, the terrain was unfamiliar; and it seemed that other nations might become involved in the war.

But the Gulf War then ended abruptly in what was perceived as a U.S. victory. The Vietnam War dragged on for years and ended in defeat. In retrospect, as Leuchtenburg sees it, the analogy seems less apt.

In recent months, another controversial analogy has emerged. Members of the Clinton Administration have likened their effort to allow gays in the military to President Harry S. Truman’s 1948 order to desegregate the armed forces.

The analogy is being used as an argument for lifting the ban on gays, subtly casting opponents into the same camp as those now seen as racist.

But critics, including Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, contend that it is incorrect to compare skin color with sexual orientation: One is behavioral, the other isn’t, they say.

For that reason, they argue, blacks and whites may be able to live together in close quarters in a way heterosexuals and gays may not.

Deciding if an analogy works, experts say, takes a trained eye.

“It takes a textured understanding of the similarities and differences in the case,” Banner said. “That’s what historical knowledge provides.”