OLD EUROPE REMEMBERS ITS HISTORY.(MAIN)

Byline: JUSTIN VAISSE

The Bush administration and ``Old Europe,'' as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld called France and Germany, disagree on Iraq because they use different historical analogies to account for the situation and have different views of the natural course of history and what they can do about it. That may be the key to the trans-Atlantic disagreement over going to war. Understanding this could open the way to a more peaceful, more permanent resolution of the crisis.

President Bush made clear in his State of the Union address that he compares a war in Iraq to the fight against Hitlerism and that he sees himself as a latter-day Winston Churchill, persevering against evil.

``If this is not evil,'' he said after listing Iraqi methods of torture, ``then evil has no meaning.'' Actually, he goes further than Churchill, pledging not just to react against an imminent threat or already committed aggression, but to prevent a future war, a future Munich or even a North Korea-type situation, from ever happening. (``America and the world will not be blackmailed,'' said the President.)

We know from the buildup of U.S. forces in the …