Fred Barnes, editor of the Weekly Standard, writes about the similarities between the current war in Iraq and the First World War, in "War and History". He makes some interesting points about the way history has excoriated Wilson as a idealistic failure, but as he notes, the real similarities are not to be found in a comparison of U.S. policy in 1917 and 2003, but between German policy in 1914 and current U.S. thinking. Certainly Wilson is one of the intellectual ancestors of neoconsersative thinking, with its emphasis on democratisation at the global level and the U.S.'s active participation in that enterprise. But the other side of the neocon coin is a doctrine of preemptive war that bears a lot of resemblance to German thinking in the lead up to the War. As Barnes says, the motives of the two are almost identical: to go to war in order "to prevent a fate worse than a short war".