Analogies can be useful. They can help us understand a complicated situation. But they can also lead us astray: Saying one thing is like another does not imply that one thing is the same as another.

This is the trap that Philip H. Gordon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, falls into in a Sunday Washington Post op-ed. He rightly observes that the Cold War, fought against Communism, can be analogized to the current war currently being waged against Militant Islamism. Both wars had a strong ideological component — Militant Islamism, like Communism, is totalitarian, and hostile to freedom and democracy. Communism envisioned the proletariat ruling the world. Islamists envision Muslims ruling the world. The Cold War took many years to complete. It is expected that the current struggle also will persist for many years.

Based on this, Gordon argues that we must use the same exact strategy against Militant Islamists as we used against Communists including, for example, “containment.” But how do you contain al-Qaeda? He says it’s by “capturing terrorists with police, intelligence and judicial means…” Really? What law had Mohammad Atta broken on September 10, 2001? What would even have been the “probable cause” that would have allowed a judge to authorize a search of the data in his computer and his cell phone?

And should we really be content to contain al-Qaeda in Pakistan and in parts of Iraq (where they will establish themselves should Washington politicians legislate a too-rapid withdrawal)? Should we contain them in Somalia too? Like we contained al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 1990s?

He argues that because the interests of Russian, Chinese and Vietnamese Communists differed, there surely must be big differences to exploit among al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and other Militant Islamist terrorist organizations. He concludes this solely on the basis of the analogy — there is not a shred of evidence in support of his proposition.

Perhaps even worse, Gordon quotes Bush as saying the terrorists are “doomed to fail” and then confuses that pep-talk assertion of confidence with destiny — an excuse not to do much, to sit back and wait until Militant Islamism proves itself to be bankrupt as did Soviet Communism.

In truth, it was never inevitable that the Free World would prevail over Nazism or Communism. We fought hard, made mistakes, muddled on anyway and eventually managed to prevail. It is not inevitable that some years from now the disciples of Osama bin Laden and/or Ayatollah Khomeini will not have nuclear weapons, vast terrorist networks and many, many demands to make of us, the hated infidels whom they believe they have a theological obligation to defeat, no matter how hard that is, no matter how long that takes. If we are to prevail, we must reject the kind of strategy-by-analogy that Gordon and too many others advocate.