American History

I keep seeing arguments made against Kerry's stance on the Iraq war, berating the usefulness of foreign support and praising Bush for having the courage to go it alone. I feel these viewpoints are ignoring history. The United States Declaration of Independence was itself written in part to inform the world of their grievances in the hopes of acquiring foreign aid against England, were they cowards for taking this stance as Kerry has been accused of being? Further, many are comparing Iraq to Germany circa WWII and saying that if Kerry was president back then Hitler would still be in power. This claim, above many others, strikes me as completely ridiculous, since the US was one of the last to become involved in that war, not the first.

History is not my strongest academic subject, but I know that much about our own history. Why do so many others not seem to even know those two things?