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Still Not Learning From History
Still Not Learning From History | Frontpage Mag
Bad ideas and practices that we have witnessed over and over again.
www.frontpagemag.com
From its beginning 2400 years ago in ancient Greece, the purpose of history has been to counsel the present by documenting the mistakes of the past. Thucydides explicitly made this goal the purpose of his History of the Peloponnesian War: to memorialize “an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the understanding the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it.” At the violent end of the Roman Republic, the historian Livy similarly explains his intent: to shows us “what to imitate,” and “mark for avoidance what is shameful in the conception and shameful in the result.”
Yet here we are, two millennia later, despite our wealth, technological advances, and much vaster knowledge, still repeating the mistakes and follies not just of the distant past, but of the last half-century. The four years of the Biden administration’s failing foreign policy are the consequence of bad ideas and practices that we have already witnessed over and over.
Until we pay attention to the blunders of the past, and acknowledge the tragic nature of human affairs, we will continue to let misplaced idealism, electoral politics, ideological mantras, and sheer laziness endanger our national security and interests.
~Snip~
Obviously, a political party going into a presidential election with a failed candidate suffering from dementia and underwater in the polls, is loath to add the uncertainty of serious military action against Iran. So the financier and provider of materiel for its proxies has not had its mind concentrated by a serious degradation of its military infrastructure and armaments. Moreover, it’s clear that Iran is also providing targeting information to the Houthis’ attacks on commercial and military shipping in the Red Sea. Yet Iran continues to get a pass.
And we know why. The Biden foreign policy establishment is still slaves to “new world order” talismans like “diplomatic engagement” and “negotiated settlements.” The former is chin-wagging with photo ops, the latter mere “parchment barriers.” They create the illusion of action, while avoiding the uncertainty and unforeseen contingencies that attend the use of force on the scale needed to concentrate the mullahs’ minds and reinvigorate our weakened deterrence power.
~Snip~
The history we’ve failed to learn from does not have to go back to the Twenties and Thirties of the 20th century for monitory examples, when the serial appeasement of Germany began before the ink was dry on the Versailles Treaty, and ended in the most destructive war in history. The Nineties and the rise of al Qaeda provide enough foreign policy decisions “shameful in the conception and shameful in the result.”
The first portent was the 1993 bombing of the underground parking garage of the World Trade Center, the first of several other bombings planned for the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, and the United Nations building. Federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy publicized during the trial and in his book Willful Blindness, the traditional Islamic doctrines that motivated Abdel Rahman, the “Blind Sheik,” and his followers who carried out the attack. Though the explosion did not cause the destruction and the mass casualties the terrorists had hoped for, the audacity of the attack against the world’s greatest infidel power heartened and inspired jihadists across the globe, especially Osama bin Laden and the jihadist group al Qaeda he founded in 1988.
~Snip~
As the Nineties progressed, this rhetoric became a gruesome reality:
- In November 1995, a car bombing killed five Americans in a U.S.-Saudi training facility in Riyadh.
- In June 1996, another car bomb killed 19 Americans and wounded 372 in a residential complex housing Air Force personnel near Dhahran. Bin Laden credited those murders with the U.S. reductions of its number of troops in Saudi Arabia.
- In August 1998, al Qaeda launched simultaneous attacks on two U.S. embassies in east Africa. In the Nairobi bombing, 12 Americans died.
- In October 2000, a fishing boat full of explosives blew a 40-by 40-foot hole in the destroyer U.S.S. Cole, killing 17 sailors and wounding 39.
~Snip~
Finally, then as now, missish rules of engagement squandered several opportunities to take bin Laden out. One good chance to kidnap bin Laden while he was attending evening prayers in a mosque was lost when the plan was vetoed out of fear that the Muslim world would be offended, and jihadists who hadn’t participated in the embassy bombings would be killed. Just like today, international public relations trumped punishing those who murdered our citizens, at the cost of our powers of deterrence. And bin Laden enjoyed a huge boost to his prestige for once again eluding the American infidels and exposing their weakness.
The wages of those failures were the smoking ruins in New York, D.C., and Pennsylvania, and 2996 dead.
So here we go again, our soldiers taking casualties from Iran’s proxies, and our leaders losing their nerve and not punishing the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism that for 45 years has been at war with the U.S. and killing our citizens with impunity. Such are the wages of historical amnesia, political calculations, and feckless foreign policy idealism.
Commentary:
Great article..
We're supposed to learn from our mistakes and history in order not to repeat the mistakes. It appears we do not.
As Professor Thorton notes, errors repeat themselves continuously in history as though we have learned nothing. We will need some time and additional academic training to understand why this happens on all levels of human activity. Let me suggest here that to truly understand the origins of the problems,
Perhaps all our politicians should be require to study the teachings of Sun Tzu, because the art of war is no different than the art of politics.
“Those who do not learn from history....” Winston Churchill
