Posted by
malize on Thursday, May 24, 2007 4:47:06 AM
I think that the diluting of history as taught in the schools is one problem...the second problem is utilizing historical metaphor.
Everyone knows the famous line, "He who does not know history is destined to repeat it." This would seem like common sense, but it is entirely misunderstood. It is commonly trotted out in liberal arguments against Iraq, where they point at Vietnam and parrot the quote.
I wish they would actually know their history as we come up on what will likely be the Tet Summer of the Iraq War...where the insurgents and jihadists destroy themselves militarily to achieve a strategic victory in US poll numbers and Congressional votes in the fall.
I wish they would actually know what happened after we withdrew from South Vietnam...how the rebuilt NVA blitzed the South knowing that the US would not do anything concrete to stop them, having shown no will to fight. How the South Vietnamese did not all supinely submit to the North with flowers and candy...and how millions paid the price.
I wish the liberals could wrap their heads around American policy with Hussein's Iraq in the 80's. If they could be made to understand that his Iraq was actually a Soviet client, that it was Soviets helping his WMD development...that America of the 80's was just as horrified of Iraq becoming a regional hegemon in the Gulf as it was of Iran doing the same. That just enough aid and intelligence was supplied to BOTH Iraq *AND* Iran during their war by us...the goal being to bleed them both out and maintain the status quo. An outstanding, perhaps genius example of realpolitik at work...and the cost to us were the lives lost to two exocets and one mine. Those exocets likely being a certain dictators expression of displeasure upon realizing he had been played.
However it is not just the liberals who fall into this metaphoric trap. I'd like to find the bright minds that thought using the German/Japanese Occupation model was the metaphor to latch onto, ignoring the historical circumstances and natural tendencies of the cultures involved. Additionally the war fighters seem to ignore Vietnam like the plague...however there were what we would term "nation building" type programs from that conflict that were totally ignored in designing the post-war occupied Iraq.
Historical Metaphors can be powerful tools, they can be very insightful if you understand the roles and actors involved.
Another example of misinformed history is the characterization of the 1940 French soldier as a coward...because many of them left their stories of valor to be told only by their adversaries. Those Frenchmen of 1940 who fought to the last at Sedan or in vicious house to house fighting for two days in the forests and towns just west of Sedan...they do not deserve such dishonor. If you want to dishonor someone - then point your fingers at those who lost their will to fight, the French politicians, the inept General staff, the foolish socialistic defense establishment...blame the Comintern for telling their labor parties in France to not resist the Germans (who were on good terms with the Soviets for the moment.)
When you give up the will to fight, you surrender. You loose, you lay down upon the ground and fight no more.
Blame all those actors from pre-war France for the failure of 1940...and recognize their descendants in our own midst today, because that would be learning from the history.
Victor Davis Hanson Is Sky Falling on America?
Hugh Hewitt Drop Dead America
Peter Wehner John Edwards's irresponsible and revealing address