Learning from Past Mistakes

If there is one huge gaping hole in America policy-making, it appears to be an absolute stubborn resolve to ignore facts, pretend the past never occurred and abhor any notion that history holds the slightest relevance for us. Yet, in an oxymoronic moment, we continue to live in our past glory, assume that greatness, once achieved, requires little or no maintenance to sustain, and no other nation or group of nations could ever threaten our global “king of the mountain” status.

Since the United States accelerated to world power status particularly through its contributions to World War II, it is relevant to ask why? Not only was American soil relatively unscathed from bombs and invasion – yes, there were attacks on Hawaii and Alaska – but by reason of massive government infrastructure “make-work” projects in response to the unemployment of the Great Depression –notably hydro-electric generating capacity with massive dams across the land – the United States had huge energy surpluses that made us into the Allies’ manufacturing machine. We supplied guns, tanks, ships, planes, munitions and ultimate our own flesh and blood that tipped the war irretrievably in our favor.

The Korean War ended in a stalemate, and we began to ignore the lessons of history big time in Vietnam. Vietnam had been a trap for foreign invaders for centuries (millennia, actually) beginning with the Chinese who fought the first Vietnamese war in 208 AD. After many conflicts, the 15^th century Ming Emperor Zhu Di, who attempted and failed once again to conquer this thorn in China’s side, said that the rebels wouldn’t stand and fight, that they preferred a “hit and run” war of attrition that obviously succeeded. The legendary tunnel system, where Vietnamese soldiers could disappear underground and elude their enemy force, was already well underway.

When the French were humiliated by the brilliant tactics of Vietnamese Communist General Võ Nguyên Giáp culminating in their infamous defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, they too complained of the no-win tactics of attrition, the escape of fighters into the labyrinth of tunnels that seemed to be everywhere, that led to the end of French Indochina. In the 1960s, Americans entered Vietnam under a mistaken illusion that helicopters could fly behind attacks and defeat even small bands of “hit and run” rebels or even North Vietnamese regulars. They were wrong.

The United States again ignored the litany of defeats for major powers attempting subdue the forbidding terrain and rugged fighters of Afghanistan. Most recently, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December of 1979 in support of a Marxist government under fire from an internal force set on overthrow. By the time the Soviets left in 1989, their economy was in shambles, ripped apart by the never-ending costs of waging war in a land where each victory was rapidly followed by re-conquest by opposing forces. The massive budget deficits incurred by the Soviets, which added significantly to the downfall of this Communist, pales, however, in comparison to the deficits incurred by the United States in its failed efforts in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

We ignored the fact that we toppled a minority Sunni government in Iraq and handed power to the Shiite majority, even though any Middle Eastern scholar can tell you that this would eventually and effectively move Iraq into their fellow-Shiite-Iran’s camp. We never even got a thank you note from the Iranian Ayatollahs. Go figure. Oh, it happened, and the Sunni minority drew support from al Qaeda and worse in their attack against the Shiite government that continues to this very day. History had long since provided the inevitable roadmap of what was going to happen in a country – artificially created by a Anglo-French treaty (Sykes-Pico) in 1916 among three ethnic groups who never got along – most unnaturally shoved into a political system that was never constructed to reflect reality.

And so it is with our internal policies. We think we can promise civil servants – federal, state and local – generous fixed benefits pensions that we have yet to fund, that we can cut educational support and allow young Americans to graduate with mortgage-level student loan debt, decimate our public primary and secondary schools, allow our infrastructure to deteriorate and cut our research budgets… and expect the United States to remain on top of the pile. Ignoring the fall of societies from excess military spending – from ancient Sparta to the Ming Dynasty to the recent collapse of the Soviet Union – we continue to prioritize spending where it does not benefit Americans in any material way and cut spending where it is absolutely necessary to support economic growth. We seem to be imploding faster than did the British Empire!

Instead, we have politicians who sell completely disproven theories: trickle down ‘job creation,’ the belief that financial regulation stifles growth (when it should prevent economic collapse that we just went through), that minimum wage increases only raises costs (and kills jobs) and have no impact on creating consumers with more money to spend to spur growth, and that environmental disaster (which is imposing billions and billions of dollars of hard costs every year) will be fixed by religious forces that seem nowhere in sight. History is watching and preparing to write anothers story of how hubris once again unraveled a great power.

Want to see a great America again? Then believe in it, invest in it, and prioritize what makes a nation great! Otherwise, keep a clear eye on what happens when you simply think that history has no relevance to our future.

I’m Peter Dekom, and George Santayana was right… we are repeating the mistakes of history and expecting a different result.