Triumph of Reason: History
  by Groff Schroeder

In 1905, George Santayana wrote in “The Life of Reason Volume I, “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.” History recounts successes and failures of the past. While no comparison of modern events with history is perfect, we can achieve success by “…standing on the shoulders of giants,” as Isaac Newton wrote. In contrast, ignoring history can cause the repetition of disastrous mistakes or infamous policies.

Few things are more common in history than war, and comparisons between historical and current situations are important foundations of military planning. Rational military planners carefully study historical tactics and strategies and their roles in success or failure. Without historical analyses, leaders might not recognize a well-known maneuver from history – falling into a classic trap.

Today, the United States is at “war” with Iraq. However, the US Congress never actually declared war, as is their duty under the Constitution, instead passing a resolution giving the president a “blank check” to use military force against Iraq. This is not the first time that the Congress allowed the president to wage undeclared war. Other examples include the first Gulf War, Korea and Vietnam – none of which provided much advantage to our nation. In contrast, when Congress formally declared war in World Wars I and II, the outcome was more positive.

America’s war history includes President Johnson’s use of the “Tonkin Gulf Resolution” for radical escalation of US involvement in Vietnam. Johnson alleged that isolated attacks in the Gulf of Tonkin by tiny Vietnamese patrol boats upon massive US warships represented a grave threat to the United States. While Johnson was successful in using these alleged attacks to initiate an undeclared war, we now know that they never occurred.


Like Johnson, George W. Bush led us to “war” employing known, repeated deceptions. Unlike Johnson, whose misrepresentations of fact remained a secret until after his death, it is all but impossible to deny that George Bush repeatedly lied to start the war in Iraq, or that war on Iraq was an administration policy long before the September 11, 2001 attacks, or even the November 2000 “election.”

Another important historical precedent is 1930s Germany. Like George W. Bush, many considered Adolph Hitler an illegitimate leader until an attack on an architectural icon (the Reichstag) catapulted him to unprecedented power and popularity. After the attacks, both men issued executive orders to arrest people without evidence, hold them without charge, deny legal representation, imprison them indefinitely without trial and even torture and execute them in complete secrecy. Both men passed legislation (the Enabling Act in Germany and the USA Patriot Act in the US), curtailing important civil rights, and both employed “pre-emptive war,” aggressively attacking and occupying other nations that (as evidence would later show) had no culpability, capability or plan to attack. Now the US appears to share the infamous policies of collective punishment and prisoner torture with the Nazis.

Robert Kennedy wrote, “Few of us will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all these acts will be written the history of this generation.” It is up to each of us to study the events of the past and apply what we learn to the realities of the present. History can repeat itself, but only if We the People allow it.
 
 

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