Beware Historical Analogies
It has started again. About this time in every war our "Wise Men (People, if you prefer)" begin to roll out the superficial historical analogies by which they deem themselves, and would have others deem them, "Wise."
Gary Hart started it last week in a post on the Huffington Post entitled "Twenty-first Century Rome." He superficially compared the Bush Administration's policies to the policies that led to the fall of the Roman Republic and the rise of Julius Caesar in 49 b.c.e.
Not only was the analogy superficial, Mr. Hart left out one major detail. Bush is out of office in 2008 and regardless of what you think of him, I doubt he'll try to become a dictator thereafter; nor will our democracy disappear.
Mr. Hart should also be ashamed of himself for using the Roman analogy since he should remember that "The Fall of Rome" was used by right-wingers to justify our continued presence in Vietnam, a war he opposed.
Not to be outdone, Rummy and Cheney have pulled out the other easy, thoughtless historical analogy often used when you have screwed up a war policy and are losing popular support. That is the Munich "appeasement" analogy. It is even worse and more absurd than Hart's Roman one.
Both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon used it during the Vietnam War. Like Rumsfeld and Cheney they always used it in front of the American Legion or another veteran's group that fought WWII.
The argument is that if you "appease" your enemy by stopping the prosecution of even an ill-conceived war you will encourage them to continue their conquest of the world or at least Western civilization. The last I checked, we have not been overrun by Vietnam since we left there, and communism has been consigned to the dustbin of history. Vietnam is now a trading partner as well.
I'm not exactly sure who we will be "appeasing" if we leave Iraq soon. The Iraqi people to whom the country belongs? Fundamental Islam, which will spread from San Francisco to Lynchburg, Virginia?
Has anyone ever heard of a "strategic retreat?" Certainly no one in the Bush administration has. They should ask the Israelis about that. They just did it in Lebanon.
The latest usage of the two favorite and inapplicable analogies (Rome and Munich) do prove one thing. They prove not that history repeats itself. They prove that people who ponder present day historical problems superficially, without much thought, eventually try to substitute the historical analogy for original, creative thought.
The historical analogy has its roots going all the way back to Thucydides writing of "The Peloponnesian War." and a fragment written by Euripides, the ancient Greek playwright. They believed that history repeated itself. I think they were wrong. It is human nature that repeats itself, not history.
George Santyana did the world the greatest disservice to independent thinking by uttering every superficial analogist's favorite cliche. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." That is true only in the most superficial way, though to the lazy analogist it is dogma (and easy to remember).
It is especially ironic since Santyana's quote comes from "The Life of Reason, vol. I, Reason in Common Sense."
History never comes at us in the same way. There are always variations that make any historical analogy anything but perfect or ironclad and should only be used cautiously and in its broadest sense.
Whenever you hear the Santayana quote, beware. It means that the speaker or writer has decided to engage in cant, without resorting to independent reason.
Gary Hart started it last week in a post on the Huffington Post entitled "Twenty-first Century Rome." He superficially compared the Bush Administration's policies to the policies that led to the fall of the Roman Republic and the rise of Julius Caesar in 49 b.c.e.
Not only was the analogy superficial, Mr. Hart left out one major detail. Bush is out of office in 2008 and regardless of what you think of him, I doubt he'll try to become a dictator thereafter; nor will our democracy disappear.
Mr. Hart should also be ashamed of himself for using the Roman analogy since he should remember that "The Fall of Rome" was used by right-wingers to justify our continued presence in Vietnam, a war he opposed.
Not to be outdone, Rummy and Cheney have pulled out the other easy, thoughtless historical analogy often used when you have screwed up a war policy and are losing popular support. That is the Munich "appeasement" analogy. It is even worse and more absurd than Hart's Roman one.
Both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon used it during the Vietnam War. Like Rumsfeld and Cheney they always used it in front of the American Legion or another veteran's group that fought WWII.
The argument is that if you "appease" your enemy by stopping the prosecution of even an ill-conceived war you will encourage them to continue their conquest of the world or at least Western civilization. The last I checked, we have not been overrun by Vietnam since we left there, and communism has been consigned to the dustbin of history. Vietnam is now a trading partner as well.
I'm not exactly sure who we will be "appeasing" if we leave Iraq soon. The Iraqi people to whom the country belongs? Fundamental Islam, which will spread from San Francisco to Lynchburg, Virginia?
Has anyone ever heard of a "strategic retreat?" Certainly no one in the Bush administration has. They should ask the Israelis about that. They just did it in Lebanon.
The latest usage of the two favorite and inapplicable analogies (Rome and Munich) do prove one thing. They prove not that history repeats itself. They prove that people who ponder present day historical problems superficially, without much thought, eventually try to substitute the historical analogy for original, creative thought.
The historical analogy has its roots going all the way back to Thucydides writing of "The Peloponnesian War." and a fragment written by Euripides, the ancient Greek playwright. They believed that history repeated itself. I think they were wrong. It is human nature that repeats itself, not history.
George Santyana did the world the greatest disservice to independent thinking by uttering every superficial analogist's favorite cliche. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." That is true only in the most superficial way, though to the lazy analogist it is dogma (and easy to remember).
It is especially ironic since Santyana's quote comes from "The Life of Reason, vol. I, Reason in Common Sense."
History never comes at us in the same way. There are always variations that make any historical analogy anything but perfect or ironclad and should only be used cautiously and in its broadest sense.
Whenever you hear the Santayana quote, beware. It means that the speaker or writer has decided to engage in cant, without resorting to independent reason.
posted by Marshall Darts at
2:25 PM
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