Why Study History?

There are many reasons to study history, but I submit that the most important reason is to give us a realistic perspective on our own beliefs and assumptions.

The followers of Plato and Aristotle thought they had a good understanding of the world, as did many scholars right through the medieval period, yet now we see how naïve many of their views were, and how much more complex the world really is. How naïve will some of our current scientific theories seem to our descendants a thousand years from now?

Our civilization (at least in the developed world) is appalled at earlier practices such as child labor, slavery, serfdom, drawing and quartering, human sacrifices, and the like. Yet at the time these were common, accepted practices – nothing to even comment on. What common practices do we all take for granted today that will horrify our descendants a thousand years from now?

No doubt the followers of ancient religions were just as sure they were right as followers of today’s religions are sure they have the truth. Yet the worship of Poseidon and Augusta and Athena and the various river gods and mountain gods and the like seem so dated, so naïve in today’s world. How naïve will our own religious beliefs seem to our descendents a thousand years from now?

In earlier times the general population subscribed to all manner of social and political beliefs which we no longer hold, such as the divine right of kings or the inherent superiority of men over women. What social and political beliefs do we accept that will seem outlandish and naïve to our descendants a thousand years from now?

It would take a large dose of hubris to look at all the naive and erroneous beliefs and assumptions of our ancestors revealed by a study of history, and yet believe that we ourselves are free from such errors and naiveté. The study of history ought to keep us humble, and give us clues to where our own current views and assumptions might be suspect.

Status symbols

Nature is composed of predators and prey, though of course many predators are themselves prey for other, larger predators. Prey multiply into vast herds or schools or whatever, and the predators come along periodically and harvest them, like a blue whale gulping down tons of krill.

I was thinking of this the other day as I read an advertisement for a vastly overpriced watch. Being social animals, humans are status conscious – it matters to them where they are in the group’s pecking order. And among the alpha humans or those who aspire to alpha status, status displays are important.

This has spawned a whole group of predators selling overpriced stuff to the masses of status-conscious prey: oversized McMansions, overpriced watches and cars and art and purses and suits. If one child has an iPod, every other child wants one too. In the ghettos, young people sometimes even kill for overpriced “status” athletic shoes.

I’m sure a $150,000 Bentley is better built than a $25,000 Ford, but surely not 6 times better! Perhaps a $5000 Rolex watch really is better built than a $50 Timex, but odds are they tell time just the same. A 25,000 square foot house certainly has more room than a 2,500 square foot house, but who really needs that much extra room?

It is amusing to watch nature at work – the alpha humans oh-so-proud that they made it, being harvested systematically by those predators who, for a good price, cater to their need for ostentatious status displays.

Civilian control of the military

One of the foundation principles of American government is that our military is always ultimately under civilian control, with the President as the Commander in Chief acting through his Secretary of Defense. In general this is a wise policy. From the Roman Praetorian Guard to the present day, military organizations that became powerful and unfettered political organizations within their country or empire have inevitably caused havoc and bloodshed in the end, and often installed and maintained brutal and unprincipled dictators as leaders.

Nevertheless, there is an important division of labor needed here. Civilians should certainly determine the high level policies and objectives for the military, but then they ought to leave the details of the execution to their experienced military leaders. The persistent failure in American politics from Vietnam right through to the current Iraq mess is the tendency for Washington politicians, and particularly Presidents and their Secretaries of Defense, to try to micromanage the military operations they have set in motion, with uniformly disastrous results. During the Vietnam war President Johnson and Secretary McNamara would sometimes involve themselves in the details of the daily Air Force targeting list, and Secretary Rumsfeld meddled continuously in the planning for the Iraq invasion, overruling his experienced generals repeatedly, with disastrous consequences.

These people, if they needed an operation, would never think of going to a politician rather than an experienced surgeon. If they needed a house designed, they would go to an experienced architect, not a politician. Why then are they so arrogant or ignorant as to assume that they know how to manage military affairs better than people who have spent their entire life in the military?

The way the system should work is that the civilian political leaders should determine what the high level military objectives should be, after consulting with their military leaders as to how feasible these objectives are, and then issue the orders to their generals and admirals, and get out of the way and let the military experts do what they have spent their life learning to do. In general, it is the civilians who are often eager to use military power, and the military, who after all are the ones who will have to bury the dead, who are more cautious.

Perhaps there is something about the Washington air that inflates politician’s egos to the point where they fancy themselves experts in everything. In military matters, that is a very dangerous illusion.

Why do we get such poor leaders?

Have you ever noticed how many of our leaders – presidents, CEOs, generals and admirals, prime ministers, and kings – are unsuitable to their position? Of course the Peter Principle plays a part – many were talented in lower level positions, but have simply been promoted to their level of incompetence.

But there is another factor in play here – it often takes a different skill set to win the position than to function effectively in it. A CEO may reach his/her position by being expert in brutal office politics, but that is not the skill set needed to be an effective CEO. A general or admiral may get promoted to the rank by never taking risks and therefore having no blots on his/her record. But an effective military leader has to be able to take calculated risks. Presidents and prime ministers get where they are by being good at partisan politics, but the job requires a broader perspective than that.

One advance the world could use is a better way of promoting people to top jobs – one that improves the odds that they can really do the job once they get it.

Recommended – Why We Fight

I highly recommend the documentary “Why We Fight”, a film by Eugene Jarecki which won the 2005 Sundance Grand Jury Award. President Eisenhower in his farewell address to the nation warned us about the military-industrial complex, and this movie explores that theme in a pretty well-balanced manner. As one who has worked in the military-industrial complex, I know all too well how tightly the Pentagon, the defense contractors and Congress work together to advance their own parochial interests at the expense of the rest of the American public. This film ought to make you thoughtful, and very uneasy.

The Marines

Many years ago I attended a performance of the Black Watch in a large Washington stadium. Their playing was stirring, and the vast audience was duly appreciative. At one point midway through the show the pipers began to play the Marine Hymn, and to my amazement, scattered all thorough that vast audience men rose and stood at attention, old men and young men, veterans of World War II and Korea and Vietnam and current marines, in uniform and out. I was deeply moved at the bond all those men had, across time and generations, to an organization like the Marines.

There is something special about the Marine ethic. I recall some years ago reading a business book about how to run a business along Marine principles, written of course by an active duty Marine. Two things impressed me about that book – the emphasis on mission focus and the emphasis on taking care of one’s people.

During the second Gulf War I happened to be working on a project with lots of retired Marines, and they shared with me the informal “lessons learned” emails that were being circulating in the Marine community from colleagues in the field in Iraq. Once again, the overall emphasis was on taking care of their people, getting them enough sleep, getting their mail to them, cobbling together makeshift armor for their inadequately-protected vehicles, boosting their morale.

American politicians could learn a lot from the Marines, if only they would.

Is Islam a peaceful religion?

We in the modern Western world have been trying our liberal best to believe that Islam is really a peaceful religion, and that the recent actions of terrorists are really not driven by the religion of Islam. We have been trying to be multicultural and politically correct and sensitive to the religious feelings of others. But you know, it just doesn’t wash.

As the old saying goes, “actions speak louder than words”. Despite the protests from some scholars and liberals that Islam is really a peaceful religion, the world, and especially the Middle East, is awash daily in bloodletting in the name of Islam. If they aren’t killing the infidels (us), they are busy pitting Shia against Sunni and killing each other over who was the rightful successor to the prophet centuries ago.

The terrorists themselves tell us in no uncertain terms that they are acting from their beliefs in Islam. They tell us this repeatedly and unambiguously and proudly in their internet sites, manifestos, videos, public speeches and prayers, fatwas, and grisly videos of beheadings and suicide bombers making their last proud declarations before going off to kill as many unbelievers as possible. It would hard to be more explicit than that.

Then Islam’s holy scripture, the Qur'an says such things as “Kill disbelievers wherever you find them. If they attack you, then kill them. Such is the reward of disbelievers.” (2:191-2) and “Have no unbelieving friends. Kill the unbelievers wherever you find them.” (4:89). It would hard to be more explicit than that.

And then there are the local Islamic madrassas (schools) throughout places like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia where the young are drilled daily in hatred of the infidel (us), and their Islamic duty to give their lives to our extermination. And the mosques throughout the world (even, apparently, in London) where mullas weekly preach hatred of the West and advocate violence. It would hard to be more explicit than that.

Certainly many Muslims, indeed the vast majority of Muslims worldwide, don’t follow these precepts, and are content to live in peace with non-Muslims. But in fact the terrorists have sound theological support from the Qur'an itself, as well as from the Sharia law that has been built up over the centuries, for most of their actions. And although most Muslims don’t participate in terrorists actions themselves, it is clear from the street celebrations following terrorist killings, the writings of many Muslim clerics, and the generous contributions to terrorist organizations that a great many of them approve of and support such actions by others, privately if not in public. If such acts really are against the principles of Islam, one would expect much more outcry against them from Muslims worldwide. In fact one of the most disturbing aspects of all this is the resounding silence from most of the Muslim world in the face of these terrorist actions.

Try as we might to hide our heads in the sand and be politically correct and pretend that Islam as a theology is a peaceful religion, it really isn’t. It never has been, as any competent historian of the Middle East knows. For Islam, the world is divided into dar al-Islam, the house of peace (nations ruled by Islam) and dar al-Harb, the house of war (everyone else). It is the duty of any good Muslim to defend dar al-Islam and to convert to Islam, by force if necessary, dar al-Harb. Moreover, for devout Muslims it is an intolerable affront to Allah that any land that has ever in the past been part of dar al-Islam should now be in dar al-Harb, and that affront calls for the devout to win that land back, by whatever means possible.

It is true that Christianity, like most major religions, also has a bloody and intolerant past -- in some periods of history far more intolerant that Islam -- and even some unpleasant aspects in the present. But Christian scripture and religious dogma does not require the devout to kill unbelievers (you can be nasty to them, but you are not required to kill them). Islamic scripture and dogma do enjoin the devout Muslim to kill unbelievers, even if that injunction is ignored by the majority of Muslims.

We had better wake up soon to the fact that we in the Western world face, not a rag-tag little group of criminal extremists from the religious fringes, but a large and dedicated and increasingly competent group of warriors, numbering by now in the tens or hundreds of thousands if not more, profoundly driven by their Islamic creed. They are not going to be defeated by military might; this is going to be a battle of ideas, not tanks. It’s hard to know how to face this threat effectively, but we certainly won’t ever figure it out if we persist in pretending that the fundamental nature of the religion of Islam isn’t a major component.

People who never make mistakes

Have you ever noticed that class of people who never make mistakes. Whatever goes wrong (and lots always goes wrong for them) is always someone else’s fault, never their own. Never, never, never do you hear from their lips the words “Oops, I made a mistake”.

It took me years to realize what was going on here. These are people whose self- confidence and self-image are so poor that they simply can’t face admitting to a mistake. They will change history in their own minds to avoid facing the consequences of their own mistakes.

Since humans learn from their mistakes, it follows that people who can’t admit to their mistakes can’t learn from them either, which is why such people usually make so many bad decisions in their lives, and so often make the same bad decisions over and over again.

Whenever I meet someone who is always blaming others I know I am meeting someone with a poor self-image. Whenever I hear someone frankly admit to a mistake I know I am dealing with someone pretty healthy.