Hubris, that arrogance mixed with
stupidity that in mythology offends the gods and inevitably brings disaster, is
the centerpiece of Sir Alistair Horne’s 25th book Hubris: The Tragedy of War in
the Twentieth Century. Ranging from the 1905 annihilation of the Russian Fleet
by the Japanese at Tsushima though to the
French debacle at Dien Bien Phu and McArthur’s unwise push to the Chinese
boarder in Korea, Horne explores the role of hubris – of unrealistic exuberance
and historical ignorance among generals and political leaders – in producing
the bloodiest century in human history.
Lest
readers think this is just old history, we have a number of presidential candidates
in the present election cycle talking glibly about “carpet bombing” ISIS and
the like, which just shows that we still have politicians who are ignorant of history and are doomed, as George Santayana
observed, to make us all repeat it. In more recent times President Bush and his
advisors, if they had known history, would not have been so glib about
promising to bring democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan, and setting the Middle
East on the disastrous course it is now on.
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