{"id":3369,"date":"2014-05-13T20:55:02","date_gmt":"2014-05-13T17:55:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/?p=3369"},"modified":"2017-11-14T21:28:11","modified_gmt":"2017-11-14T19:28:11","slug":"history-should-matter-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/history-should-matter-2\/","title":{"rendered":"History should matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Given the large turnover in newly elected members of both houses of Congress and the ascent of the twenty-somethings to positions of power in the White House, it is pretty clear why American governments suffer from near fatal bouts of historical amnesia or, worse, ignorance.\u00a0 Understanding the past is not a panacea for predicting the future.\u00a0 But not every crisis or issue is tabula rosa and many have roots deep in history.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some regard the situation in Ukraine and Crimea as a new form of political warfare.\u00a0 Much of this overly hyped and misinformed description is mistakenly based on former KGB lieutenant colonel Vladimir Putin\u2019s background in the intelligence service.\u00a0 Of course Putin has mixed propaganda, disinformation, subversion and information and cyber warfare to destabilize Ukraine and bend Kiev to his will.\u00a0 But what is new?<\/span><\/p>\n

How did V.I. Lenin and his band of Bolshevik brothers and sisters manage to seize power in Russia in 1917 defeating the Kerensky government and the Mensheviks along the way?\u00a0 How did the fledgling Soviet Union survive foreign intervention by both Britain and America after World War I?\u00a0 How did the Soviet Union manage to put in place collaborators and agents virtually round the world to support the eventual triumph of communism?\u00a0 And after World War II, how did the eastern bloc of European states fall under Moscow\u2019s control?<\/span><\/p>\n

The answers are self-evident.\u00a0 What Putin has done in Ukraine is exactly what his Soviet predecessors attempted decades earlier.\u00a0\u00a0 However, calling Putin\u2019s actions a new form of political war is a bad case of historical amnesia.<\/span><\/p>\n

Much ado about Benghazi similarly rejects any linkage with past acts of terror that killed Americans.\u00a0 In October 1983, 241 Marines died in the suicide bombing of their barracks in Lebanon.\u00a0 Later that month, U.S. forces stormed ashore in Grenada to \u201crescue\u201d American students thought to be in grave and imminent danger at the hands of rebels who had murdered the prime minister.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Beirut bombing was the subject of an intensive investigation headed by retired Admiral Robert Long.\u00a0 The Long report castigated the chain of command including the White House.\u00a0 In the wake of the botched Grenada assault, investigations ultimately led to major reforms that mandated \u201cjoint\u201d operations to redress service \u201cstove-piping\u201d that had proved so counter-productive.\u00a0 Indeed, regarding Grenada, when bullied by Washington to accelerate the \u201crescue\u201d of the endangered students, the overt reason for the invasion, task force commander Vice Admiral Joseph J. Metcalf signaled back that the medical students were \u201cin no danger.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Some accused the Reagan administration of using Grenada to deflect attention away from the catastrophe that befell the Marines.\u00a0 But no one, not a single Democrat, called for the impeachment of the Republican president or labeled either Beirut or Grenada as the biggest cover up since Watergate.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

In 1979 U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Adolph (Spike) Dubs was taken from his car at gunpoint by insurgents.\u00a0 Against the advice of the U.S. but supported by the Soviet Union, Afghan police stormed the hotel where Dubs was held captive.\u00a0 In the shoot-out, the abductors murdered Dubs.\u00a0 Yet no one clamored for an investigation or accused the Carter administration of cover up or the State Department of incompetence.<\/span><\/p>\n

What has happened?\u00a0 The answer is painfully obvious.\u00a0 The American political system is not only broken.\u00a0 It has metastasized to the point where even a minor bite or scratch can become septic and politically fatal.\u00a0 Fact and truth no longer matter.\u00a0 Washington has become the political equivalent of the Mad Hatter\u2019s Tea Party where even the most ludicrous notions can be taken seriously.<\/span><\/p>\n

Talk radio and cable television dominated by the extreme left and right amplify this nonsense.\u00a0 The Internet is filled with propaganda and misinformation that would make Putin and his former KGB now FSB colleagues cringe. Not only the fringe listen to or watch and consume this stuff.\u00a0\u00a0 And few carefully vet what is being said or written.\u00a0 The First Amendment guarantees that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rabid ideologues such as Depression Years Father Coughlin and Cold War Joe McCarthy have multiplied.\u00a0 With voluminous stories swirling and the inability of the media to do real investigative journalism into many of these political hacks, history, truth and fact have become casualties.\u00a0 And virtually every political disagreement in Washington no matter how trivial is turned into a life or death matter, when it is not.<\/span><\/p>\n

How do we extricate ourselves from this increasingly destructive cycle?\u00a0 It would be nice if not fantasy if both political parties could agree to a truce and perhaps even limit negative campaigning.\u00a0 Sadly, the Mad Hatter\u2019s mad Tea Party ain\u2019t likely to end soon.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Given the large turnover in newly elected members of both houses of Congress and the ascent of the twenty-somethings to positions of power in the White House, it is pretty clear why American governments suffer from near fatal bouts of historical amnesia or, worse, ignorance.\u00a0 Understanding the past is not a panacea for predicting the future.\u00a0 But not every crisis or issue is tabula rosa and many have roots deep in history. Some regard the situation in Ukraine and Crimea as a new form of political warfare.\u00a0 Much of this overly hyped and misinformed description is mistakenly based on former KGB lieutenant colonel Vladimir Putin\u2019s background in the intelligence service.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":3367,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,65,76,86,102,62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-americas","category-blog-en","category-harlan-ullman-en","category-international-peace-security","category-issues","category-regions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3369"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3369"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3370,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3369\/revisions\/3370"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}