Ignorant of History and Determined to Repeat It

Yogi Berra died recently. He was a hall-of-fame baseball player for the New York Yankees -- an iconic figure in baseball -- but more than that, he was a guy who could string a few words together and make you think, huh? One of the things he said that the recent Republican debate brought to mind was, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might wind up someplace else.”

That’s certainly what’s happened to us ever since we started meddling in the byzantine affairs of the Mesopotamian tribes of Iran, Iraq, and Syria. It worries me that our recent crop of Republican presidential candidates seem so uninformed about America’s unfortunate history of failed excursions in the region. They stood on the dais at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Library in Simi Valley, California, and tried to convince voters that they were the honest-to-god best person to be the next American president and fly on the Air Force One that stood as the backdrop to these wannabe Commanders-in-Chief. Unfortunately they demonstrated that they aren’t ready for the job.

With the possible exception of Sen. Rand Paul, these people still don’t understand the massive strategic blunder that the U.S. made in invading Iraq in 2003. They don’t ‘connect the dots’ between that calamity and the chaos that exists in and migrates from the region today.

The candidates talked over each other in their efforts to convince the audience how tough they’d be as commander-in-chief. They would’ve stayed in Iraq, forgetting that the Iraqis didn’t want us and George W. Bush agreed to leave. They’d take on ISIS on the ground in Syria. The so-called “second-tier” Republican debaters were even more forceful in their promises to put “boots on the ground” in Syria.

Jeb Bush, who has vacillated on the wisdom of his brother’s decision to invade Iraq, admits he’s using some of the same foreign policy advisers his father and brother used. But he “will be his own man.” He blames President Obama and Hillary Clinton for creating the “insecurity” in the Middle East, “the likes of which we never would've imagined.”

Insecurity is a placid term for what is a haboob of death and destruction that, in fact, not only could we have imagined, but was predicted by none other than the elder Bush, who showed admirable restraint in not attempting the occupation of Iraq after kicking Saddam out of Kuwait in 1991, saying that doing so, “would have been disastrouss.” At that time, even Dick Cheney cautioned against becoming mired down in an Iraq “quagmire.” Brent Scowcroft, Chairman of George W. Bush’s own Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, went on ‘Face the Nation’ in August 2002 where he predicted that invading Iraq, “would turn the Middle East into a cauldron.” He followed up with an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal later that month.

The Iraq war cost America thousands of lives, left thousands more injured and maimed, cost trillions of dollars, and brought the U.S. economy to its knees. The conduct of the war tarnished forever America’s image as a just and reliable ally. It left Iraq a devastated country wracked by sectarian violence. It created this humanitarian crises that floats bodies upon the shores of Europe.

In defense of his brother, Jeb Bush said, “You know what? As it relates to my brother, there's one thing I know for sure. He kept us safe.”

Truth and Truthiness in our World

For my Republican Friend Who Forwards Me Anything With Which He Agrees, 'Truthiness' Be Damned
The News Herald, Panama City
Published: Monday, August 4, 2014 at 10:45 AM.

A recent email had us thinking of Mark Twain, John Adams and Stephen Colbert.

Let’s start with Twain who wrote: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

That’s the right sentiment to describe the email which claims that Col. Oliver North warned then Senator Al Gore about Osama Bin Laden during congressional testimony in 1987. The hoax spread like wildfire after the Sept. 11 attacks. It was so popular that North debunked it himself by pointing out (among other things) that he was not questioned by Gore and that the terrorist he spoke about was Abu Nidal, not Osama Bin Laden.

An anonymous email forward is one thing but these “facts” get embarrassing when people post the things they know for sure on social networks. More than one person has had to apologize to their Facebook friends for sharing “facts” that weren’t facts.

 Although there are hundreds of examples especially involving President Barack Obama (who, it turns out, was never a member of the Black Panther Party,) and his immediate predecessor George W. Bush. The photo showing Bush holding a book upside down might be funny but it’s fake.

Another of these that stuck out to us was the famous or infamous, “I’m Tired,” speech that is incorrectly attributed to Bill Cosby. Cosby may be tired but he never made any of the statements in that email.

The Cosby email, for many, had too much “truthiness” to ignore and for a time we often saw it in our inboxes and Facebook pages. Late Night comics Stephen Colbert invented truthiness. It describes those things we want to believe (mainly because they support our point of view) even when they are false. If it sounds good, if our gut says it is right but it just is not true, then it is truthiness.

Colbert’s wit was aimed, as it usually is, at politicians who do their best to polish and spin truthiness into votes on Election Day. There will surely be mountains of truthiness as the election draws near and we hope voters will do their homework when they are confronted by claims that sound too good to be false.

When people and politicians allow the facts to get rubbery it’s damaging to the entire political process. We can’t have honest disagreements using dishonest facts. “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence,” Adams said as he defended British soldiers in Boston in 1770.

And while facts may be stubborn they can be slow to appear when we really need them even, it seems, on the internet where fact and fiction live side by side and are only a click away.


Twain, as he often did, nailed down the heart of the problem. “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”