Why History Is Important

In 2001 the National Center for Education Statistics published a report that cited dismal performance among American students on a history test. The failure of American students to understand history is troubling to be sure because as has been said, "Those who fail to understand history are doomed to repeat it." I am always troubled by the inability of American students to understand the basics of any subject matter, but history, aside from perhaps reading and math skills, is the most vital of subject matters because it can help prevent stupid mistakes from happening on both a personal and a national level.

My concern about failing to understand or be educated about history is that eventually, those students who fare poorly now in history are destined to become leaders one day. Even now, when the leadership of our nation, supposedly educated better than today's children, are faced with crises, they cling to the same bad policies as their predecessors. Had they studied history, we would not be making the same mistakes.

Take for example, our policies in Iran. Iran is a bellicose nation, with apparent aims at a nuclear arsenal. Will they build a nuclear bomb? I don't know, and frankly I don't want to find out. So what are we to do? Well, one option be presented as the most prudent course is to talk to Iran (as if this ever helped). The fear is that if we as a nation use force, or the threat of force to prevent Iran's current course, we will take more steps toward war. Perhaps, but the alternative is a policy called appeasement.

Appeasement, for those who have not studied their history, has a near perfect track record--of failure. Let's take a look at the record in the 20th Century. Woodrow Wilson sought to appease critics in the 1910's with regard to America's entry into the World War I, by proclaiming a policy of non-interference. The result--we got into the war anyway.

The British in the 1930's sought appease the the expansion of the Third Reich. The result, the Nazi invasion of the Sudetenland, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, France and oh, yeah, the attempted invasion of Britain. Had it not been for the RAF and the United States, World War II would have lasted a lot longer than it did.

During the 1960's and 1970's the United States called appeasment something else--containment, of the Soviet expansion. It was not until Ronald Reagan decided that he would wage and economic war by building our military capability to the point that the Soviets could not economically keep up that the Cold War was won. But decades of "containment" did nothing to stop the spread of the Soviety Empire. Eventually, their own mistakes and the Reagon build up did.

What other lessons can history tell us? Raw naked power wins. Always has, always will. Don't believe me? Ask the city father of Carthage, of Dresden, of Hiroshima. Ask the men and women of the French coast near the English Channel. Ask the citizens of Iraq or Afghanistan. The exercise of raw, naked power will always carry the day. That is not to say that the exercise of that power does not come at a cost to both the person applying the force that the person against whom the power is applied. But it does win.

I am not advocating the immediate invasion of Iran. We are neither prepared militarily or socially for such a step. But to deny that power has never solved anything is to ignore history.

And thus we return to the subject of history. Never has so much ridden on the shoulders of a generation than now. Ours is a complicated world, one where various factions do not wish to merely defeat us in war, but to remove our nation from the face of the globe. Do we honestly believe that a policy of appeasment, of diplomacy, or of containment of a nuclear Iran is really a viable option? If so, we need to send our national leaders back to history class.