(Vance Serchuk, The Weekly Standard, August 10, 2015)Konrad Adenauer once quipped that the definition of history is “the sum total of things that could have been avoided.” But the task of a leader, in casting his or her gaze backward, is not to derive a sense of superiority from the mistakes of his predecessors, to slough off responsibility for the problems of the present, or to imagine alternative, more pleasing realities that might have come into being. It is to try to understand why and how intelligent, well-intentioned people nonetheless got important things wrong, to discern the patterns and pathologies to which we seem predisposed as individuals and as a polity, and to distill a set of lessons that can help in navigating the present.
The whole article is here - http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/ ... 01545.html
The author makes many good points about our overall failure to deal with the aftermath of our military incursions into the Middle East, which is a direct result of our failure to think things through beforehand. Starting something with no idea how to end it isn't good policy anywhere in the world.
