In Foreign Policy, the Study of History Is Most Of What We've Got

There is no doubt about it: America is on a new course in international relations since 9-11. We declared war on terrorism, knowing neither who the terrorists were nor what countries they represented, if any. The old world in which the enemy was easy to identify and lived within a well-defined border had evaporated, but from it came a force that attacked us forcefully and killed 3,000 Americans on our own soil ... not to mention toppling two major New York skyscrapers and part of the Pentagon. At that point we knew there was an evil force out there that had to be reckoned with.

When we learned Ben Laden and the Taliban had hijacked the government of Afghanistan we invaded a country half the way around the globe, and those who saw history no farther back than the Vietnam War insisted we would be defeated, as Russia once was, and would quit the field when we started bringing thousands of people back in body bags. But this was the new, not the old, and Afghanistan is now being stabilized and becoming peaceful and America is welcome there by most. And hated by the despotic rulers we deposed. When we finally accepted what we already knew, that Saddam Hussein was part of the big danger we faced, we went after him. And the people who embraced the foreign policies of the past half-century said we should leave him alone, that he was no threat, and that we would quit the field when we started bringing thousands of people back in body bags. And now we know the truth about Iraq ... that the problem was not the people of that nation, but Saddam Hussein who was allied with shadowy terrorists in other nations.

I think it is time we in America quit listening only to sound bites on the six o'clock news, and start paying attention to some of our historians. Try Harvard's Samuel
Huntington and his book "The Clash of Civilizations." Or the interview with Ralph Peters in the magazine American Heritage. Or Fredric Smoler, who says: "When we think about the evidence that's available for formulating American grand strategy in the years to come, the study of history is most of what we've got."

This is Gordon Sawyer, and may the wind always be at your back.