Wilson And Mistakes

If we ignore history we are doomed to repeat it.

Woodrow Wilson is a tragic American figure.  His post-WWI leadership was destroyed by two things: his health that failed him and the Republican Party that refused to share his internationalist vision.

WWI was the most destructive war in human history.  And those who were making decisions about it were in the same generational paradigm as we who are over 60, are comparing the Civil War to Vietnam.

I was 18 in 1965, a civil war veteran was 18 in 1865.  It is 2017 now which compares with 1917 .  In short, my generation is in exactly the same place as were civil war veterans and those old enough to know better in 1917.

And that generation was against ANY foreign war or any war for that matter.

Why?  Because the Civil War virtually destroyed the south and killed a generation of young men.  It was obvious in 1917 that the same thing was happening in Europe, a generation of young men were dying as the war, the SECOND modern war, ground human beings into pulp.

So, the American People, especailly Republicans (the Party of Lincoln remember) were against any modern war.  People were in positions of power who remembered, and their children had been told the stories of Vicksburg, Shilo and Gettysburg.

So when the U.S. went into the war in 1917 it was with great  temerity....there was a lot of opposition.  And the United States was very cautious to get embroiled in European politics that were as unstable as middle east politics are today.

And when the U.S. fresh troops, whose knowledge of static line warfare was far advanced from the Europeans (the lessons of the  Civil War was that small squad type manuvers rather than frontal assaults were most effective) turned the tide, all Americans wanted was to bring the troops home. 

In short, tactically the U.S. troops fought with the hard lessons learned in the Civil War.  Those lessons were observed first hand by Adoph Hitler, a corporal at the time in the German Army, and used twenty years later in France and Poland during the start of WWII; they called it Lightning War. 

After the war, Wilson (a southener) fought for a fair peace and the League of Nations, knowing full well that modern warfare had simply become too  lethal to be used anymore by mankind.  Remember the generations of Americans who were making decisions still had the taste of the Civil War and were highly against  foreign entanglements.

And Republicans, who had won the Civil War and knew the costs,  were not interested in entering the world stage, whose lack of judgement had just cost a generation of young men their lives.  So they resisted ANY actions by the United States to stabilize the world poltical system; which needed it badly.

Wilson, who was a southener had no real base to oppose this isolationism; which was the American dominant foreign policy in 1919.

So the problems of the middle east, Africa and central Europe, that had helped start WWI, were left unaddressed; and would quickly cause WWII!

And Hitler was watching, waiting for his chance to destroy the world.

And America, still remembering the horrors of the Civil War and just witnessing the horrors of WWI, froze politically and withdrew from the world stage, leaving it to the future dictators of the world.

We are faced with a similar situation in the United States right now.  We have elected a potential dictator in Donald Trump. Right now we are faced with a fledgling Constitutional Crisis and Trump struggles to "control" the raging controversy about Russian interference in our election.  And Republicans, ironically, are saying do nothing; that it is all political, ignore it; JUST like they did in 1919.

In a sense their lack of historical judgement is about to cause the same kind of disaster that we endured in 1939!

And the consequences of that were the births of four dictatorships that nearly reduced the entire globe to ashes (Stalin, Mussollini, Tojo and Hitler). 

Right now the dictator who has ALREADY manipulated our political system, is waiting as his surrogate, Donald J. Trump, struggles to carry of the greatest con on the century.

The true tragedy of history is when we ignore it, we repeat it...The true tragedies of history happen when good people know there is a danger and do nothing.