History Repeats

I grew up learning about religious wars in history. The horrors of the crusades, the holocaust, all seemed too far in the past to touch my life. Thank god my generation seemed to be so much more focused on the important things in life, like happiness and family, or even money. But George Santayana had it all wrong, simply learning history won't necessarily protect you from repeating it, and here we are, in the midst of one of the biggest religious wars in the history of man.

The similarities between the world's attitude regarding the atrocities of Hitler and those of Hussein are remarkable. The backlash the government faced during that time from some of the citizenry of the U.S. as well as public opinion abroad so closely matches our world in 2004 that it's almost scary. The 9/11 commission, the Pearl Harbor panel, the accusations that were floated that Roosevelt didn't do enough to stop Pearl Harbor from happening (there were warning signs of an impending attack from Japan). High ranking government officials like Joeseph Kennedy felt that we shouldn't have gotten involved in WWII in the first place. Others, citing the atrocities of the holocaust, argued that we didn't do enough to stop the Nazi's from their crusade of violence. And didn't we tacitly support Hitler during his early days? Now we want to go to war to take him out? How dare we change our minds like that? Does any of this sound familiar?

As a nation, as a people, we haven't grown. Our political system is mired in partisan debates that boil down to who may gain a majority advantage come the next election. Rather than focus entirely on what's right, we respond with emotion and fear, finger pointing and unaccountability. We are faced with a greater threat than we've faced in half a century. Our entire system of freedoms is under review. Yet we pay more attention to a whistleblower's book than we do to the problem itself.

Taking bi-partisan politics and emotional hatred for the Bush administration out of the picture, the majority of Americans agree that Saddam Hussein should have been removed from power a long time ago. The majority agrees that we need to win the war against Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. The majority feels that the best way to fight terrorism is through the establishment of real democracy in the Middle East. The differences between our highly split electorate boil down to whether we've conformed to international policy when waging war, or whether we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that every single reason to go to war has been vindicated.

Article Author: James Golden

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