[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by 1stindoor

What did we as a nation believe them capable of on September 10, 2001?

FWIW, in the spring of 1999, after India test fired an Agni II, my forecast was that a coalition of states (what Bush the Elder latter labeled "the axis of evil") was going to drag the planet into a global war after Pakistan and India nuked each other. In this scenario, Iraq would use WMDs against Israel and the United States, someone was going to detonate something in Eastern Europe, and the DPRK was going to attack ROK.

From the stares I received from a classroom of undergraduates, I got the sense that people didn't really care what I thought. (How little things have changed.)

Originally Posted by 1stindoor

IMO, not recognizing, and learning from, our own intel gaps in regards to Nazism and the rise of the third reich, will only cause us to repeat those same mistakes.

During the Cold War there was a running debate among diplomatic historians that America's responses to international events after 1945 were too narrowly focused on the 'lessons' of the Second World War. (In general, the ups and downs of 'summitry' [i.e., personal diplomacy], in particular the conferences held in Munich, Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam.) Similarly, American military historians frequently pointed out that the United States seemed intent on refighting its last war, that the general public placed too much emphasis on World War II as 'the Good War,' paid too little attention to the Eastern front, romanticized the military effectiveness of Nazi Germany, and under appreciated the military effectiveness of the United States.

Originally Posted by 1stindoor

Forty or Fifty years from now...what do you believe the research and debate will show regarding radical islamists.

I have no idea.

One hot spring day in the early 1990s, Robert Divine, while going over page after page of a bibliography/reading list on the history of American foreign relations, pointed out how the Spanish Civil War, once the most contentious topic of political and historical debate among Americans, had since faded into obscurity in the United States.

His graduate students looked up from their furious note taking, confused frowns on their faces. He did not specifically mention Chevy Chase's running joke on Saturday Night Live, but that's what came to at least one student's mind. The moment of levity quickly vanished as the stress of understanding his comments (is he saying we do or do not have to read this particular book) was compounded by the thought that what is vitally important today may not be tomorrow.

Originally Posted by 1stindoor

I'll give you a hint...we choose to ignore the first attempt on the WTC, we choose to ignore the attack on the Cole, and we choose to forget attacks on Marines.

Of late, I wonder when was this choice made? After these attacks occurred? Or was the choice made when the American people picked Ronald W. Reagan over James E. Carter, Jr.? (The greatest 'failure' of his presidency was Carter's inability to make a convincing case for his vision of American power. If one plows through his public remarks dating back to the 1976 presidential campaign, one can find ample evidence that he envisioned the geostrategic environment that America faces today.)