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The Lessons of Pseudo-History
By Jonathan Foreman
The New York Post, February 10, 2002

It is often asserted, especially abroad, that U.S. foreign policy is hobbled or distorted by the historical ignorance that besets the American public and many of its elected leaders.

There may be something to this, though Americans tend to be quick studies when it comes to things they care about. But chattering-class pseudo-knowledge of the kind regularly paraded on the op-ed pages and TV may well be more dangerous than the public's alleged ignorance.

Look, for example, at the way the punditry here and in Europe chose to misinterpret the supposed lessons of history with regard to the making of war in Afghanistan.

We were assured that any U.S. intervention would be a disaster, even "another Vietnam." The Afghans, we were told, were an unbeatable warrior people. Not since Alexander the Great marched to the Indus had any foreigner succeeded in cowing these indomitable mountain men, whose hillsides were scattered with the bone-dust of would be conquerors.

In the form of the Taliban, the Afghans would drown the American Eagle in sand and blood just as their ferocity once humbled the British and Soviet Empires.

All myth.

The Soviets are generally acknowledged to have been winning the war in Afghanistan (despite problems of drunkenness, inadequate training and poor morale that bedeviled their conscript units) until America gave the Afghan resistence devastating Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and other support. And even then, it was dwindling will and economic collapse back home that led the Soviets to give up on Afghanistan.

Yes, both of the British Empire's 19th century Afghan wars included some terrible defeats. But both also culminated in the crushing of Afghan armies before the forces of the Raj withdrew to the borders of India.

That Afghanistan was never incorporated into any
neighboring empire did not prove that the country was
inconquerable, merely that the prolonged occupation of its
mountains and deserts wasn't deemed worth the effort by
the British, Russians, Persians or anyone else.

What a look at Afghan history does show - and recent
events confirm - is that even the most fearsome warriors are
generally defeated by trained, disciplined soldiers, or even by
other warriors led by such soldiers. Even without the benefit
of modern tactical air power.

Similar historical mythology was used to argue against U.S.
intervention in Bosnia and then Kosovo: If sent to protect
Bosnian and Kosovar Muslims from Slobodan Milosevic's
mass murderers, our forces would face certain humiliation at
the hands of the Serbs - an unconquerable warrior race
whose guerillas had tied down 20 crack German divisions in
World War II.

It does no disservice to the bravery of a nation that suffered
very greatly in resistance to the Nazis to point out that the
"20 crack division story" was rubbish. Germany's main goal
in Yugoslavia was to retain control of the country's mineral
resources, and that the Germans did with far fewer than 20
divisions.

When the U.S. goverment and military brass finally
overcame an exaggerated fear of casualties and decided to
take some military risks in the Balkans, it didn't take long for
Milosevic and his thugs to cave. (Sadly, it was already too
late for large numbers of Bosnian Muslims and Kosovar
Albanians. )

Of course, everyone can make mistakes based on historical
misinterpretation.

In 1940, Adolf Hitler believed that the French would be very difficult to defeat but the Russians a walkover - an underestimation almost as fatal as that of the United States by Imperial Japan. And during the Korean War, Gen. MacArthur assumed that Chinese wouldn't fight on the Yalu, a gross error (though one which killed vastly more Chinese than Americans).

But since Vietnam, U.S. policymakers have persistently underestimated our own capacities and overestimated those of our enemies. It's odd, because the purely military lessons of the Vietnam war are complicated and far from clear. And whatever else one may think of America's policy
of backing the Republic of Vietnam, the South's victory at the battle of An Loc in 1973 did indicate that by providing only tactical air support, we could have held off the armies of the North indefinitely.

Now, with so much at stake, America must examine its own military capacities (and those of our potential enemies) in a sober, realistic light, uncolored by historical lessons that are nothing of the sort.