Old School: Lessons "not" learned- War and Conflicts continue...

After some time decideing what would be a great topic to hopefully get a discussion flowing on, it was almost clear that maybe if any one was willing to learn from history so as to not repeat it, we ought to start in the right place.

With this ever happening state of conflict we are globally in, it was in my opinion a good idea to see who and what it was that got us here today. There is a treasure trove of information to make ones brain rich with info, but it does not one bit of good if not known. That would be like having a book and not reading it to learn what is inside. Or buying a video game and not playing it to unlock what is inside.

Those who do not learn from history, are doomed to repeat it, and that is very much true with todays current and recent past events.

In order to apply lessons learned, we have to adapt and respond to those lessons "not" learned. For this to occur we need to go back to school, the old school.

1946 NATIONAL WAR COLLEGE

old, so if any one has a interest in figureing out where we went wrong, or could have gone wrong, I highly advise starting with the below info, which is just a couple of key peices selected, much more is detailed in the source link provided.

It's goes back to the time that shaped and influences our time today.

The problems we are faced with today in the international arena are not problems just of the adjustment of disputes. They are problems caused by the conflict of interests between great centers of power and ideology in this world. They are problems of the measures short of war which great powers use to exert pressure on one another for the attainment of their ends. In that sense, they are questions of the measures at the disposal of states not for the adjustment of disputes, but for the promulgation of power. These are two quite different purposes. Governments are absorbed today not with trying to settle disputes between themselves, but with getting something out of somebody else, so they often promulgate a policy which goes very, very far. Governments have to use pressure on a wide scale; and therefore these traditional categories are not often applicable to conditions today.

The first category of measures lies in the psychological field. Tomorrow morning you are going to hear Joe Barnes, the foreign editor of the Herald Tribune, who had a prominent position in the Office of War Information (OWl) during the war. There is, though, one point I'd like to make about the psychological category: it would be a mistake to consider psychological measures as anything separate from the rest of diplomacy. They consist not only of direct informational activity like propaganda, or radio broadcast, or distribution of magazines. They consist also of the study and understanding of the psychological effects of anything which the modem state does in the war, both internal and external.

MEASURES SHORT OF WAR
THE GEORGE F. KENNAN LECTURES
AT THE
NATIONAL WAR COLLEGE, 1946-47

Any one want to compare notes?

[edit on 26-10-2006 by ADVISOR]

But I wont give up on you just yet, hence I have selected another peice that may be of interest, even if just for historical re iteration.

Totalitarian governments have at their disposal every measure capable of influencing other governments as a whole, or their members, or their peoples behind their back; and in the choice and application of these measures they are restrained by no moral inhibitions, by no domestic public opinion to speak of, and not even by any serious considerations of consistency and intellectual dignity. Their choice is limited by only one thing, and that is their own estimate of the consequences to themselves.