In her brilliant book The Uses and Abuses of History, historian Margaret MacMillan tells a story about two Americans discussing the atrocities of Sept. 11, 2001. One draws an analogy with Pearl Harbor, Japan's attack on the United States in 1941. His friend has no idea what this means. “You know,” the first man replies. “It was when the Vietnamese bombed the American fleet and started the Vietnam War.”
Historical memory is not always quite as bad as this. But international politics and diplomacy are riddled with examples of bad and ill-considered precedents being used to justify foreign-policy decisions, invariably leading to catastrophe.
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