“This will be final message from Saigon station. It has been a long fight and we have lost. . . . Those who fail to learn from history are forced to repeat it. Let us hope that we will not have another Vietnam experience and that we have learned our lesson. Saigon signing off.”As we sign off from 2017 and look ahead to 2018, it would be wise to recall these words from Thomas Poglar, the CIA station chief who uttered America's last pronouncement from the Vietnam War as Saigon fell in April 1975. If the last couple years has taught me one thing, it's how little most Americans, particularly those who wield the greatest power today, seem know, or choose to learn, from history. And more than anything, it explains why so many choose to cling to elements of the past that should represent shame, while ignoring the elements that represent the most significant steps toward progress and justice that our democracy should symbolize.
And lest you think this is simply another attack on the unpresidential conduct of our current commander in chief, let me assure you that the inability, or unwillingness, to learn from history is not limited to any one ideology, but indeed is endemic to extremists on both the left and the right who dismiss facts and truth in pursuit of their own arrogant and misguided vision for our country, and the world.
Here's a quick rundown of where history lost in 2017, followed by a hope that 2018 will finally prompt most Americans to look to the past for real and meaningful guidance to the future.
1) The President of the United States chose to honor Native American code breakers from World War II by standing in front of a portrait of a president (Andrew Jackson) who committed probably the greatest genocide against Native Americans (the Trail of Tears) in American history. If that weren't enough, he capped the ridiculous display with a racist, Native American-themed slur against a political opponent.
2) Speaking of Andrew Jackson, Trump has made no secret of his infatuation with the occupant of the $20 bill and his desire to mold his "populist" presidency after our seventh president, who apparently best represented American greatness. Of course, any reading of history tells us that Andrew Jackson's vision of greatness was a country in which white males trampled over the basic rights of other Americans, most notably African-Americans and Native Americans, and matters of life and death and morality were inconsequential to the greater cause of seeing the United States expand its territory and power over all who would dare stand in its way. Jackson was the most staunchly pro-slavery president in early American history, and his unwillingness, or lack of interest, in confronting the insidious evil that was beginning to split the nation during his presidency ultimately led to the Civil War. In fairness, Jackson was a man of his times, and some of his actions did advance the principles of democracy and equality of opportunity, but in the era in which he presided, those principles were only relevant to white males, and for Donald Trump or anyone else to ignore that fact is to betray history.
3) Moving to the liberal end of the ideological spectrum, a recent survey indicated that half of Millennials say they wouldn't mind living in a communist or socialist country. This follows the shameful and pathetic praise that was heaped upon Cuban dictator Fidel Castro by some on the left (including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau) upon Castro's death in late 2016. Trudeau was richly, and deservedly, mocked over his comments, in which he called Castro "a remarkable leader." Indeed, Castro was remarkable -- remarkable at destroying lives, murdering innocent people, turning his country into an economic backwater of despair, plunging the world to the brink of nuclear war and representing all that was evil and destructive about the communist system during the Cold War. The fact that so many young people have such a sanguine view of communism today is yet another example of how little younger generations know, or care, about the lessons of history. No system in world history has done more to trample on basic human rights than communism; no system in world history has proven to be such an economic and moral disaster than communism; no system in world history has done more to threaten world peace, and human survival, than communism. History has already passed its judgment on communism; sadly, many Millennials seem eager to give it another chance. Since it would surely be too much to ask them to commit 18 hours of their time to watching Ken Burns' "Vietnam War," perhaps they can squeeze the final 2-hour episode which covers what happened to the people of Vietnam when communism "won."
4) The fact the #MeToo movement exploded onto the national scene at the end of 2016 shows how little was learned by the feminist movement of the 1960s and '70s and decades-long push for gender equality. The fact that so many men in positions of power continued to think they were entitled to treat women as sexual objects long after such behavior should have been stigmatized and universally condemned shows how little we have learned the lessons of the long fight for civil rights in this nation.
5) Anyone who watched the "Vietnam War" series, or any documentary about war, or read "All Quiet on the Western Front" or any novel about war, appreciates the common thread of war through history: It is unquestionably, undeniably, horrible for all involved. It's not something to be taken lightly, joked about, or casually tweeted about. The United States is at its greatest when it does everything in its power to find peaceful solutions to the world's problems, not when its president threatens to "totally destroy" nations with nuclear weapons in front of the United Nations, the world body that was established precisely to prevent the horrors of world war that consumed the planet in the 20th century.
Perhaps fittingly, 2017 ended with a White House ceremony to mark the signing of the Republicans' tax bill, a piece of legislation that marked a betrayal of history by promising economic prosperity by cutting taxes and freeing the hand of corporations and the wealthy (the same promises that led to the Great Depression and Great Recession when unbridled faith in capitalism led to economic disaster). But I think the greatest betrayal of history in 2017 came out of the mouth of Senator Orrin Hatch during that ceremony, where he speculated that perhaps the most ill-informed, untruthful, crude, disrespectful and divisive president in American history may ultimately go down in history as its greatest. Those words were spoken a short distance from the Lincoln Memorial, in which history honors a man who was the polar opposite of Donald Trump in every way imaginable, a man who represented grace, humility, dignity and strength unsurpassed in American history, a man who summoned Americans to reach for the "better angels" of their nature and to bind up the nation's wounds at its hour of greatest peril and tragedy. Abraham Lincoln represents both everything we should learn from history, and everything Americans have chosen to forget.
Orrin Hatch should rest assured that whatever becomes of the Trump presidency, the words inscribed in the Lincoln Memorial will never be spoken about Donald Trump or himself:
"In this temple, as in the hearts of the American people for whom he saved the union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln lives forever."
Whatever the future holds in 2018 and beyond, America's hope for achieving true greatness will ultimately hinge on the ability and willingness to learn the lessons from its past -- both from its achievements and its sins. That was the message from Thomas Poglar as he signed off from Saigon in 1975, and, more than ever, it needs to be the message today.
