Why Military History Matters

Because citizens of democracies who don't know anything about military history won't win when called to fight otherwise, says Victor Davis Hanson:

It’s no surprise that civilian Americans tend to lack a basic understanding of military matters. Even when I was a graduate student, 30-some years ago, military history—understood broadly as the investigation of why one side wins and another loses a war, and encompassing reflections on magisterial or foolish generalship, technological stagnation or breakthrough, and the roles of discipline, bravery, national will, and culture in determining a conflict’s outcome and its consequences—had already become unfashionable on campus. Today, universities are even less receptive to the subject.

This state of affairs is profoundly troubling, for democratic citizenship requires knowledge of war—and now, in the age of weapons of mass annihilation, more than ever.

It is this gap in knowledge which leads the Left Wing Media to continually produce absolute howlers in their coverage of the war.

It is this gap in knowledge which leads American citizens to grow weary of a war in Iraq marked by the single swiftest, bloodless, and most complete military victory in history.

It is this gap in knowledge which leads America's political leadership to recognize that the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is just one theater in a wider Middle Eastern war, and fail to deal with a determined enemy in Tehran which is the cause of it.