The Politics of War

I have been reading The Politics of War, a history of American involvement in the Spanish American War, the Phillipines War and the Great War, by the late Walter Karp. I haven't even got to the second half of the book and I am struck by the similarities of events of the late 19th century to those of the early 21st.

The push for war against Spain began long before the accidental sinking of the Maine in 1898, and President McKinley attributed the war he had planned for to the "Almighty hand of God." A quick victory led to a lengthy war against insurgents in the Phillipines.

I could go on and on. George Santayana famously said "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." The companion to that saying should be, "people never remember."