Do we ever learn from history?

Sir, airpower is not employed today because of it's effectiveness (or lack of it). Airpower is employed because it's politically expedient and relatively low risk. It's much easier and less risky (both in safety to the SM and politically to the politician) to drop a bomb on a tent and say "look, I'm doing something!" than to deploy a company of Soldiers or Marines to assault that tent and say "look, I'm doing something!"

If we want to win their hearts, we must first grab 'em by the ****s! It's rather difficult to make that reach from 10,000' above the ground.

I think we thought our air power and their soldiers would be enough to fight and win. But their, Iraqi, forces can't take advantage of the success of the air strikes. The Iraqi Army expect the air strikes to kill all of the enemy. That isn't going to happen. You aren't going to show up after the fight is over and came victory. I just think we didn't think they were that much of cowards as they are.

COL Charles Williams, some do (or did) understand, and utilized previous lessons learned. Here are GEN George Patton's thoughts on the subject, all penned some 65-70 years ago!

"It’s the unconquerable soul of man, not the nature of the weapon he uses, that insures victory."
"The soldier is the army."
"Wars might be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who leads that gains the victory."
"... many, who should know better, think that wars can be decided by soulless machines, rather than by the blood and anguish of brave men."

Short answer is no, we do not. As a nation, voters and politicians alike are more focused on the issue-du-jour rather than the fact that history repeats itself, and that those who do not study the failures of the past are apt to repeat the same failures.

I keep hearing "75% of the bombers come back with their payloads because they couldn't identify where the ordinance was needed. (paraphrased)" Well, DUH! But there are other history lessons that seem to have been forgotten, like thinking that Americans on the ground in Muslim countries will ever be seen as "a peacekeeping endeavor."

No matter what the lessons are from history, if are our leaders ignore those and follow some other path of idiocy, all we can do is follow orders as we are required to.

"Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it."
-- George Santayana
"Those who study history are doomed to watch others repeat it"
-- Randy Bartlett
“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”
--Ecclesiastes 1:9 (NIV)

The question is not so much “Do we ever learn from history?”, but rather WHY don’t we ever learn? If we could answer that question, then solutions to “novel” problems – especially with regard to human relations – might stand a better chance of actually working.

With regard to WHY, there are at least THREE contributing factors to our overall failures (in general). The first is human conceit which believes that mankind is perfectible, that we somehow evolve beyond our base human instincts…or may somehow have them trained out of us. We believe that we will naturally do things better than the previous generations – without a firm or comprehensive first-hand knowledge of what they had to deal with. The Framers of our Constitution – recognizing this self-serving conceit – sought to put in place control measures to prevent abuse and repetition of errors made in every previous human experience with government. Bottom line: we tend to believe the very best in everyone,

“The [human] heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” Jeremiah 17:9

Another reason we seem to miss the mark is the sheer amount of interactive complexity that exceeds our human mind’s capacity -- individual or collective -- to grasp. Therefore, we tend to oversimplify the problems and fail to consider unintended consequences of their “obvious” solutions.

Thirdly, we (some more than others...just ask my wife) get pigheaded that OUR solutions WILL work, and we do not like to be proven wrong (See Reason #1). Our tenacity to hold on to flawed solutions tends to grow the more of ourselves we devote to their success.

http://www.amazon.com/Logic-Failure-Recognizing-Avoiding-Situations/dp/ [login to see] /ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid= [login to see] &sr=1-1&keywords=logic+of+failure

I'd like to find the guy who said "air power alone can get the job done" and drive a pitot tube through his throat. It's like saying boots on the ground alone can get the job done. Who's saying this? And the article itself gets me beaked...if the strategy is "overwhelming air power delivering..." then what we're executing definitely is NOT the strategy. Overwhelming? Arrrgghhh!

Well... My second marriage is better than my first....

But, no. Politicians and the public are eternally enamored of the idea of war without human cost. As such "Airpower alone" will never die.