VPRO television started a docu series based on Geert Mak's impressive journal 'In Europe', chronicling 100 years of European history, based on many highly interesting interviews with people that personify that history today. Tonight's program was about the year 1916, the Battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest battles in human history with over one million casualties. A crazy war that drove many literally to madness, distruped hundreds of thousands of families, still impacting generations after.
It makes you wonder what the Dutchies are doing in Uruzgan - engaged in a so-called human mission, but in reality a guerilla war that's impossible to win. Same with the Americans in Iraq. Why aren't we learning from history... Btw, over the years VPRO has developed a comprehensive website with excellent historic documentaries, that links yesterday's stories to today's realities. Good stuff, worth to check out.
are we able to learn from history? Don't you think that various periods in history are too different from each other to compare them?
Posted by: MB | December 18, 2007 at 18:57
It depends on how you look. A former history teacher of mine, now an expert in military history, analyzed the Uruzgan mission based on both his knowledge of today's military operations/capacity and historic precedence, and drew the conclusion that there's no way the Dutches will be able to accomplish their mission. In fact the mission was unrealistic from the start. It's a politics/ideology motivated mission. I tend to agree. Of course it doesn't make sens to compare Uruzgan to Napoleon's time or the old Greeks, but it does to compare it to the earlier Russian invasion in Afghanistan and the problems the Americans have in Iraq.
Posted by: Marc | December 18, 2007 at 20:06