Those who fail to learn the lessons of history........

I saw this. I have to say, if there's one phrase that should discount Mr. Chalabi and the future of Iraq - more precisely the future of the territory formerly Iraq - it should be "Cheney's old pal." I'll leave it to the linked piece to detail all of the red flags regarding Mr. Chalabi. I will say again that Mr. Cheney, and the rest of the neo-cons, should never again be consulted on foreign policy. I mean, how wrong do you have to be before you stop getting invited to give an opinion?

I have an idea, and it's regarding the old "appeasement" argument. History tells us that the mistake the world made in the 1930s was appeasing Hitler, and that's a good lesson. That's not the only lesson that history teaches us, and it's not the most important. We have so overemphasized the appeasement lesson to the detriment of others. After the assassination of the Arch Duke Ferdinand in 1914 the world rushed headlong into World War I. That's pretty much the opposite of appeasement. We have fallen woefully short of appreciating that lesson.

To be clear, in the dichotomous political climate we live in today, I'm not advocating 1930's style appeasement, but I do think that somewhere between appeasement, and "We have to show these guys we mean business." is where the sweet spot is.

Take the latest development in the Russia/Ukraine crisis - the shooting down of MH17. There is little doubt that it was done by the separatists backed by Putin's Russia. Most of the information released indicates that the separatists received the hardware and training to show down aircraft from Russia. That said, there is still an investigation to do, and separatists hindering the efforts to do that only make them look more guilty, but can we start by talking to credible people about the area, and groups involved? That's be a good idea. One more thing, can we talk about what has happened in past comparable occurrence, and not the political mythology?

What I'm saying is that maybe we should heed the lessons of the advent of WWI, and not jump to conclusions, and make decisions that are not thought out thoroughly. There are 3 really big crises going in the world right now; Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, and the continuing fracture of Iraq and Syria and ISIS. Making a snap decision, and then building a case supporting that to show everyone "we mean business" is foolhardy, and short sighted. Cherry picking information and building up those that support that cheery picked data is what wasted lives and US fortune in the Iraq fiasco. If there's a lesson history can teach us it's that. Being so recent you'd think it'd be reasonably clear. We need to gather information first, THEN make a decision.

So please, stop talking to Dick Cheney.