If the ultimate use of historical knowledge is to avoid repeating mistakes of the past and using past ideas and techniques that have worked well, then President Bush is not ultimately using historical knowledge in the current war against Iraq. Based on the information provided by Gary R. Hess in Presidential Decisions for War, regarding the Korea, Vietnam and Gulf Wars, President George W. Bush has not learned from the mistakes of predecessors Truman, Johnson, and George H. W. Bush. Hess maintains that the nature of American war changed after WWII in considerable ways. One was the advent of international agency like the United Nations, overseers of international crises that required consensus and a coalition to sanction war. Another change was that wars like the Korean, Vietnam, and Gulf wars differed in that they were limited, regional conflicts fought against minor powers.
Hess argues that once Truman, Johnson, and GHW Bush made the determination to go to war against North Korea, North Vietnam, and Iraq, respectively, the mistakes made by each occurred across certain dynamics: alternatives to war, constitutional process, and congressional, public, and international support. Each president was responsible for a variety of mistakes in these wars, from TrumanÆs failure to unite the Korean peninsula and JohnsonÆs underestimation of North Vietnamese resolve to GHW BushÆs failure to secure stability for the Iraqi people by permitting Saddam Hussein to remain in power. While each of these presidents tried to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors, each made their own or inadvertently repeated similar mistakes. Truman, for example, did not want to repeat the mistakes in Korea that had been made in the 1930s when the Japanese invaded Manchuria. Truman did avert WW III by avoiding escalating tensions between the U.S. and Soviet Union. Hess argues that ôFor Truman, Johnson, and Bush, the wars pro
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