Angry Planet - Romanticizing History Can Be Worse Than Repeating It

Episode Date: May 3, 2019

The cliche goes that those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. But history is more than just a memory and a lesson, sometimes it’s a tool and a weapon. Some pundits are concerned that historians in their ivory tower of academia are neglecting the study of war and policy in favor of identity politics, and in some cases shirking their role of educating the public in favor of an academic elitism that is mostly aimed producing work for themselves and their colleagues to consume.Brian Laslie is the Deputy Command Historian at NORAD and United States Northern Command.  He previously served as the Historian of the 1st Fighter Wing at Langley Air Force Base from December 2009 to August 2012.  In 2011, he deployed as the Air Forces Central Command (Forward) Historian to Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, from September 2011 to January 2012. It was while deployed that Brian wrote the majority of what would become his first book. Brian’s views expressed here are his own and don’t reflect those of the United States government.You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. You know, I think the romanticizing of history, the mythology of history, there's much more danger there. You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front lines. Here are your hosts. Hello, welcome to War College. I'm Matthew Galt.

And I'm Derek Gannon. And I'm Kevin Nodell. The cliche goes that those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it. But history is more than just a memory and a lesson. Sometimes it's also a tool and a weapon. Some pundits are concerned that historians in their ivory tower of academia are neglecting the study of war and policy in favor of identity to politics and in some cases shirking their role of educating the public in favor of

an academic elitism that is mostly aimed producing work for themselves and their colleagues to consume. Brian Lasley is the Deputy Command historian at NORAD and United States Northern Command. He previously served as the historian for the first fighter wing at Langley Air Force Base, base from December 2009 to August 2012. In 2011, he deployed as the Air Force's Central Command Forward Historian at LUDD Air Base, Qatar, from 2011 to January 2012. It was while deployed that Brian wrote the majority of what would become his first book. Brian, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

I do want to state up at the very top that the views that are going to be expressed here are your own, and they do not reflect those of the United States government, correct? Absolutely. Okay. Well, can you tell us about that first book? So, long story short, I actually wanted to write a book on Walt Disney and World War. too. And I say that only as an introduction that the Disney archives were not letting outside researchers in. So I was kind of struggling for a topic for a book to write. And I'd gone over to the history office at

Air Combat Command, and they had a box called Red Flag Files. And I said, well, what is this? So I started going through that. And for those that don't know, Red Flag is an Air Force exercise to train primarily fighter pilots, but really a lot of other Air Force members for their first 10 combat missions. The theory is, if you can do your first 10 missions in a training environment and make them hyper-realistic, that gives you a better chance of survival when you actually do go into combat. And so the Air Force Way of War, the first book, looks at the development of large force training exercises after Vietnam and kind of follows how those exercises

developed into the successes of Operation Desert Storm. Okay, so kind of, you know, a very interesting view of how history can be used to teach, right? From your perspective, you know, kind of like we said at the top, a lot of people like to complain that we are forgetting our own history, that we're, you know, or that history is being misappropriated. do you think the discipline of history is in decline or changing in some malicious way?

You know, not in a malicious way, not by any stretch of the imagination. Is the discipline of history in decline? And I would say yes and no. There are dozens of articles that clearly point to a decline in history majors at the bachelor's level in the last four to five decades. You know, when you go back to the early 1970s, something like 20% of all majors were history majors, and now that is down to well under 10%, you know, depending on the study you look at. And the American Historical Association, the AHA, did a study that showed that there was an even greater, a steeper decline since the Great Recession in 2008. So clearly there's a dual trend, but an especially steeper drop over the last decade. So not to be glib, but look, that's clearly bad.

Now, I think that there are a number of reasons the history major has dropped and perhaps continues to drop. Look, there has been a vast proliferation of majors in the last 20 years. there are other options for young college students to go out there and study. You know, this isn't the days of you're going to go to college and you're going to be either an engineering major or science major or a humanities major. There's just other things that you can study now. Now, I'll say that, look, the focus on STEM in the last decade, the emphasis on parents wanting their kids to have an employable job, not to say that history isn't an employable job. but there are clearly other reasons, other factors for the decline in history, other than, well, we're just not studying it anymore. Okay, well, what are those, what are those factors? You think it's really just down to more options?

You know, I would think there's probably several reasons. And the studies point to these different reasons, right? People are looking for a job right out of college. and history doesn't lend itself, or at least, you know, if you're looking at the average 20, 21, 22 year old, probably doesn't think of history as a very employable major. Now, I think they're probably getting that advice from their friends, their cohorts, their parents, other people they respect. And I think, you know, if you talk to your average history professor, they're going to tell you, look, that's not true, because a history major, really any major in the humanities, is going to teach you to do a couple of things, right? It's going to teach you how to write. It's going to teach you how to be clear and concise.

It's going to teach you how to analyze problems, which is what an employer is looking for in, you know, the program management fields out there. But, no, I think it's clearly obvious that there are less history majors now. But I also think, look, the discipline of history is expanding. And I also think that we need to be a bit more nuanced. when we look at what we consider history or history-related career fields. You know, when I went through undergraduate, there were no or very little interdisciplinary

studies. So I think that there might be a factor of, hey, I really like history. I've always enjoyed history. But this security studies degree, the security studies program, might be a better path. So I think there are a lot of newer disciplines that take advantage of history that aren't necessarily history. So when we look at the decline in the history major itself, there are other career fields that I don't want to say the word, you know, history light, but there are other career paths that take advantage of historical or history classes. Okay. Well, when we talk about

the discipline here, and this is one of the reasons I think we really wanted to have you on, because you were very critical about this on Twitter. Some historians like Max Boot, Hal Brand, and Francis Gavin have argued that academic historians are beginning to neglect military topics and are also becoming increasingly inward-looking and kind of less accessible. And you've been pretty critical of that. What do you think they're getting wrong? You know, I think, and maybe I'm in danger of being in an echo chamber here, because I do think that there are historians, you know, both academic who teach it,

your traditional four-year college, and those of us either employed by the government or employed in museums, excuse me, who spend a lot of our time, you know, interacting with the public, writing professional blogs, writing articles for magazines. So I think this idea that academics are this cloistered minority who only write for themselves is really short-sighted. And I think there's a danger in giving historians kind of this broad brush stroke that we are all in an ivory tower. We only write for ourselves. We only interact with each other. And I think if you go out, you know, to social media, to Twitter, to even Instagram now, and on Facebook and go out to museums, I think it's fairly obvious that there's a large portion of historians who are interacting

with the public who are writing for the public on a daily basis. Now, I will say that if you want to make the charge that the discipline of history has changed, that there is less focus on diplomatic and military history,

you know, that might be true, but I don't think that it comes at the expense of diplomatic and military history. There are clearly myself, that is what I write, that is what I'm interested in researching. And Most of the people I tend to interact with are military historians. But the discipline is certainly changing. And I would actually say the discipline is expanding.

Everyone kind of points to the areas of race, class, and gender. So what we consider traditional history, I guess, you know, military and diplomatic has broadened into new areas, into richer areas for exploration. So I think it's certainly true that we as a profession are studying history differently. You know, I would point that most people don't say, hey, I study military history. They say I study war in society. So I think the discipline itself has kind of changed. In military history, do we care more about the ground level or the command level?

Or do we want to kind of strike a balance with that? I've always wanted to strike a balance. And I'm a big fan of saying, I may not be interested in your area of history, but I am glad you do it. So, you know, I mentioned strategic studies earlier. And there are a lot of people that focus on the strategic level of war and the strategy of war. And I've always kind of considered myself more at the operational level with the subjects that I have written on or even down into the tactical level. But I think it kind of depends on the audience. You know, I would go, who are we talking about with reference?

Do we focus more on one level or another? I think most, you know, I'll use the term popular histories, you know, what you can find on the bookshelf at Barnes & Noble or order off Amazon. I think they tend to be more tactically focused. I think, you know, maybe you can go in there and occasionally find a biography of a four-star. But I think the popular histories tend to be more tactically focused. I think we all have kind of our own area of emphasis, be that strategy, operational tactics. I do think the service academy, and professional military education institutions do a really good job of ramping up so that you're studying at, say, the majors level, that operational level of history. And at the 06 kernel level, you're studying that strategic level of history. So the history is out there, right? I mean, there's no dearth of or lack of publications. In fact, I kind of hear this a lot that, you know, historians aren't writing books or they're not publishing enough. my two read stack is so large that there's no way I'm going to get through it this year.

So I think there's a balance. And I would say whatever it is you are interested in reading, historically speaking, it's out there. You've just got to know where to look for it. I think that's true. The show gets a lot of mail from publishers. We get a lot, and it's mostly history books. And we have to be really choosy about which subjects we, want to dive into because there is so much coming in. If you were going to design a survey course

for every boot going into the American military, what would you want them to know? So this is a great question. I am a government historian, but I keep my feet kind of in the academic realm. I teach part-time. I'm an adjunct professor at the Air Force Academy. So I can say with fairly clear reasoning what we want, you know, at least a young second lieutenant to know, because the course I teach is the introduction to military history class at the Air Force Academy, and it happens to use the same textbook or one of the same textbooks that is used at the United States Military Academy at West Point. So I think what we're trying to get across to at least junior officers is that, look, there are three levels of war, and that these

aren't, you know, they're not clear delineations between them. They blend together, they blur together. And can you as a lieutenant recognize that what's going on at the tactical level is linked up to the operational and the strategic level? Can you make those connections? Can you make the analysis to why what you are going to be doing as a lieutenant is important to higher level authorities. What books or specific historical lessons would you use to impart that? You know, you started the program off by saying those that don't study history are doomed to repeat it. And there's a joke I often use that those who do study history are doomed to watch others repeat it. So as far as what books are out there, what specific books I would read,

It would really depend on, you know, the time period I'm trying to get across, the lessons I'm trying to get across. So as an Air Force historian, is someone who studies the history and the importance of air power. Look, you got your early texts of Gullio Du Hay, Billy Mitchell, William Sherman, not that, William Sherman, different Sherman. But then you've got kind of stuff that's been written more recently in the last day. decade or so, John Andrews Olson seems to turn out a new book every year with the importance and the lessons to be learned of air power. And I am sure that my fellow ground power authorities have their list of go-to books as well. How do you teach American military failures? So, you know, I've, for years, I've been teaching leadership camps in the summer since I was in

college. And one thing that I have often imparted to, and these are high school students I teach, is that you can learn as much from failure as you ever will from success. In fact, I would be willing to argue that everyone who I'm talking to right now and everyone who is listening to this show has learned as much from their failures in their own lives as they have from the successes or the big wins in their lives. And I think the same thing. thing is true of military history. So right off the bat,

I always go to Pearl Harbor, 9-11, in certain lessons, I talk about the Apollo 1 fire that killed the crew and the astronauts there. And I use that as an example of a lack of imagination.

Were we not prepared for these things from a certain point of view? Yeah, we weren't prepared. But it was a lack of an imagination, it was something that we had not thought about. It was an avenue of approach that we had not anticipated. And so I think there's as much to be learned from the failures in American military history as there are from the successes and the great battles, if you will. That leads, I think, into two questions that I wanted to ask. One, I think there's been a lot

written about whether America's historical literacy is starting to wane a little bit. But two, I think there's a real question to be asked about there's danger in forgetting history, but there's also danger in romanticizing in misremembering history and over-emphasizing the success and forgetting the failures. What do you think is more dangerous, forgetting history or misremembering? You know, I think the romanticizing of history, the mythology of history, there's much more danger there. And let me kind of give you a personal story, a personal vignette, if you will. So I am a son of the South, right? I was born and raised in Kennesaw, Georgia, right outside of Atlanta. I attended college at the Citadel, the military

college of South Carolina, not an institution known for its progressive behaviors. In the Civil war class that I took in college was either alternately titled either the War of Northern Aggression or the War for Southern Independence. So I had an upbringing that very much represented, you know, what we call the lost cause ideology of the Southern states, the romantic myth of the southern states during the Civil War. And I can say with 100% certainty that in my house growing up, gone with the wind set next to the Bible on the bookstand. And so it's actually not until graduate school that I really began to question some of the beliefs that I had kind of reverently held on to for so long.

Be they the causes of the Civil War, the outcome of the Civil War, the aftermath of the Civil War. Now, I think that having moved away from the South, having been in the military for a couple of years, having gone to graduate school and having other experiences that kind of broadened my understanding of who I am as a person, helped me be able to change some of the assumptions that I had held on to for so long. Now, if you're raised in kind of a similar way to which I was, if you believe certain facets, certain facets of your history, of your upbringing, of your history and heritage, if you will, those are really, really hard to let go of. You know, you're kind of predisposed to believe certain things. Now, I'm not saying that everything I learned as a kid or as

a undergraduate was wrong by any stretch of the imagination. But I think that there are many people who believe certain things, who are raised to think certain ways. And if you can't see past that, if you can't see into that kind of that analysis of your own history, I think there's a real danger because, you know, what happens? You turn into an adult, you turn into an adult who fervently believes that my way of thinking is the right way that what I know about history, and I wish I could do air quotes on the air, but what we know about history to be 100% the truth. So I definitely think that there is much more danger in the romanticizing or the misremembering of history. Now, how do we prevent that? Well, I think that kind of goes back to the heart of the conversation

that we are having right now, which is that as a professionally trained historian, and I could, you know, start naming people off on Twitter. Rob Thompson comes to mind who does a great job, kind of dispelling the myths of the lost cause ideology, which he's doing right now as, as part of, you know, what many Southern states call Confederate Heritage Month, he kind of takes that idea to task. But there are a lot of historians, and I think that's kind of part and parcel to our job, is not to write for each other, but to write for a greater public to say, here's the world as we see it. Here's what we used to believe. Maybe here's what we believe now. And so I think how do we fix or how do we engage with that romanticize sometimes?

misinterpreted version of history. I think as a professional historian, that's kind of part of our job, right? This is reminding me of I live in South Carolina, the statehouse grounds in Columbia, where there's still a statue of Benjamin Tillman up and many others. So what you're talking about is hitting me real hard. Kevin, I know you, when you were here last, you explored the grounds and were a little, is somebody who's from the north a little, I don't, want to put words in your mouth, but surprised by some of the stuff that you saw there?

I don't think you'd ever seen, like, the way we do here in the South. Well, I don't know if surprise is necessarily the right word, but I certainly hadn't seen it myself up close. And it was certainly something to read some of those inscriptions. Another thing I think is really interesting is when we talk about recent history, because we are now, people are now publishing books about wars that we are still fighting, right? What do you think is the responsibility there and what do you think can be learned? It's funny, I think you have to keep in mind, not as a historian, but as a person that time marches on, right? that what we really anyone clearly remembers as part of their own history or part of their experience,

you know, it gets farther and farther, you know, from right now. So when you look at the students that I am teaching, these are freshman cadets at the Air Force Academy. They are 18, 19 years old. You know, to them, the entire idea of 9-11. is not something that they have a memory of. You know, it is something that happened long ago in the past, whereas, you know, for a lot of us, that's something that's very visceral. With regard to the wars that are going on right now.

So if we want to lump the post-9-11 engagements into, you know, one unending conflict, I think it's important that we continue to write and we continue to examine the conflicts and look, what can be learned from them? How did things, you know, get to where we are now? And so I think that there's probably a tendency on the historians to go, well, that's too recent for me to write about. But I don't think that's the case. I think that you can look at, you know, for example, what was coming out of certain Air Force circles in the immediacy of Vietnam. And so I'm talking in the mid to late 70s, the exercise I talked about at the beginning of the show.

But the Air Force was publishing books immediately following Vietnam, you know, looking at what had happened and trying to come to an understanding of the experience that we had just gone through. And I think we're seeing that now with Operation Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom, and even more recently inherent resolve. I think that we're seeing a lot of books and publications as we try to come to grips with what we've gone through over, you know, wow, coming up on two decades, right? Do you think the American public cares about these questions so much? Are they still engaged with history, whether it be recent or distant? You know, and so I think the question there is, is your average American person? Is the American public's grasp of history slipping away? Is it getting worse? And I don't remember a time even from, you know, being a kid, you know, listening to my dad

talk about things like this up until now where you don't hear something along the lines of well, this generation doesn't appreciate history. And so I think you have to ask yourself then, or at least I ask myself, and I kind of joke about this, I'm a little glib about it, because I find that history is one of the few areas we do this with. No one ever complains about the American grasp of physics or chemistry or biology. No one ever says, you know, oh, our grasp of chemistry is seriously slipping. So I think there's an expectation among a certain segment of the society that we should know history or that we should understand our history.

And so I ask myself, you know, why is this? Why are we expected as a populace to be at least a little historically informed? And I think it's because, you know, that is kind of an expectation for a member of an informed society. in order to be part of citizen engagements in the fields of politics or current events to be part of, you know, I'll say, you know, the greater informed republic, I think there's an expectation that we should understand our history. In fact, one of the one article that was that was published recently said that Americans are suffering from an epidemic of historical amnesia. And so we expect at some level for the. average American citizen to know who we are and where we come from. And so again, using air quotes,

I think what do we mean by to know, air quotes history? Do we mean dates and names and specific events, or do we mean something, you know, in a greater understanding and insight into historical trends and themes? I actually think, and I could probably be proven wrong by any number of of articles that the average American has a greater understanding of historical themes and historical trends than they might readily admit to. So I think it's unfair. You know, if you go up to your average American on the street and say, hey, when was the Battle of Gettysburg? Go. But if you ask the average American, hey, do you think slavery has had and continues to have an impact on who we are as a society? They might have some thoughts on that.

you think then, and I'm going to speculate here, that when people say that Americans don't have a grasp of history, what they're really saying is they don't look at history the same way that I do? Yeah, and I think it's dangerous to think that everyone should have an interest in the same, you know, I'll say the same types of history that I like. but I think this can probably go well beyond the historical profession. Look, I absolutely adore and very passionate about military history, specifically about the history of the Air Force. Do I think that every American citizen needs to appreciate it in the same way that I do?

No, I'm glad I do it, and I'm glad I interact with the people that study it also. do I think there needs to be kind of a fundamental baseline? Yeah, probably. We probably need to understand the rough outline of how and why we became an independent nation, how and why we came to fight each other in the Civil War. But going back, I do think there's a very real danger in looking down on a segment of society or looking down on society as a whole and saying, well, they don't appreciate it. history the way I appreciate it, therefore they are somehow less than I am, or I know something

that they don't. I'm very cautious about that. That just gave me kind of a slight flashback to my undergrad years studying history. I did not continue history beyond my undergraduate years, partly because I think maybe this is me just getting a little bit too whiny. My faculty just wasn't that interested in a lot of the things that I wanted to study. And that actually was a lot of the military topics. And there was actually a little bit of slight horror that I was interested in that kind of thing. Is there a danger when historians themselves start setting the agenda about what is and is not important? Yeah, you know, our understanding of history changes. And we use the term historical revisionist.

or revisionist history. And I think that particular term, revisionist history, is always used as a pejorative. And I don't view it that way. I view it as we revising our understanding of any particular people or subject. We're changing the way we have traditionally thought about history. Now, I mentioned earlier that there are any number of areas in the historical career field, writ large, be that at the undergraduate, graduate level, government service, museums, tour guides, you know, what have you. I think there's a wide, wide range of historical topics that we can look at. And I am super impressed with people's historical literacy in their own areas. But I would never, and I'm not trying to toot my own own own here. I would not look down on someone because they are a different type of historian than I am.

I'm glad they study it. But I think, insularly, if that's a word, you know, kind of inside the historical profession, we do have our own stratifications. And I would assume that that's the same. And, you know, look, any military organization, any service branch, and probably in any number of other career fields, there are at least perceived stratifications, right? You know, the fighter pilot rules all in the United States Air Force, or at least there's a perception of that.

And so going back towards history, race, class, gender, military, society. Yeah, we kind of, we all focus on our own things. But again, I would say it's dangerous to think that my particular topic in history is more important than your topic of history. Look, look, there's enough book space at Barnes & Noble for us to publish all of our works and have a conversation about who we are. It's like every generation rediscoveres history over and over again and processes it through the lens of what's going on at that time.

Yeah, absolutely. It seemed that for a few years, if we want to go back to the early 2000s or the many, 2000s, there was a real hesitancy to use the word Afghanistan and Vietnam in the same sentence. There was a real hesitancy to ever utter the word quagmire when relating it to either Iraq or Afghanistan. But now that we have been involved in these conflicts for 17, 18 years, I think that we can look back on to Vietnam. And I'm not saying, and I don't think anyone would ever say this, that Afghanistan is Vietnam, Vietnam is Afghanistan. But I do think that we can look back and see that there are lessons learned, that there are similarities and differences between the

conflict. So yeah, I think I wholeheartedly agree that our own experiences, be they in the military or outside the military, inform our opinion of history. And And kind of isn't that the point of history to begin with or writ large is to be able to look back in the past and not provide a map to the future, but definitely provide guideposts, things to look for in our understanding of where we are going. I think that sounds like a lovely and not depressing place to go out on, and we usually end on a depressing note on this show. So I appreciate that. Brian, thank you so much for coming on the show. Do you have any books coming out that you'd like to plug? No, you know, I will say that I am busily working as a series editor for the University Press of Kentucky. And so our first two books in the Aviation and Air Power series, which we are doing in partnership with the Mitchell Institute, both of those just hit the shelves last month.

They are the lectures of the Air Corps Tactical School and biplanes at war, which is a look at Marine Corps Aviation in the inner war year. So I'm happy to see both of those hit the bookshelves and excited about where we're going with the series in the future. That's it for this week. Thank you for listening. War College is me, Matthew Derek Gannon and Kevin O'Dell. It was created by myself and Jason Fields.

If you like the show, you know what to do. Leave us a comment, like, and subscribe, all that jazz. You can find us on Twitter at War underscore College. We'll back next week with a discussion with Amnesty. International. Stay safe until then.