World War I

History can be a good friend of confirmation bias. We often look to the past for lessons that support beliefs that we already have instead of the ones best supported by a deep analysis of the evidence.

A little more than 99 years ago, and several months after the United States declared its entry into the Great War against the Central Powers of Europe, Charles Evans Hughes declared in a widely publicized speech that “the [constitutional] power to wage war is the power to wage war successfully.” In a new draft article

Americans (myself included) have tended not to be attentive to the Great War. Our attention is focused instead on World War II, and we think of the Great War as "World War I" - and regard the "First" merely as wind-up to the "Second." It took me a long time to understand intellectually that the 20th century (and the 21st as well, to judge by current events in the Middle East) takes place in the shadow of the towering mountain range of the First World War. In historical terms, the First World War stands above even the Second in its influence upon the world.