By 1964, South Vietnam was a total mess and on the verge of collapse. Trying to prop up the series of incompetent gangster-generals running the show had not worked. The US had a choice: abandon South Vietnam to the tide of totalitarian communism or Double Down. American leadership convinced itself of the latter. Why?

Unbeknownst to many people (and certainly to American war planners, seemingly) is Vietnam’s long and proud history of resisting colonial oppressors. For most of the last two thousand years, the area we now know as Vietnam was dominated in some way by much larger and more powerful forces. The associated ethnic groups making up the Vietnamese people never forgot their own identity or their desire to manage their own affairs. Colonial France would learn this lesson in the harshest way imaginable.

For far too many Americans, “Vietnam” conjures up vague film or picture images of futility, atrocity, and stupidity; it also seems to symbolize folly and national shame. While there are truths to all of these, if we are to learn the things the American war in Vietnam can teach us (and dare I say even the ways in which it can inspire us), we need to know its stories better than the two weeks we got in high school. What are the true lessons of Vietnam? Sit down with me for this series and you’ll see.

In Part 2, I cover the speech itself, line by line, why it’s remarkable all by itself and why its legacy is even more so. It is hard to understate the impact of Lincoln himself and this speech in particular on how America still remembers the war and why it was fought.

Many of us in America know a few phrases of it here and there because we all had to read it in high school. We know it was a good speech, totally reaffirming freedom while honoring war dead, yadda yadda. But lost in the cliches is how significant it was that Lincoln was able to make such a speech at such a time, and make it stick. He had a LOT riding against people even taking the speech seriously, let alone holding it up later as an example of everything America stands for. In part 1, I explain why.

All appeared well as the Romans had the “pacification” of modern-day Germany underway in A.D. 9. The early Principate Roman Army had driven the “barbarians” before it, as it had done many times before. Then revolt stirred and Rome relied on a charismatic German prince, raised as a hostage and then proven auxiliary commander in Roman civilization, to help reaffirm the Empire’s authority in his country…

The image of the samurai is almost synonymous with Japanese history for many people: the honor-bound, bow and sword wielding individual warrior on horseback. It could have been very different. When the early Japanese Court was trying hard to adopt the massed infantry tactics of China, a series of defeats to an impressive “barbarian” guerrilla warrior from the north changed the military culture of the country.

Part 3 of a series on historical events that are widely overrated in aspects of their impact and yet actually underrated and deeply misunderstood. The decisive victory Hannibal Barca won over the Roman Republic at Cannae in 216 BC was the crown jewel of his many achievements, and has been studied so often that perhaps it’s now cliché. I retell the story to focus on why it was so significant in that war and why it still has lessons for us, despite what modern scholars might think.

Part 2 of a series on historical events that are widely overrated in aspects of their impact and yet actually underrated and deeply misunderstood. The Roman civilization is famous all over the world, but few people know just how unlikely and unique their rise to power was. Through an uncommon combination of ruthlessness and humility, Rome built a culture and a war machine that learned from mistakes, adapted to circumstances, and relentlessly pursued total victory.