Forgetting simple truths

Michael Ledeen has a must-read column titled Wrong, Wrong, Wrong. But Celebrated. He discusses simple truths established by history being willfully ignored by foreign policy "experts" today, especially in the cases of Syria and Iran. Two key grafs are simply irrefutable by anyone with a knowledge of world history:

Historians used to know that “peace” usually comes after one side defeats the other in war, and the winners impose terms on the losers.  That is what successful “peace conferences” are about, and the terms imposed on the losers define the “peace.”

[...]

Forget about working things out around conference tables.  The war against us is on, and we won’t have anything approaching peace until that war is won.  By us, or by our enemies.

Read the whole thing.