I recently praised Amazon for enabling me to sell my book. Shortly afterward, my seller account got screwed up, and I ended up closing it. You can still buy In DeWitt’s Footsteps: Seeing History on the Erie Canal from the Erie Canal Museum, which occasionally purchases a resupply of signed copies from me. Meanwhile, the Buffalo Maritime Center has constructed its replica of the Seneca Chief, the packet boat DeWitt Clinton rode from Buffalo to New York City at the canal’s opening in 1825. The replica will recreate that journey for the canal’s bicentennial next year, and my wife’s uncle David Clinton Carter, longtime maven of family history, has offered to perform the role of his great-great-great-grandfather.
My son Dewitt competed at International Academic Competitions’ middle-school national championships in Orlando recently, and I joined in some events set up for adults. DeWitt and I both medaled in political science, and he and his friend Sarang earned honors for playing North Korea in a model U.N. simulation of crisis in the South China Sea. Along with another friend, Quentin, who’s a walking library about Stalin and more, the three families took top place at family quiz night. History, in which I double-majored with economics in the 1980s, has been dropping as a choice of major for decades, which bodes ill for our nation’s capacity to understand domestic and international problems.
A question about Tora Bora came up at the competition, and I was surprised that even history enthusiasts seemed to have little awareness of the pivotal December 2001 battle fought over that cave complex in eastern Afghanistan, near the Pakistan border. This memory gap may be partly from confusion with similar names, such as the Pacific island Bora Bora or an old movie about Pearl Harbor, Tora! Tora! Tora! But more important may be that this battle was what Wikipedia calls a “U.S.-led coalition partial victory,” and also a consequential failure in that Osama bin Laden wasn’t killed there.
The U.S. had small groups of special forces and CIA on the scene, alongside larger forces of Afghan tribal allies who varied in morale and worked together poorly. A CIA request for a battalion of 800 U.S. Army Rangers was turned down by Gen. Tommy Franks; we’ll never know what difference that might’ve made. Bin Laden slipped across the border, and U.S. policymakers were soon playing up the idea that the War on Terror didn’t hinge on getting rid of any individual, even the Al Qaeda leader. Instead, the George W. Bush administration became increasingly focused on achieving a big success elsewhere, by invading Iraq.
The idea that history “rhymes” has long appealed to me. Situations differ, but similarities can be instructive. Recently, as Joe Biden pressed Israel not to invade Rafah, the response of the Israeli right was that, as one Israeli cabinet minister put it, “Hamas Loves Biden.” Biden’s suggestion that Israel instead focus on targeting Yehya Sinwar, Hamas’ military chief in Gaza and the architect of October 7, was denounced as a weak-kneed attempt to cozy up to Israel’s enemies by getting one inconvenient guy out of the way. But killing Sinwar would be—much like killing bin Laden would’ve been—a massive blow against the terror organization taking orders from the targeted individual. Moreover, if Sinwar’s alive and in command at this war’s end—perhaps gloating in a chair amid rubble as he did following an earlier conflict—that will be tantamount to an Israeli defeat.
Donald Trump’s conviction on all 34 charges brought against him by the Manhattan District Attorney is another pivotal moment. One can imagine different histories playing out, ones in which this legal outcome cripples his presidential campaign; others in which Trump gains political momentum from supporters outraged at what they perceive as “lawfare” practiced by the Democrats; and yet others in which this verdict has little importance compared to whatever’s going on by November. I’m inclined to doubt Trump will benefit politically from his status as felon. Even recognizing that, as an absorbing opinion piece at Scientific American recently noted, “people operate on hunches, loyalties and grudges,” I find it hard to believe there are substantial numbers who wouldn’t have voted for Trump before his convictions, but now will, or who’ll now open their wallets to him much wider than ever before.
It’s important to be willing to change your mind. For example, I was one of the people who purported to leave Twitter/X based on dislike of Elon Musk’s handling of the platform and general obnoxiousness, but having experimented with other platforms—including the now-defunct Post.News and the determined-to-be-apolitical-and-therefore-boring Threads, I’ve decided to revise my bio line yet again.
—Follow Kenneth Silber on X: @kennethsilber