Americans are masters of amnesia, memory management, and historical ignorance. Amnesia, enabled by knowledge-free minds and a license for the highest officials to treat the truth as a potter would treat clay. Amnesia restricts the opportunity to learn from the lessons history offers.

In the wake of the Korean War (49,000 United States soldiers killed), Washington pledged no war on the mainland of Asia ever again. A decade later, we were knee-deep in Vietnam rice paddies. (59,000 American Soldiers killed)

Our country has forgotten how ugly the Vietnam War was. Textbooks in American history gave it little space; teachers downplayed it; television soon disregarded it as retro. Vietnam experience was the honing of methods to photoshop history. Vietnam was a warm-up for the post-9/11 era.

The post-9/11 memory management program has cleansed us of Presidential deceit, incompetence, systemic torture, censorship, the shredding of the Bill of Rights, and the perverting of national public discourse. The War on Terror is now an insignificant speck in our rearview mirror.

The fiasco in Iraq and the 20-year occupation of Afghanistan did not dissuade us from intervening in Syria. All three projects failed to turn an alien society into a Western democracy using the gun as a tool of choice.

In Syria, Washington partnered with the local al-Qaeda subsidiary, the same group responsible for the 9/11 attack. The Kabul evacuation showed that we learned nothing from the Saigon finale. A simple lesson, how not to evacuate, was erased from the Washington memory.

The next stop along the line was Ukraine. Washington’s ignorance of Russian security provoked its invasion of Ukraine. They mistook Putin’s anger for bluster and believed the Russian armed forces to be a paper lion. Both assumptions proved to be fatal miscalculations.

Washington’s latest failed endeavor will be ending soon. Washington eventually will stumble upon an acceptable Ukrainian off-ramp. But will they take any solace from a ruined Ukraine?

No, the foreign policy establishment will not allow remorse or thoughtful debriefing. Nobody of significance will denounce the next humanitarian or politically correct war. Eventually, the unhinged Washington cabal will propel us into an avoidable, catastrophic conflict.

Next stop, Beijing?