The conservative philosopher George Satayana is one of several people who has been credited with having coined the phrase: those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it - the implication being that to repeat certain parts of history is to be an unlearned fool.

I cannot furnish definitive proof we are living in a fool's era. But what I can claim to have discovered are glimpses of the past in our present.

Remember Lt. William Calley - the soldier who in March 1971 was found guilty of premeditated murder by a military jury for his role in the 1968 My Lai massacre? His hauntingly sad autobiographical account of the trial and his Vietnam experience provides a look into the soul of one of thousands of soldiers U.S policy planners sent half way around the globe to fight in a "war of liberation" against yesterday's evilism - communism. Today it's terrorism. What will tomorrow's be - hater-ism?

In one passage, Calley recalls a repeated conversation he had with a South Vietnamese prostitute. "Susie would say, 'VC no hurt me, VC no hurt you.' Or say, 'You nice to VC, he nice to you.' I would tell her the VC are bad for the Vietnamese people, and Susie would say, 'Same same! VC Vietnamese. Vietnamese VC.' All right: I would tell her the VC are communists. She hadn't heard of communism or of democracy.

"What could I do about it? Tell her in a democracy the Vietnamese choose - no I couldn't say it. What if she answered me, 'I choose communism.' Then what was I to do? Kill her? If she's communist, that's what my duty was."

It doesn't take much imagination to substitute "Iraqi" for "Vietnamese" to see history repeating itself in the making. Let's say a formal democracy can be imposed from the outside-in, top-down in Iraq. What if the next "elected" leader of Iraq decides what just about all modern Western democracies, including ours, have decided to do - acquire weapons of mass destruction, arguing that such weapons are needed as a deterrent for its enemies, living as they do in a tough neighborhood of nations?

The stated purpose of the president is that this is a war to liberate Iraq and isn't a war against the people of Iraq. If Calley's story, like the story of countless other combat vets, can be trusted, it seems a utopian fantasy that war can actually be carried out under the rosy Bush scenario.

Vietnam Vet Philip Caputo, in his book "A Rumor of War," speaks to America still. "America seemed omnipotent then: Like the French soldiers of the late 18th century, we saw ourselves as the champions of a 'cause that was destined to triumph.' So when we marched into rice paddies on that damp March afternoon, we carried, along with our packs and rifles, the implicit convictions that the Viet Cong would be quickly beaten and that we were doing something altogether noble and good. We kept the packs and rifles; the convictions, we lost."

Caputo says that what made Vietnam different from past conflicts was the savagery that "prompted so many American fighting men to kill civilians and prisoners." He then goes on to attack popular explanations for such behavior. "The evil was inherent not in the men...but in the circumstances under which they had to live and fight." The Vietnam conflict, Caputo observes, combined the two most bitter forms of warfare - civil war and revolution.

"Communists and government forces alike considered ruthlessness a necessity if not a virtue. Some men could not withstand the stress of guerrilla-fighting: the hair trigger alertness constantly demanded of them, the feeling that the enemy was everywhere, the inability to distinguish civilians from combatants created emotional pressures which built to such a point that a trivial provocation could make these men explode with the blind destructiveness of a mortal shell.

Iraq will be qualitatively different? Well, I'll be an April fool. When you consider weapons of mass destruction, Jesus, Dr. King and Gandhi's prophetic proposition for humanity is even more relevant today: nonviolence or nonexistence? The book of Proverbs says: "The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: A wise man fears, and departs from evil: but the fool rages and is confident."

Sean Gonsalves is a Cape Cod Times staff writer and a syndicated columnist. His column runs on Tuesdays. Call him at 508-775-1200, ext. 719, or e-mail him at sgonsalves@capecodonline.com.

Copyright 2003 Cape Cod Times

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