One of the sturdiest conventions about human affairs is the notion that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

This sage original formulation comes from the Spanish-born American philosopher and poet George Santayana, but close variations abound, correctly or wrongly attributed to a wide variety of thinkers and politicians, from Edmund Burke to Winston Churchill.

One of the sturdiest conventions about human affairs is the notion that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

This sage original formulation comes from the Spanish-born American philosopher and poet George Santayana, but close variations abound, correctly or wrongly attributed to a wide variety of thinkers and politicians, from Edmund Burke to Winston Churchill.

Last week, I reread a modern classic by the late journalist David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest. Originally published in 1972, Halberstam’s account of the arrogant way the administrations of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson led the United States into a senseless and unwinnable conflict in Vietnam offers a series of potent reminders of the wisdom of Santayana’s insight at a moment when Washington has once again stumbled into war.

Much has changed about the United States and the world since the Vietnam War, which was a human tragedy and a profound debacle from the perspective of U.S. power. But many of the basics of the cognitive blindness that Washington displayed in pursuing that conflict are on exhibit in the Iran war today. They have even deepened and become more glaring.

The Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam, Ballantine Books, 720 pp., $20, October 1993 (first ed. 1972), paperback

One might start with Halberstam’s title, which at first glance may appear to be an endorsement of the intellectual brilliance that Kennedy assembled around him and relied upon for foreign-policy advice. The title is, in fact, meant to be ironic. Kennedy’s advisors, many of whom were retained by Johnson, were indeed avatars of almost absurd excellence, measured by their achievements prior to entering the president’s inner circle.

McGeorge Bundy, to take one, had graduated at the top of his class at the elite boarding school Groton, where he once feigned to “read” an assignment out loud that he had not bothered to write, extemporaneously delivering his composed thoughts so coherently that his professor and fellow students were left stunned. After racking up numerous distinctions at Yale and Harvard, Bundy was named dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the age of 34, when most academics are struggling to obtain tenure. He eventually served as Kennedy’s, and later Johnson’s, national security........

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