In 1941, Americans were of two minds about the war in Europe, but after the December seventh attack on Pearl Harbor there were no more questions about whether to fight.

Forty years later, things were not so certain. In March 2003, Bush Two was ready to take America to war and those of us who had seen this movie before were not convinced he was wise.

*****

That year, like every year, I had already taught the story of the space program in eighth grade science. Explaining its origin requires compressing fifty years of history into a forty minute presentation suitable for eighth graders.

World War One left Germany crushed by post-war treaties, the Great Depression made a bad situation worse, Germany rebuilt and, following a madman, set out to take revenge. This drove Russian and America into temporary alliance. During the war, America developed the atomic bomb and Germany perfected the V2 rocket. Russia – and the Russian winter – destroyed German forces on the Eastern front. The rest of the allied forces entered France and fought their way into Germany. Germany was divided among the conquerors; the allies split into two camps, America, France and England on one hand and Russia on the other; and World War Two morphed into the Cold War.

What does that have to do with the space program? Everything; it was both the why and the how. Fear by Russians of American nuclear might, and fear by Americans of Russian nuclear might, led both sides to seek superiority in space. And the same gargantuan descendants of the V2 which brought about the fear, also carried astronauts and cosmonauts into space.

The space program was an offshoot of the Cold War, and the Cold War had shaped my 2003 students’ world before their birth. Now war in Iraq was going to shape their future, and I felt obligated to help them understand the situation. But how do you teach about a war that hasn’t happened yet? And how do you tell the truth impartially to students whose parents are sometimes hawks and sometimes doves?

I chose to present two lessons from history.

I told my students the story of Neville Chamberlain returning from Germany to Britain, waving the agreement that he and Hitler had signed which guaranteed “peace in our time”. I explained that Hitler had only signed it to buy time to complete preparations for war. Then I told them of Kennedy and Johnson fighting a proxy war in a country they did not understand, and sliding down the slippery slope to disaster.

The two historic events presented two very different lessons. From Chamberlain, we learned that if you must fight, then attack before it is too late; from Kennedy and Johnson we learned not to start a war for the wrong reasons in a country you don’t understand.

I explained to my students that those were the lessons of history that our leaders had to consider in choosing whether or not to attack Iraq. No one could know with certainty which lesson would apply to the present situation. Only time would tell.

That was twelve years ago. Now we know.