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America has had a Poet Laureate for many years but I’ve often said that what America needs is a Historian Laureate. Imagine if a historian was there to tell George W. Bush that no one had successfully invaded Afghanistan since the days of Hannibal? Or if a historian had been present to tell Jimmy Carter the real intentions of the Soviets? Or if a historian was available to tell Richard Nixon of Teapot Dome on the eve of the Watergate break in, and the headaches it brought President Warren G. Harding?

1) What does Hannibal have to do with Afghanistan? He never came within 6,000 miles of the country.

The notion that Afghanistan is "the graveyard of empires" is a myth. Afghanistan has been successfully invaded many times. It is a Muslim country today thanks to the Arabs, who extirpated Buddhism and Hinduism, which most of its people followed, following their conquest of Afghanistan in the seventh century.

2) Watergate, which involved eavesdropping, is to Teapot Dome, a financial scandal involving oil reserves as apples are to pyramids. And the Teapot Dome scandal reached its zenith during the Coolidge administration. However, they are related in the sense that both presidents Nixon and Harding were unaware of what their underlings were doing.