Well, this is obviously a troll thread, which is a shame because i was hoping to embarrass a true believer.
Human decision making is impotent without raw facts and the connection between them to guide us. If you had no knowledge of how events have played out in the past, and someone asks you "should we invade Syria, yes or no?" how, exactly, would one go about trying to figure out the answer to that question A priori? Furthermore, history is dangerous because if a people are manipulated into thinking that in the past events were different to reality, then they can be manipulated into committing genocide. So getting historical facts straight as a weapon against state propaganda is absolutely vital. And to top it all off, how do we know that this is true? Oh yeah, becuase of the academic study of history shows us that it is.
gg.