When 18 crack American soldiers died there in one disastrous night in October 1993, the intervention force of which they were a part was pulled out and the Americans resolved never to intervene in Africa again.
With the debt-ceiling crisis, however, the willingness to wait until the last moment removed any chance of learning and, more to the point, there was never much of a commitment to learning on the part of many of the principal actors: over and over again we were informed that such thoughtful exploration was out of the question because of prior campaign pledges made to constituents.