We've had similar conflicts and wars in the past, and we must look how we treated them to ask ourselves why are we treating this one differently... except that

We've had similar conflicts and wars in the past, and we must look how we treated them to ask ourselves why are we treating this one differently... except that it was 'us' who started most of the others. European (well, roman) law is based on a set of rules and treating everyone by those rules, and american (case) law is based on historic cases and how we treated those. So yeah, history matters.