Quote/Unquote 2005 May
WEEK OF MAY 31, 2005
Re: Lincoln
James McPherson, in a interview with the NYT, What Lincoln Believed:The title of this book is incomplete. It should be What Michael Lind Believes Abraham Lincoln Believed. And what Lind believes suffers from a strange case of literary schizophrenia. In the first and last chapters, the author develops the theme that Lincoln was"the champion of liberal democracy" who" continues to inspire people throughout the world." But in the six interior chapters, this Dr. Jekyll Lincoln becomes a Mr. Hyde white supremacist and"lifelong segregationist" who wanted to create a racially homogeneous America by settling blacks in Africa or Haiti and who inspired the ethnic cleansing fantasies of such twentieth-century bigots as Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi. For good measure, Lind also brands President Lincoln as a"profoundly illiberal" executive who justified his wartime suspension of certain civil liberties with"sophistical reasoning and deliberate lies" and whose 1864 re-election was abetted by"massive electoral cheating." Puzzled readers may be forgiven if they come away from this book convinced that Lincoln's beliefs were closer to those of the Ku Klux Klan than to those of the NAACP--for that is precisely Lind's argument in most of the book.
Re: John Brown
Michael Wreszin, in a letter to the Nation:I'm an admirer of both David Reynolds and Martin Duberman, but I'm sorry that Duberman, like Barbara Ehrenreich in the New York Times and Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker, seems to see Reynolds as the first reputable historian to argue that John Brown was not insane but a rational and effective hero ["The Avenging Angel," May 23]. All these enthusiastic critics ignore Albert Fried's 1978 John Brown's Journey: Notes and Reflections on His America and Mine. Fried challenged the work of Allan Nevins and C. Vann Woodward, who argued that Brown was mad, a monomaniac.Viewing Brown through the perspective of the civil rights struggle of the 1960s, Fried saw the deep moral rationality and effectiveness of Brown's life and actions. His book was viciously assaulted in the Times by David Donald, a Southern historian who had previously suggested that Charles Sumner, the abolitionist senator, was demented. Fried was critical of the historical establishment, which invariably identified with the moderates in opposition to the"extremists." Fried's work deserves more attention.
Re: Mark Felt
Peggy Noonan:[Felt's] motives were apparently mixed, as motives often are. He was passed over to replace J. Edgar Hoover as director of the FBI by President Nixon, who apparently wanted in that place not a Hoover man but a more malleable appointee. Mr. Felt was resentful. He believed Nixon meant to jeopardize the agency's independence. Here we have a hitch in the story. The liberal story line on the FBI was that under Hoover it had too much independence, which Hoover protected with his famous secret files and a reputation for ruthlessness. Mr. Felt was a Hoover man who joined the FBI in 1942, when it was young; he rose under Hoover and never knew another director. When Hooverism was threatened, Mr. Felt moved. In this sense Richard Nixon was J. Edgar Hoover's last victim. History is an irony factory.
Re: Woodstein
Editorial in the WSJ:Congratulations to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, for getting scooped this week on the story about their own Watergate source. Rather than betray the man who became known as Deep Throat, they managed to keep one of the great secrets in media history for 30 years, until the source first outed himself to another reporter. Their integrity is worth noting amid so many recent examples of lapsed media ethics.
Re: Deep Throat
Ralph Luker:There's been a lot of discussion about W. Mark Felt's revelation that he was"deep throat" in the Watergate affair. Many of us think he played a heroic role in directing the Washington Post reporters to information that exposed conspiratorial obstruction of justice in the Nixon administration. But yesterday, I heard veterans of that administration, like Charles Colson, argue that Felt should have remained loyal to his chain of command, even though he knew that the chain of command was doing the conspiring. Apparently, even a prison sentence and being born again doesn't give sight to some of the blind. Wasn't it Colson who is remembered from those days as having said"If you get them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow"? It's that kind of tough certitude, combined with a clownish ineptitude, that got the Nixon inner-circle in such deep shit.
Re:"Creating the Illusion of History" (NYT Subhead)
Diana Wheeler, the director of community development at Alpharetta, a new subdivision in Georgia that features a made-up"Historic Downtown":Illusionism is something that people have enjoyed for centuries. We're creating new applications. It's a matter of how it's carried out. It's a quality issue. You convert the illusion into something that has value to you. Maybe solid columns held up roofs, and hollow columns create the illusion they do. People will go to great lengths to impress others.
Re: Deep Throat
Todd S. Purdum, in the NT:The Watergate tapes disclosed that Nixon himself had singled out Mr. Felt for special suspicion, once asking his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman,"Is he a Catholic?" Mr. Haldeman replied that Mr. Felt, who is of Irish descent, was Jewish, and Nixon, who often liked to see Jews at the root of his troubles, replied:"It could be the Jewish thing. I don't know. It's always a possibility."
Re: Bush Ratings
Peter Baker and Jim VandeHei (in the Wa Po):Two days after winning reelection last fall, President Bush declared that he had earned plenty of"political capital, and now I intend to spend it." Six months later, according to Republicans and Democrats alike, his bank account has been significantly drained. In the past week alone, the Republican-led House defied his veto threat and passed legislation promoting stem cell research; Senate Democrats blocked confirmation, at least temporarily, of his choice for U.N. ambassador; and a rump group of GOP senators abandoned the president in his battle to win floor votes for all of his judicial nominees.
Re: 9-11
Kevin McCrary, commenting on his decision to collect memorabilia from the grounds around 9-11 in NYC:I was just grabbing stuff that was around on the ground. It's all history. It's like Appomattox or the Battle of the Bulge or Pearl Harbor.
Re: French Rejection of the EU Constitution
Timothy Garton Ash:Will future historians record May 29 2005 as the beginning of the end of the EU? It would be foolish to reject out of hand that possibility. All earlier attempts to unite Europe, starting with the Roman empire, have failed. Why should this one be the exception?
Re: California
Kevin Starr, California historian:California needs a meta-narrative, a collective narrative, that realistically faces its growth. What you hear too much is people in their 50's and 60's saying,"I'm glad I'm not going to be here."
WEEK OF MAY 23, 2005
Re: Iraq ... The Outcome of War
Juan Cole:I conclude that the United States is stuck in Iraq for the medium term, and perhaps for the long term. The guerrilla war is likely to go on a decade to 15 years. Given the basic facts, of capable, trained and numerous guerrillas, public support for them from Sunnis, access to funding and munitions, increasing civil turmoil, and a relatively small and culturally poorly equipped US military force opposing them, led by a poorly informed and strategically clueless commander-in-chief who has made himself internationally unpopular, there is no near-term solution. In the long run, say 15 years, the Iraqi Sunnis will probably do as the Lebanese Maronites did, and finally admit that they just cannot remain in control of the country and will have to compromise. That is, if there is still an Iraq at that point.
Re: Newsweek
H. D. S. Greenway, in the Boston Globe:"THERE APPEARS to be a very unpleasant feeling existing among the native soldiers, who are here for instruction, regarding the grease used in preparing the cartridges," a young British officer in India, Captain J.A. Wright, wrote to his general in the winter of 1857."Some evil disposed persons have spread a report that it consists of a mixture of the fat of pigs and cows," and the rumor"has spread throughout India." The British had recently introduced a new rifle, the Enfield, that required that the end of the cartridge be bitten off before it was rammed down the rifle's muzzle. And since good Muslims cannot touch pig grease, nor Hindus the fat of cows, the"sepoys," as Indian soldiers in the service of the British were called, perceived a Western assault on their religions. Wright tried to tell his men that"the grease used is composed of mutton fat and wax," but his denial was not enough. The first serious unrest broke in Bengal. A sepoy named Mangal Pande of the 34th Native Infantry incited his brothers to mutiny yelling,"it's for our religion," fired at an English officer, and struck him with a sword. By spring the fire of the great Indian Mutiny had spread across north India, spreading death and insurrection that rocked the British Empire to its core. I thought of Captain Wright's denial when I heard Mark Whitaker of Newsweek retract his story of American interrogators flushing a Koran down a toilet a story which helped fuel deadly riots across the Muslim world. For it is unlikely that Whitaker's retraction will convince Muslims that their religion is not under attack any more than British denials about the cartridge grease stemmed the mutiny.
Re: Bush & Iraq
David Sarasohn, in the Oregonian (5-25-05):Every time President Bush tries to put Iraq into perspective, he makes things look worse. And not just for Iraqis. Last week, speaking to the International Republican Institute, he tried to reassure his audience with some American history."The American Revolution was followed by years of chaos," the president recalled."Our first effort at a governing charter, the Articles of Confederation, failed miserably. It took several years before we finally adopted our Constitution and inaugurated our first president. It took a four-year Civil War, and a century of struggle after that, before the promise of our Declaration was extended to all Americans."... Which part of the United States in the 1780s particularly reminds the president of contemporary Iraq? The suicide stagecoach bombings? The Quaker terrorist campaign in Pennsylvania? The musket battles between Baptists and Methodists? True, President Bush proudly declares himself a C-student history major, but was all the grading on a curve?
Re: History & Memory
Janice Kennedy:There isn't an American alive who couldn't tell you, 140 years after the event, who killed Abraham Lincoln."John Wilkes Booth,'' Mr. or Ms. America would say, getting all three names correct and in the right order."Shot the president as he sat in a theatre.'' Now ask the average Canadian about the 1868 assassination of Thomas D'Arcy McGee."Who?''"Oh, wasn't it that Irish guy?''"They found the gun or something, right?'' You have to hand it to the Americans. Unlike Canadians, they do their history well. ... So quick, now. Who killed McGee? The question is a trick one, because the truth is, nobody knows who killed McGee - a Montreal member of Parliament and Father of Confederation - as he sauntered back to lodgings on Ottawa's Sparks St. after a late-night sitting of the House. You certainly won't find any historian who'll tell you conclusively it was Patrick James Whelan, the recent Irish immigrant they executed the following year for the crime.
Re: Osama bin Laden
Michael Hirsh, in Newsweek:He was a legendary jihadi leader who preached holy war, took on the greatest power of his day and caused thousands of deaths in terror strikes. But as British imperial forces hunted for him year after year in the 1930s and '40s, Mirza Ali Khan simply disappeared into the folds of what are now the Pakistani tribal regions. The search for Khan, who was better known to his British pursuers as the Fakir of Ipi, petered out as the decades passed and people lost interest."The fakir was never captured," says Pakistani scholar Husain Haqqani."People say he died of natural causes in 1960." Is this to be Osama bin Laden's fate as well—an enduring case of justice denied?
Re: Bill O'Reilly
Ralph Luker:Brian Montopoli at CJR Daily notes that Bill O'Reilly has railed at the New York Times for giving excessive coverage to the story of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. For comparison, Montopoli counts the number of programs O'Reilly has devoted to Ward Churchill. In a 12 month period, the Times did 17 stories on Abu Ghraib; in a 6 month period, O'Reilly did 25 stories on Ward Churchill. Is Abu Ghraib or Ward Churchill more likely to be a story of historical significance?
Re: Our Sputnik Moment
Robert Samuelson:Americans are having another Sputnik moment: one of those periodic alarms about some foreign technological and economic menace. It was the Soviets in the 1950s and early 1960s, the Germans and the Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s, and now it's the Chinese and the Indians. To anyone old enough, there's no forgetting Oct. 4, 1957, when the Soviets orbited the first space satellite. It terrified us. We'd taken our scientific superiority for granted. Foolish us. Soon there were warnings of a"missile gap" with the Soviets. One senator admonished that Americans should"be less concerned with . . . the height of the tail fin on the new car and . . . be more prepared to shed blood, sweat and tears if this country and the free world are to survive."The missile gap turned out to be a myth, as did many later theories explaining why the Germans and the Japanese would inevitably surpass us. They were said to have better managers, better workers and better schools. They outsaved and outinvested us. It was just a matter of time. Let's see. In 2004, Americans' per capita incomes averaged $38,324, reports the Conference Board. The figures for Germany and Japan were $26,937 and $29,193....
The Sputnik syndrome is an illusion. It transforms a few selective economic happenings -- a satellite here, a Toyota there, poor test scores everywhere -- into a full-blown theory of economic inferiority or superiority. As often as not, the result is misleading.
Re: Filibuster
George F. Will:By giving the filibuster sacramental status, Democrats have become, with the zeal characteristic of recent converts, devout communicants in the church of tradition, willing to die in the last ditch in defense of the Senate as the Framers of the Constitution supposedly wanted it. But of course that Senate was done away with in 1913. The Framers' carefully considered requirement was that each state's senators would be" chosen by the legislature thereof" rather than by direct popular election. Do Democrats, in the purity of their newfound reverence for the Framers, now favor repealing the 17th Amendment?
Iraq: Chances of Victory
Niall Ferguson:In 1920, total British forces in Iraq numbered around 120,000, of whom around 34,000 were trained for actual fighting. During the insurgency, a further 15,000 men arrived as reinforcements. Coincidentally, that is very close to the number of American military personnel now in Iraq (around 138,000). The trouble is that the population of Iraq was just over three million in 1920, whereas today it is around 24 million. Thus, back then the ratio of Iraqis to foreign forces was, at most, 23 to 1. Today it is around 174 to 1. To arrive at a ratio of 23 to 1 today, about one million American troops would be needed.... Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has said that American forces should aim to work to a"10-30-30" timetable: 10 days should suffice to topple a rogue regime, 30 days to establish order in its wake, and 30 more days to prepare for the next military undertaking. I am all in favor of a 10-30-30 timetable - provided the measurement is years, not days. For it may well take around 10 years to establish order in Iraq, 30 more to establish the rule of law, and quite possibly another 30 to create a stable democracy.... [T]he Bush administration's policy in Iraq could indeed still fail. But too few American liberals seem to grasp how high the price will be if it does. That is a point, unfortunately, that also eludes most of this country's allies. Does it also elude the secretary of defense? If"10-30-30" are the numbers that concern him, I begin to fear that it does. The numbers that matter right now are 174 to 1. That is not only the ratio of Iraqis to American troops. It is starting to look alarmingly like the odds against American success.
The Israeli Boycott
Anthony Beevor:While I am totally opposed to the Israeli occupation . . . it is shocking that a union of academics can take such a flawed, ill-considered and discriminatory political stance, contrary to the values of dialogue and freedom.
Re: Filibuster
Historian Larry Schweikart:No matter who the dem president is in the future (God forbid) that person would have the rules changed in a heartbeat. Make book on that. McCain is both a turncoat and a fool, and even if it means electing She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, I'd vote for her over him. He is despicable.
Re: Filibuster
Historian Richard Jensen:What happened was McCain seized control of the Senate away from Frist and Reid; seized control of the national agenda away from Bush; averted a national disaster that Democrats had promised in response to the nuclear option; secured votes on the key nominees; guaranteed that the Democrats would not filibuster a Supreme Court nominee. It was one of the most spectacular achievements in the history of Congress and puts him in the same league as Henry Clay. Good heavens: this man is a winner and knows how to govern the ENTIRE nation, red and blue. He can carry 45 states. Of course the GOP has alternative candidates in 2008, but none of them is likely to win the election or the nomination. Perhaps you think Frist would be a better candidate or DeLay?? I can will detect an undercurrent of “my way or we destroy the party” in some conservative grousing. That was just the attitude that destroyed the Democratic party in 1968 and has gravely weakened it ever since. Win or lose—it’s time for red to win.
Just What Is Character?
Joshua Micah Marshall:Again and again, Washington struck men of his day as an exemplar of ancient republican ideals, almost as though he had stepped from the pedestal of the ages. Yet here is the crook in the path, something that McCullough reveals but never quite explains: it was all a put-on, an act. For us today, character is bound up with authenticity; someone with “character” doesn’t put on airs, doesn’t tailor his actions to impress others. Those weren’t the standards of Washington’s era. When the young Henry Knox first met Washington, he marvelled at the General’s “vast ease and dignity.” Such ease was not acquired without effort. As McCullough says, Washington was a man of “almost excessive self-command.” From an early age, he submitted his entire persona to the most rigorous discipline, shaping everything from his physical bearing to the degree of intimacy that he allowed himself with friends and associates. By the time he took command of the Army, outside Boston, in July, 1775, there was little about him that was not the product of years of conscious artifice. Few men could have been more keenly sensitive to their standing in other men’s eyes or more acutely aware of how words and deeds could diminish or enhance their reputation.
Lincoln's Greatness
Scott Malcomson:"IN 1863,'' Michael Lind begins, ''the democratic republic as a form of government was rare -- and in danger of extinction.'' He then looks around the world at the governmental forms prevalent in that year. This seems an odd way to start a study of Abraham Lincoln, but such indirection is Lind's way of saying: if you want to read my book, you're going to have to do it my way. Happily, Lind is not just demanding; he is intellectually bold and an enthusiastic researcher. In large doses, ''What Lincoln Believed'' can get claustrophobic. But taken a little at a time and in a generous spirit, it will almost certainly change the way you think about America and one of its greatest presidents.
Week of May 16, 2005
Michael Gerhardt of the William & Mary School of Law:
I think the elimination of the filibuster for judicial nominations would transform the Senate, eliminating any need to consult with the minority on judicial nominations. And if you don't have to worry about a consensus, you might pick less-qualified people or more-divisive people, knowing that you've got a majority behind you. So the balance of power between the Senate and the president shifts decisively in the president's favor.
President Bush is correct to defend democracy’s moral, political, religious, and eco nomic superiority to tyranny and terror. But between the best and the worst are many types of government that can be useful in an imperfect world. Even Woodrow Wilson distinguished, implicitly, between making the world safe for democracy and making the world democratic. The latter effort, especially if pursued under the illusion that history must be on our side, will distract from and eventually imperil the former.
Sen. George Allen (R-VA), referring to the Nuclear Option:"Finally we're going to do it, and I'm happy, very happy."
Surveying the Senate's nuclear-missile silos, Court TV's Fred Graham said that of course the Republican majority had the power to change the filibuster rule, and the Democrats would have to lump it:"What are they going to do," he asked,"appeal to the Supreme Court?" They didn't much enjoy their last visit to the high court after the 2000 election. But the nightmare lingers on.The death-struggle in the Senate over the Bush judges is best understood as a re-fighting of the post-2000 Florida election challenge. Democratic logic, premised on the famous 5-4 Bush v. Gore decision, runs like this: Bush stole the 2000 election with a Republican-dominated Supreme Court. The resulting presidency, as they've often said, is"illegitimate." Because"justice" failed in 2000, Karl Rove got four years to brilliantly manufacture a bare, popular-vote majority of social conservatives in 2004, extending the illegitimate Bush presidency another four years. Ergo, obstruction is justified.
As the United States was struggling with the postwar reconstruction of Iraq, the historian Niall Ferguson published a book arguing that America needed the modern equivalent of the old British Colonial Office to build political stability in far-flung places. The U.S. military was good at breaking things, he suggested in"Colossus," but not so good at putting them back together.Nobody in the Bush administration would endorse the neo-imperial language of Ferguson's argument. But behind the scenes, the administration is debating a range of major policy changes that would move in that direction -- transforming the military services, the State Department and other agencies in ways that would help the United States do better what it botched so badly in Iraq. Don't call it the"Colonial Office," but in many ways, that's a model for the kind of far-flung stabilization force that officials are discussing.
Kenneth L. Woodward, former Religion Editor of Newsweek:
The Quran is not"the Bible" of Muslims. It is infinitely more sacred than that. To use a Jewish analogy, it is more like the oral Torah first revealed on Mount Sinai which was later passed on orally through the prophets and eventually written down on scrolls for all to read. Whereas Christians regard the Bible as written by human beings inspired by God, Muslims regard the Quran -- the word means"The Recitation" -- as the very words of God, revealed aurally to the Prophet Muhammed in Arabic. To hear those words recited is, for Muslims, to hear Allah. If, for Christians, Jesus is the logos or eternal Word of God made flesh, the Quran is the Word of God made book, and every Arabic syllable in it lives as the breath of the divine.
Liberals used to hate the filibuster; at the moment, they love it. Conservatives used to employ the filibuster; now they reject it. Is there any way to resolve this intellectual quandary and political impasse? Yes, the test of reversibility. When legislators debate controversial social or economic legislation, a filibuster is unwarranted because bad laws in those domains can be repealed. When they vote on judges with lifetime tenure or pass bills that restrict civil liberties, however, the errors may well be irreversible; hence, lengthy debate and delaying tactics can be a crucial safeguard. The implication for today? The nomination of John R. Bolton to be ambassador to the United Nations should not be filibustered because the error can be remedied: he can be dismissed. But dubious judicial nominations can and must be filibustered, because such errors and excesses will indeed be irreversible.
FIFTY years ago, I joined Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell and eight others in signing a manifesto warning of the dire consequences of nuclear war. This statement, the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, was Einstein's final public act. He died shortly after signing it. Now, in my 97th year, I am the only remaining signatory. Because of this, I feel it is my duty to carry Einstein's message forward, into this 60th year since the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which evoked almost universal opposition to any further use of nuclear weapons.
American forces in Iraq have often been accused of being slow to apply hard lessons from Vietnam and elsewhere about how to fight an insurgency. Yet, it seems from the outside, no one has shrugged off the lessons of history more decisively than the insurgents themselves.
President Bush has made a lot of traditional Republicans nervous with his big-government conservatism. He's increased the growth of nonsecurity domestic spending at a faster rate than Lyndon Johnson and twice as fast as Bill Clinton.
I always knew that Nixon would be back -- again and again. I just didn't know that this time he would ask to be the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Week of May 9, 2005
Jordan's King Abdullah II is set to pardon Ahmad Chalabi, who has emerged as vice-premier in the new government. Chalabi was indicted in Jordan in 1992 for embezzling over $200 million from his Petra Bank in the 1980s in that country. ... Just so readers don't put their necks out doing a double take, I just want to repeat that Chalabi is a vice premier of Iraq and the Jordanian government is going to pardon him for embezzling over $200 million. In an unrelated story, two burglars from Dubuque, Iowa, face life in prison under a 'three strikes and you're out' law for their robbery of the West Locust Mart (their third offense), in 2000.
Mr. Putin scolded an Estonian television journalist who had asked why Russia refused to renounce the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the nonaggression treaty signed by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in 1939, leading to the Soviet occupation of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania - a question raised repeatedly before the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II.He responded that the Soviet Union's Congress of People's Deputies did so in 1989, making a new Russian denunciation unnecessary. He then dismissed historical claims that Soviet forces reoccupied the Baltic nations after the war, since by then they were already part of the Soviet Union.
"Maybe I did not study very well in university because I drank too much beer in Soviet times," he said,"but something still remains in my head, because our history teachers were good."
I can't tell you how much I resent being called a Wilsonian.
[W]hat about the 400,000 enemies that we supposedly created by disbanding the Iraqi army? Most of Iraq's soldiers were Shiite conscripts who deserted at the earliest opportunity once the war began. Even privileged Sunnis -- like Omar, an air-force pilot who became my driver and translator for several weeks shortly after the war -- were only too happy to sit out the fighting and move on to more lucrative work. By and large, the military men who stayed in place, uninterested in new careers, were the unreformable ones -- such as the Special Republican Guard.
As a share of national income, federal taxes in fiscal 2004 were 16.3 percent, the lowest since 1959. Meanwhile, budget increases go well beyond defense and homeland security. Even excluding these categories and"mandatory" programs (Social Security, Medicare, etc.), federal spending has risen 4.8 percent a year (after inflation) under Bush, estimates Stephen Slivinski of the Cato Institute. That's the highest rate, he says, since Richard Nixon. In 2003 Bush proposed and Congress approved the biggest new spending program since Lyndon Johnson's administration, the Medicare drug benefit. It was all deficit financing; there was no new tax for any of it. Gone is any sense of shame about overspending and undertaxing.
German journalist Clemens Wergin:
As long as Germany is forthcoming with repeated signs of remorse, its neighbours resist the temptation to use history as a political tool against Germany. So there is something to learn from the European experience for China and South Korea, too. It is up to Japan, however, to change its strained relationships in the region. Japan has invested billions of dollars in east Asia and has thus pushed the economic boom there. It might be time now to invest in political capital, too. In order to gain the trust of its neighbours for the future, Japan probably needs a more thorough stocktaking of the past.
Stefan Wagstyl, in the London Financial Times:
Russian liberals say that under Putin, the Kremlin portrays Stalin in an increasingly positive light. Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a foreign policy magazine, says the Kremlin wants an ideology that can generate loyalty among ordinary Russians. Communism is discredited. So is liberal democracy, following the turmoil of Yeltsin's rule. Full-blooded Russian nationalism is dangerous, given the country's many non-Russian minorities. So, says Lukyanov, the Kremlin is trying to find"a point of reference" in Stalin."This is not a return to Stalinism, but an attempt to use 1945 as a basis for political authority. It was the absolute peak of Soviet prestige and power."
Ronald Grigor Suny:
Bush's trip to Georgia is more about U.S. policy toward Russia than about American interest in the South Caucasus. The timing, the choice of countries to be visited, and the president's public statements are all directed at lessening the impact of the 60th anniversary of the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany, a dampening of the Russian celebration of a victory that was largely the result of Soviet efforts and losses. Georgia makes sense as a place to visit because of the way it is seen in the West as a beacon of democracy, though in the region the Saakashvili government is not so universally praised. The alternative sites in the area -- Armenia and Azerbaijan -- are more facade democracies than real ones, and going to one or the other country would be seen as an affront to the other. America's interest in Georgia is primarily in keeping Russia out and limiting Russian influence south of the Caucasus, though the pipeline from Baku that runs through Georgia is also a real interest of Washington.
Few Soviet myths were as powerful, and arguably none a stronger legitimizing force for the regime, than the"Great Patriotic War of 1941-45" and the Soviet triumph, with a mere nod to the Allies, over Hitler. Tellingly, Russia to this day uses a different name and starting date, 1941, than the rest of the world, conveniently ignoring that Stalin was Hitler's ally at the beginning of the war. A week before the German blitzkrieg into Poland on Sept. 1, 1939 -- which began what everyone else calls World War II -- the secret Ribbetrop-Molotov Pact divided Eastern Europe between Hitler and Stalin, who savored his spoils, which included the Baltics and today's western Ukraine and Belarus. Stalin went into shock when Nazi Germany attacked in 1941. It was imprudent to speak of this past publicly in the ex-U.S.S.R., and today's Russian leaders continue to lie about it.
Even when one shuttle bus driver managed to get lost and circled the San Jos airport three times, a couple of executive board members were in stitches and a former OAH president was at his sardonic best.
May 6, 2005
The vigilantes are back. In the 1850s, they lynched Irishmen; in the 1870s, they terrorized the Chinese; in the first decade of the twentieth century, they murdered striking Wobblies; in the 1920s, they organized"Bash a Jap" campaigns; and in the 1930s, they welcomed the Joads and other Dust Bowl refugees with tear gas and buckshot. Vigilantes have always been to the American West what the Ku Klux Klan was to the South: vicious and cowardly bigotry organized into a self-righteous mob. Almost every decade, some sinister group of self-proclaimed patriots mobilizes to repel a new invasion from some subversive threat or other. Their wrath has almost always been directed against the poorest, most powerless, and hardest-working segment of the population: recent migrants from Donegal, Guangdong, Oklahoma, or, now, Oaxaca.
May 6, 2005
Amid the blare of the Bush Administration's alarms about Iran's alleged nuclear weapons capabilities, few remember that the United States, from the Eisenhower through the Carter presidencies, played a major role in the development of Iran's nuclear program. In 1957 the United States and Iran signed their first civil nuclear cooperation agreement. Over the next two decades, the United States not only provided Iran with technical assistance but supplied the country with its first experimental nuclear reactor, complete with enriched uranium and plutonium with fissile isotopes. Despite the refusal of the Shah to rule out the possibility of Iran's developing nuclear weapons, the Ford Administration in 1975 approved the sale of up to eight nuclear reactors with fuel to Iran and, in 1976, approved the sale of lasers believed to be capable of enriching uranium. The Washington Post reported that an initially hesitant President Ford was assured by his advisers that Iran was interested only in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Ford's Defense Secretary was Donald Rumsfeld, his Chief of Staff was Dick Cheney and his man in charge of nonproliferation efforts at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency was Paul Wolfowitz.
May 6, 2005
Turkey has been a friend; but I have grave doubts about its future status. Let me explain. I see Turkey as a uniquely pliable country. What Atat rk accomplished, changing so much of the country in fifteen brief years, 1923-38, is a unique development (with the partial exception of the Meiji restoration leaders a half-century earlier). He wrenched the country from one way of life and pushed it toward another, with considerable effect. I see Recep Tayyip Erdo an as the anti-Atat rk. He is young enough, clever enough, and popular enough to stay in power as long or longer than Atat rk and step-by-step, almost imperceptively, to undo the entire Atat rk revolution. We have already seen the fruits of this in his two and a half-years in power: the refusal to help the American-led coalition eliminate the noxious Saddam Hussein regime, Mein Kampf becoming a bestseller, and the Turkish public having among the most anti-Bush attitudes of any population in the world. I do not know where this transformation will end, but if things go as they have the past few years, I expect Turkey before long to be more in the “foe” category, along with Saudi Arabia, than the “friend” one.
May 6, 2005
Throughout human history, all evil, all sin and indeed all suffering is ultimately a product of human pride and self-conceit. At the same time, all heroism, all virtue, all true progress is ultimately a product of humility and self-sacrifice, from the obedience of Abraham and Moses, to the courage of Jesus on the cross.
May 5, 2005
Religion is today banished from the public square? John Kennedy finished his first report to the nation on the Soviet missiles in Cuba with these words:"Thank you and good night." It would be a rash president who today did not conclude a major address by saying, as President Ronald Reagan began the custom of doing, something very like"God bless America." Unbelievers should not cavil about this acknowledgment of majority sensibilities. But Republicans should not seem to require, de facto, what the Constitution forbids, de jure:"No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust."
May 5, 2005
Two views, as expressed in the pages of the WSJ:
I am not a Christian, or even a religious believer, and my opinions on social issues are decidedly middle-of-the-road. So why do I find myself rooting for the"religious right"? I suppose it is because I am put off by self-righteousness, closed-mindedness, and contempt for democracy and pluralism--all of which characterize the opposition to the religious right.Christopher Hitchens:
I have never understood why conservative entrepreneurs are so all-fired pious and Bible-thumping, let alone why so many of them claim Jesus as their best friend and personal savior. The Old Testament is bad enough: The commandments forbid us even to envy or covet our neighbor's goods, and thus condemn the very spirit of emulation and ambition that makes enterprise possible. But the New Testament is worse: It tells us to forget thrift and saving, to take no thought for the morrow, and to throw away our hard-earned wealth on the shiftless and the losers. At least two important conservative thinkers, Ayn Rand and Leo Strauss, were unbelievers or nonbelievers and in any case contemptuous of Christianity. I have my own differences with both of these savants, but is the Republican Party really prepared to disown such modern intellectuals as it can claim, in favor of a shallow, demagogic and above all sectarian religiosity?
May 4, 2005
Steven Aftergood:
In its ascendance as an economic and military power, China is increasingly a subject of both fear and fascination among political leaders and the popular press."An intimate friend and a hated enemy have always been indispensable to my emotional life," Freud wrote in The Interpretation of Dreams,"and not infrequently ... friend and enemy have coincided in the same person."
Something similar seems to be true with respect to China, which has simultaneously been the object of ingratiating praise and pre-emptive demonization, as it has compelled the attention of would-be global strategists and others.
May 3, 2005
Edwin Black, in an email to friends:
During my many city-tour, I often spoke to high schoolers, motivating them to exercise their mind and take charge of their destinies. The message: tune in--not tune out. The brightest young man I encountered was a high school student in one of the Florida cities. As usual, I fired a series of questions at the audience to demonstrate how much the newest TV and Gameboy generation did not know. In this large assembly of several hundred, this one student distinguished himself by enthusiastically answering all my questions about history, names, dates, and concepts about WWII. I had never seen anything like it. Microphone in hand, I left the lectern and walked up the long aisle to the young man. I asked,"Who the heck are you? Why do you know so much about history?" He answered with excitement that he knew the future could not be controlled without a grasp of history." I was powerfully impressed with this talented teenager. I admonished the other students to pay attention to this dynamic boy and remember his name as he would be making their decisions for them in the years to come. Just now I was informed that this effervescent young man was discovered dead Friday in his home, dead from unknown causes. Snatched from life. Never wait an extra moment to appreciate people or show them they are appreciated. If a kind word forms in your heart, don't hesitate to share it. Life is a very brief visitor.