President George W. Bush, Historian
But if they were rewriting history, who wrote it in the first place? Why, George W. Bush, of course, and it falls to us private citizens in the historical profession, as his new colleagues, to evaluate his work-in-progress, "A History of the Iraq War, 2002-2003."
Vetting drafts of history -- like vetting intelligence -- is harder than it sounds. There are no known laws of history, and more art than science goes into a good narrative. Still, neither does history heel like an obedient hound at the whims of its authors. Historians need to handle evidence persuasively, to reason logically and to provide useful perspective to lend credibility to their stories.
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Bush's "History" tells an arresting tale: The United States, threatened by Saddam Hussein with imminent attacks using nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, launched a swift war -- with only one real ally -- on Iraq to prevent these strikes. It is assuredly a moment worth chronicling.
As to handling evidence, Bush hasn't any to handle -- yet. It is foolish to say he never will, and his research assistants are still in the field seeking data. But barring their discovery of a Dr. No-style secret hideout full of nukes, the threat cannot have been so pressing as presented. And it is unusual for a historian to demand acceptance of his work without offering at least some evidence, even if his research assistants are, like the president's, "darn good."
Bush did cite a fellow politician-historian, British Prime Minister Tony Blair -- but it turned out Blair's people hadn't much evidence either: They plagiarized a paper they found on the Internet and "sexed up" the details of their story. Perhaps this is why Blair bowed out of the history business, telling Congress "history provides so little instruction for the present day."
As for reasoning logically, Bush fumbles by concluding, "One thing is for certain, Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat," and in another version of the same idea, "One thing is for certain: He's not trying to buy anything [e.g. uranium] now." Bright history majors will recognize this as petitio principii: assuming in the conclusion what you were supposed to prove in the first place -- i.e. that Hussein's threat merited pre-emptive war sooner rather than later. A historian might as well justify the U.S. Cavalry attack at Wounded Knee Creek, S.D., in 1890 by saying that afterward the Sioux no longer posed a terrorist threat to Washington. The premise remains unproven.
Then there is the question of putting the episode in perspective. Unlike scientists, historians can't do experiments -- so we look for comparable situations to tell us if we're on the right track. For example, British historian Niall Ferguson compares empires, arguing that the British were not so bad because, well, would you rather be colonized by the Germans? Bush's fellow faculty-member Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tried in May to compare revolutions, arguing that in making the "transition from tyranny to a free society" in Iraq, guerrilla attacks are no big deal. After the Americans liberated themselves from George III, he noted, Daniel Shays led a rebellion in Massachusetts. But Shays fought American tax collectors, not foreign liberators. And George Washington did not say of Shays's men, "Bring 'em on." Rather, he took the rebels seriously, thinking it "not probable that the mischiefs will terminate" unless the country addressed their root causes.
Altogether, these problems suggest that Bush's "History" needs revision. Further, he also makes incorrect statements. It is erroneous to claim that "we've found the weapons of mass destruction" and that "we gave [Hussein] a chance to let the weapons inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in." Every historian makes mistakes. Even a short history contains thousands of facts, some of which will go wrong. But errors -- especially errors key to the argument -- need correction.
And in the end the need to correct errors provides the ultimate argument why
governments must not write history. As the great historian Marc Bloch observed,
"The moment an error becomes the cause of bloodshed it is firmly established
as truth." If ordinary historians make mistakes, they are only mistakes,
correctable by the next historian who comes along. But if governments make them
in the name of war, then blood sanctifies them, and myth replaces history.
This article first appeared in Newsday and is reprinted with permission.