Those Obscure Historians

by Cliopatria

Via Jim Henley at Unqualified Offerings:

At the Media Research Center, L. Brent Bozell III shrewdly notes that critics of the war in Iraq are citing the work of"an obscure professor named Martin Van Creveld."

Adding to the fun, Bozell reveals the origin of a quote from Creveld to have been a"Jewish newspaper."

The tragicomedy grows a little more, you know, tragically comic with each passing day.

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Stephan Xavier Reich - 11/25/2006

A lot of people misunderstood Sharon, it's true, but Van Crevald was pretty strident in his misunderstanding.

Stephan Xavier Reich - 11/25/2006

It's certainly true that Van Crevald is no obscure radical. He is credited with being the inspiration behind Israel's Security Fence (an idea which, actually, began on the Left). But Van Crevald is notoriously bad at prognosticating in general. He said, in the preface to his most recent book, that anyone who thinks Ariel Sharon would ever remove settlements from Gaza is "delusional." OOPS!

Barry DeCicco - 3/28/2006

I guess that far more people have one great book in them, than two or more great books.

John H. Lederer - 3/28/2006

Many years ago I read Creveld's "Supplying War". It was a brilliant reanalysis of a number of campaigns asserting that logistics really controlled what happened, i.e. Carl Gustav's mobile campaigns were in part caused by his need for forage.

After reading that book I regularly grabbed anything I saw that Creveld wrote--to be always disappointed.

Jonathan Dresner - 3/26/2006

I don't think that particular error is worthy of the epithet "notoriously bad": that was the majority view for a long, long time. How many people were predicting it?

Chris Bray - 3/25/2006

And this is maybe a healthy reminder that prognostication is a bad business for historians to be in.

Chris Bray - 3/25/2006

For another sign of Martin Van Creveld's obscurity, the U.S. Army Chief of Staff's Professional Reading List suggests that field grade officers and senior NCOs read his scholarship on logistics. The Army describes Creveld as a "noted historian."

Which, by the logic of the moment, totally proves that the U.S. Army is run by America-hating leftists who hate the troops.

Chris Bray - 3/25/2006

You could make a pile on the floor, and then borrow a neighbor's dog. Murray appears to be arguing that the disaster didn't happen immediately, so the disaster somehow wasn't really a disaster. Would someone who knows this history well like to take a crack at Murray's argument?

In the meantime, we might wonder if Varus took comfort in knowing that it took quite a few years for his command to be wiped from the face of the earth.

Ralph E. Luker - 3/25/2006

Chris, I was wondering what to make of this reaction by Iain Murray at The Corner.