Week of Jan. 15, 2007

I know when the American Medical Association annual meeting is happening, because all of a sudden there’s cutting edge medical news on the radio; I know when the American Chemical Society meets, because all of a sudden someone’s talking about material science; there’s never any big news that comes out of the AHA, though, and that bothers me. Actually, there was big news this year (in which I played a small role), with international coverage, but it’s not exactly a credit to the profession. Academic journalists have been more interested in the business meeting, which was fun (you can see me in the background of some of Rick Shenkman’s videos) and “historic” but which still doesn’t really represent what we, as historians, do on a daily basis; it doesn’t show us advancing human understanding, clarifying things, growing.

Headline in the NYT on Jan. 11 :

In Germany, a Hitler Comedy Goes Over With a Thud

Hitler Comedy Is the Top Draw in Germany

So here's the way I see it. The Bush administration is clearly attempting to create a pretext to attack Iran and creating the conditions where a series of massive bombing raids can be undertaken to degrade, and possibly delay, Iran's nuclear program, which is so well hidden and protected -- in part as a reaction to Israel's raid against its earlier program -- that it is impossible to stop. It's my view that this raid will set up another war inside Iraq against American assets there as well as inciting worldwide terrorist attacks against Americans and their properties around the world, including inside the United States -- without doing much to prevent Iran's nuclear program. It is, in other words, perfectly consistent with everything Bush and the neocons have done in the past. And of course, this being the Bush administration, you can count on it being done incompetently and dishonestly.