Week of July 9, 2007

The president mentioned in his speech yesterday that he was reading history, and he has been summoning historians and theologians to the White House for discussions on the fate of Iraq and the nature of good and evil.

W. thinks history will be his alibi. When presidents have screwed up and want to console themselves, they think history will give them a second chance. It’s the historical equivalent of a presidential pardon.

But there are other things — morality, strategy and security — that are more pressing than history. History is just the fanciest way possible of wanting to deny or distract attention from what’s happening now.

"Visit Our Ancestors" Cemetery Tour: Meet at the Las Cruces Masonic Cemetery at the corner of Compress and Brown at 10 a.m. Tuesday for the second in the Branigan Cultural Center's"Visit Our Ancestors" series of cemetery tours. Learn about local notables Thomas and Alice Branigan, A. J. Fountain, John Newbrough, W.W. Cox, and Sheriff Pat Garrett. The tour will also cross the street to visit the Odd Fellows Cemetery. Be prepared for the free, two hour tour with comfortable shoes, sunscreen, long sleeved shirts and hats. Bottled water will be available.

[I]t is truly shocking--and it is hard to be shocked when the Huffington Post, the leading left blog, carries an anti-Israel article which actually attacks Israel for supposedly not accepting Yasir Arafat's peace offer at the 2000 Camp David meeting!!! (when the truth is the exact reverse)--that the LA Times (of which one would expect beter) would carry an op-ed by a Hamas leader which includes such lies as that Ben-Gurion called for the destruction of the Palestinians. [T]here are truly no limits any more of professionalism or decency in the mainstream media.

Late last month, President Bush gave an address at the Islamic Center in Washington, D.C., where he announced that the United States would for the first time appoint an observer to the Organization of the Islamic Conference."Our special envoy will listen to and learn from representatives from Muslim states and will share with them America's views and values," he said."This is an opportunity for Americans to demonstrate to Muslim communities our interest in respectful dialogue and continued friendship."

To say public diplomacy hasn't been this administration's forte is a truism and an understatement. Still, it's hard to recall any presidential initiative as spectacularly misjudged and needless since Ronald Reagan paid tribute to Nazi soldiers at Bitburg. The OIC's signal contribution to date has been a decades-long boycott by Muslim countries against Israel.

Fernandez-Armesto is Professor of Global Environmental History at Queen Mary, University of London, a member of the Faculty of Modern History at Oxford University, Principe de Asturias Chair in Spanish Culture and Civilisation at Tufts University, Massachusetts, and the author of about 20 books, including a histories of truth, humankind, civilisations, the millennium, the Spanish Armada, food, and Christopher Columbus.

But he seeams destined to go down in history as the man who tried to cross the road between the Hilton and Hyatt hotels in Atlanta, while he was in town for a conference of the History News Network[sic]. What Professor Fernandez-Armesto did not know, on that fateful day last January, was that jaywalking is an offence in Georgia, which it is not in the UK. When the young man in a bomber jacket told him that he should not cross at that point, the Professor took his words as advice, and ignored it.

Hoover was a disaster. Warren Harding rates very low in the pantheon of presidents and it is likely that Bush will be seen as a bottom feeder.