Member Forum

Question Man, Not His Work

The tragic events of September 11 have enabled American historians to draw their students into the web of history: to place the attacks within the broader context of national history, foreign policy, and global trends. We and our students are, suddenly, no longer provincials. It is a heady exercise reaching into the American past to understand a confusing present and an uncertain future. It is an exercise, however, that demands both rigor and responsibility. Professor Alan Singer's essay in the February 2002 OAH Newsletter fails on both counts. As I understand it, he argues that because of questionable military engagements in the past, and as a result of our economic imperialism at present, our war against the perpetrators of September 11 attacks and our continued military actions are unjustified. Instead, we must reform ourselves and teach "democracy, social justice, and a world where people can live in peace." Few would argue with the latter lesson plan; but without a strong and continuing military response, our enemies would threaten and erode those very values cherished by Professor Singer.

Conspicuously missing from Professor Singer's list of American military debacles is World War II--a conflict more pertinent to September 11 than, say, the Mexican War or American involvement in World War I. Even then, the Japanese attacked a military target in December 1941, while the Islamic terrorists of September 11 murdered civilians outside a theater of war. Singer fails to distinguish between terrorism and acts of war. Civilians suffer in both actions, to be sure. But, as political scientist Michael Ignatieff noted, in the World Trade Center attacks "civilians were massacred deliberately, and without warning, during a time of peace, by a nonuniformed group whose intention was to spread terror." During the American campaign against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan "civilians were killed during an exercise of legitimate self-defense by a state, in response to an act of war, and were killed unintentionally despite good-faith efforts." Civilians in both instances are just as dead, of course, but death, Ignatieff argued, "does not create any moral equivalency among them" (1).

The truth of the matter is that, since the 1980s, the United States has followed the anti-war strategy Professor Singer promotes. We have been as paralyzed by the supposed "lessons" of Vietnam as Professor Singer is by the historical analogies he attempts to draw between past events of different contexts and our current conflict. Over the past twenty years, we have not retaliated against the suicide bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in April 1983, the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut that same year, the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York in 1993, the attack on U.S. troops at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, the suicide bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998, and the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen in 2000. Our inaction has emboldened our enemies. That history is missing from Professor Singer's account (2).

Also missing from Professor Singer's essay is any systematic understanding of the nature, extent, and motives of our radical Islamic enemy. Professor Singer writes of "one organized group or a few individuals," and implies that the poverty we have allegedly precipitated in the Arab world accounts for the searing hatred and violence hurled against us. He holds up the "millions of people [in] the refugee camps . . . of the Middle East," as results of our treachery, thereby ignoring about two centuries of history and misreading contemporary politics in the area.

According to Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, radical Islam appeals to "about 10% to 15% of Muslims" (3). Considering there are more than one billion Muslims throughout the world, that comprises a substantial number of people. Moreover, an untold number are embedded in Western societies where, according to political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, their presence among infidels and the trappings of modernity radicalize them further (4). And that is merely the beginning. Many more support the movement's objectives if not all of its theological baggage. Arab readers are daily treated to vicious anti-Semitic screeds in the state-controlled presses of the Middle East that are no different from the Nazi propaganda of the 1930s; belief in Western, Christian, and Jewish conspiracies abound in the Arab world. (5). A recent poll indicated that a majority of Egyptians and Pakistanis believe that the Mossad (the Israeli intelligence agency) and the CIA were responsible for the September 11 attacks. Another poll of educated Saudis showed 95 percent supported the objectives of Osama bin Laden (6).

Also on a daily basis, millions of school children are regaled in the fundamentals of radical Islam in madrasas (schools), cynically funded by corrupt, totalitarian regimes such as in Saudi Arabia where rulers trade such support for political stability (7). It was not a geographic coincidence that fifteen of the nineteen Islamist hijackers on September 11 were Saudis. Muslim people have a Hobson's choice in the region between authoritarian rule or religious fanaticism. A recent survey conducted by Freedom House indicated that of the forty-seven countries in the world with Muslim majorities, only one, Mali, could be characterized as free (8).

I suppose Professor Singer would attribute these developments to American economic imperialism, the tragic impress of globalism run amuck and, to our foreign policy which has encouraged Israeli depredations and Saudi intransigence. But if Professor Singer had read Bernard Lewis's What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response, and assigned it to his students, he and they would have learned that much of what ails the region today is self-inflicted, derived from an inability to confront or accommodate global, political, and economic changes occurring since the mid-eighteenth century. Islam has not always been so insular and oppositional--from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries Islamic civilizations were in advance of Christian Europe in science, sanitation, architecture, and philosophy. And, during that period, Islam was arguably the world's most tolerant faith. Jews, terrorized by Roman Catholic regimes in Europe, often fled to the protection of Ottoman-controlled areas. Lewis's account is both illuminating and despairing; the former because Islam is inherently a peaceful, embracing, and uplifting faith; the latter, because its current declension requires a self-analysis and reformation that does not appear imminent (9).

What infuriates radical Islam is not poverty, but a loss of dignity, power, and the highly visible success of democracy, freedom, and diversity. The target of the World Trade Center was unwittingly symbolic for quite another reason than as an icon of American economic power: citizens from more than eighty nations worked there, in a city as diverse as any in the world. As Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa explained, "For those who dream of unifying, integrating and confining the planet within the straitjacket of a single dogma, a single god, a single religion, New York, no doubt, is the first enemy to be brought down" (10).

What is to be done with this fanaticism? Foremost, we must continue to be ourselves, for democracy is the strongest rebuke to extremism and the greatest inspiration to those people caught in the grip of religious and political totalitarianism. The Abraham Lincoln example I would use is his characterization of the United States as "the last best hope on earth." We can encourage moderate elements within Muslim countries and we can offer platforms for Muslim clerics here and elsewhere to present a different perspective on their religion.

But most immediately, we must respond to the atrocities of September 11, and we must do so forcefully because the opposite only encourages more terrorism. I agree that military engagement is fraught with its own danger and unintended consequences. However, we have no choice; it is our right and responsibility. We must tell our students that the use of force is sometimes justified, especially when our civilization is threatened. Of course, considerable hypocrisy and contradiction have marked our foreign and domestic policies; but, as imperfect as we are, our ideals are infinitely more supportive of the best in humankind than those of our enemy. Writing in February 1941, ten months before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, whose work would become a major inspiration to Martin Luther King, Jr., chided religious leaders who preached neutrality in the face of Nazi aggression. "There are historic situations," Niebuhr explained, "in which refusal to defend the inheritance of civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war. . . . The biblical answer to the problem of evil in human history is a radical answer, precisely because human evil is recognized as a much more stubborn fact than is realized." People who refuse to directly confront evil "have obscured what the Bible has to say about the relation of justice to mercy in the very heart of God." Niebuhr concluded that "the task of defending. . . our civilization is imperative, however much we might desire that our social system were more worthy of defense. . . . If this external peril is not resolutely faced . . . the possibility of correcting its faults . . . may be annulled for centuries" (11).

Echoing Diane Ravitch's assertion in Education Week (17 October 2001) that we must teach our students intolerance toward certain things, historian Peter Gay wrote, "I believe with [Voltaire] that the world is a shipwreck and that it is our duty to save ourselves and one another; that love is better than hate, but that we must hate some things, especially fanaticism, for the sake of love" (12). It is our role because of who we are and what we can represent to ourselves and to the rest of the world to confront radical Islam.

Professor Singer is not a relativist, but an absolutist, instructing that our nation's past precludes our current military engagement. That is both a misreading of our past and a misunderstanding of our nation and our enemy. Radical Islam presents the greatest threat to civilization since the rise of Nazi Germany, and we all know the consequences of our collective lack of engagement during the early stages of that menace (13). The alternative to war, however lengthy the struggle, despite the unfortunate loss of civilian life and property, and despite the prospect that we may be virtually alone in this quest, is unthinkable. Just ask the women in Afghanistan.

1. Michael Ignatieff, "Barbarians at the Gates," New York Times Book Review, 17 February 2002, 8.
2. See Thomas Friedman, "Crazier Than Thou," New York Times, 13 February 2002.
3. Daniel Pipes, "Islam Is Not the Problem, Militant Islam Is," <http://www.historynewsnetwork.org/articles/> 21 January 2002.
4. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).
5. See, for example, Andrew Sullivan, "Protocols," The New Republic, 225 (5 November 2001): 46; Jonathan Rosen, "The Uncomfortable Question of Anti-Semitism," New York Times Magazine, 4 November 2001, 48-51.
6. Martin Peretz, "Foresight," The New Republic, 226 (11 February 2002): 42.
7. Erik Eckholm, "For Some, Koran Teaches Both War and Peace," New York Times, 15 January 2002.
8. Barbara Crossette, "Survey of Islamic World Finds Few Democracies," New York Times, 23 December 2001.
9. Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
10. Mario Vargas Llosa, "Out of Many, New York," New York Times, 11 December 2001.
11. Quoted in Rabbi A. James Rudin, "Niebuhr: We Must Defend Civilization," Charlotte Observer, 26 November 2001.
12. Quoted in Michael Skube, "Islam Clear-Cut: Nonbelievers are Infidels and Enemies," Charlotte Observer, 11 November 2001.
13. See Andrew Sullivan, "This Is a Religious War," New York Times Magazine, 7 October 2001, 50.

Creating A Usable Past

On September 11, life handed American scholars a puzzle-piece that for many simply did not fit their worldview. It showed the United States as a victim of foreign aggression. Scholars had two choices: find where the information fit, or throw the puzzle-piece away. In his article for the last OAH newsletter, Alan Singer made the second choice: there was no chink in his mental landscape for the United States to be anything but an oppressor.

Singer is not alone. His line of thought reflects two dominant assumptions that have gradually narrowed historians' potential audience and even invited political attack in recent years: namely, that America's relations with the Third World are unrelievedly wicked, and that our country's domestic history can only be understood as a continuing battle over race, class and gender.

Then came Tuesday, September 11 and the spontaneous flag waving that followed. The America that academics had persistently characterized as "wrong" had been wronged. How could that be? Students returned to class forever changed, though they found minimal guidance if they were looking for an intellectual bridge between love of country and a sophisticated understanding of the nation's place in the world. Many intellectuals burnt that bridge decades ago.

There are numerous examples of the castigating tendency of scholars, but a favorite is an anthology I reviewed a few years back. This textbook gave undergraduates three articles on World War II: one on Japanese internment, one on segregation of black troops, and one on harassment of Italian-Americans. Every article discussed an aspect of the war that was absolutely true, yet collectively they made for a portrait that was fundamentally false. No Hitler, no Hirohito, no Holocaust--only an imperfect America battling its demons.

Historians who step out of this mold risk censure of the type that Singer leveled at Diane Ravitch. She "identifies herself as a historian," Singer snidely noted (what else would anyone call the author of a dozen monographs?), but she is actually on par with Osama Bin Laden, he accuses. What was Ravitch's unpardonable tyranny? She dared to suggest that multiculturalism goes too far, and that teachers must unhesitatingly condemn the assaults of September as mass murder. For Singer, such statements somehow amount to a campaign to "silence" people like him, and to deny those times when the United States has sinned, rather than been sinned against.

I understand this dilemma. I hail from the radical left, and so like many of my colleagues I hesitate to write books that might appear to whitewash America's character flaws. But it is time to admit that this generation of historians has done a better job examining the republic's weaknesses than its strengths.

This lopsidedness ill-serves both foreign and domestic audiences. Our academic communities produce most of the world's scholarship on the United States. Too often they implicitly encourage critics in other countries to assume that America is culpable for all that goes wrong. Foreign readers sometimes parrot the very things we have said about ourselves. As teachers we urge youth to learn from the country's errors, but offer few lessons in what it has done right.

One issue here is intellectual integrity. The contortions that portray the United States as always oppressive are dishonest. Take, for example, Singer's allusion to supposed American atrocities "since the end of World War II," like the "bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Last time I checked, this event took place during the war, not afterward. There is a difference.

We need to change our approach if we want to remain relevant. To begin, we need to think harder about how to apportion responsibility for complex world problems and stop reflexively blaming America. That Saudi Arabia is undemocratic or that Israel and Palestine have yet to resolve their conflict is not the fault of the United States. Those countries are the primary actors in determining their fate.

Second, we need to recognize that the United States has often played at least a decent hand in world politics. Our country made its debut in global affairs in 1917, when the intractable dilemmas of the Third World were well advanced. Even so, Woodrow Wilson's "Fourteen Points" gave hope for self-determination to colonized peoples everywhere. During World War II the United States led the effort to create the United Nations, the first body to give a voice and vote to every country.

These accomplishments do not obviate the fact that U.S. foreign policy has on many occasions been stupid, arrogant, and even destructive. And, internally, issues of race, class and gender have indeed fractured our society, as they do most societies--but we work on them. We need to examine the U.S. within the context of world history, comparing the nation not only with its ideals, but also with its contemporaries. Does this mean we should cease being critical? Certainly not. But we need to absorb the lesson we teach students, that being critical does not preclude being positive.

Third, we can even learn from our most embittered critics. Last fall a conservative group associated with Lynne Cheney published a list of quotes by academics about the war. Intellectuals scorned the broadside as "Cheney's Black List." Of course, it is easy to dismiss inflated criticisms made by people we do not like. But it is far better to examine why the critique resonates with the public. The political right will capture the American flag only if we hand it to them.

Lastly, it would not hurt for professional skeptics to meditate on what the nation gets right, and why. During an interview a few years ago, the head of Canada's broadcasting regulatory agency gave me a lecture on American cultural imperialism. He surprised me by what he said next. "Don't get me wrong," he emphasized. "I have no doubt that the Americans will always be the first to go to the mat for freedom in the world."

This is a puzzle piece that scholars should seek to fit within the pattern of American history. An open-minded examination of America's historical willingness to defend freedom might help those students with flags pinned on their backpacks to fit their newfound patriotism with what they also learn about the nation's flaws.

The tragedy in New York and Washington rekindled respect for the country. Academics who ignore this risk losing credibility. Indeed, the twin assumptions of fin de siecle scholarship deserve to come down. America is more than the sum of its problems, and that is a precious piece of wisdom we can take away from ground zero.

U.S. Not Root of All Evil

Alan Singer is indicative of the problem of how we teach history and successfully dumb down our youth in the process. I do not possess the credentials of Mr. Singer, but I did serve almost thirty years in the military. My question is--are there no teachers or professors of history out there who can look past the socialistic rhetoric of the 1960s and inculcate a sense of why this nation is different and in many cases better than the rest of the so called civilized world? "Better"--now that's a word that scares many of you!

Can you teach how our Declaration and Constitution came to be? Why there was a Civil War? What role religious beliefs played in the development of our nation? What were the underpinnings of our involvement in WW II that led to the dropping of the atomic bombs? What is our sense of justice predicated upon?

The actions that Mr. Singer cites seem to be moral equivalents for him. For example, if I fly a civilian aircraft into an office building to kill infidels or start a holy war then dropping the atomic bombs to end a horrific war is no different. I don't think so!

What our children should be taught is that America has made mistakes but no other nation on the earth makes a more sincere attempt to make the world a better place. My many years in the military took me to numerous countries and I would be hard pressed to find another one that cleans its environment, ensures human rights, openly discusses its cultural problems, is as culturally diverse, and has done more to economically help the disadvantaged than the United States. Whereas families living in their native lands have been kept economically at one social stratum for generations, they can come here and within a generation or two become economically better off then any of their ancestors. Teach them that!

The time has come to teach children the truth. I realize for some of you the truth is a relative term. Whose truth you may say? I say our truth. Focusing on what differentiates us, what makes us this great cultural rainbow just does not seem to be working. During the last eighteen months, I have had the opportunity to work in a charter school whose student body is 90 percent minority. I can tell you for a fact that these kids do not even know that the War of 1812 began in 1812 or what decade WW II or the Vietnam War occurred. They don't know, and in most cases, don't care. Most couldn't tell you what the Constitution of the United States is. These are fourteen through seventeen-year olds. Some can vote in a year! The system, their parents, lack of a moral foundation, and our multicultural sensitivities are creating an ignorant electorate. If they had the reading skills, I would have them read Thomas West's book Vindicating the Founders. It is a well researched text pertaining to race, sex and justice in the origins of America. Teach them that!

OK, George Washington didn't chop down a cherry tree and Abe Lincoln probably told a few lies. However, they also helped to create a country that has done more to further the freedom and prosperity of mankind than any other nation before us. That is why so many people today still want to come here. They want to come for jobs, schooling, and medical treatment and they do it by the thousands each year. Teach them that!

Education should help to define what unites us as a people. It is our love of freedom and belief in our form of government as being the best form to enable human beings to develop themselves to the fullest that unites us. It is the belief that you can just about say what you want, worship like you desire, and be what you want and it is no business of government to tell you otherwise. Our teaching must inculcate our children with not only these beliefs but also how we arrived at them and fight to maintain them. Teach them that!

The bottom line is that the United States is not the root of all evil. Our foreign aid and, yes, our military--which does more to keep other nations free and should therefore be considered as foreign aid--is paid for by the citizens of this country. For you see, in a republic the citizens are the defenders of the nation. Other nations hire us to defend them and then condemn us for not doing more to solve their problems. Is there a free press in most Islamic countries? Can you speak your mind there? Can you openly practice your religion if it is not the state sanctioned religion? Where is the economic wealth centered in those countries? Should we even speak of multiculturalism or tolerance when we think of these so called nations? Come on, Mr. Singer, did you teach the kids that we are responsible for all these social injustices that these nation states have perpetuated upon themselves for centuries? At least Europe left the Middle Ages! Teach them that!

The mantra of tolerance, tolerance, tolerance seems to only apply in one direction. Your type of tolerance will defend homosexual rights but does not tolerate the belief that the homosexual lifestyle is aberrant. Your type of tolerance may defend pro-choice but not pro-life. You find it hard to make judgments about groups of people. Why? Actions do speak louder than words and the actions of many of these Islamic nation-states have enabled this type of religious fanaticism to kill thousands. Tolerance is not a one-way street designed only for those who have an axe to grind or elect victimization as justification for their current actions. There should be no tolerance for evil. Evil must be contained or destroyed. Ask the Nazi's, rather ask the Jews! Teach them that!

Tired Rhetoric

Accurate History

On page 3 of the February 2002 OAH Newsletter, Alan Singer referred to "actions taken by the United States since the end of World War II including the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." I may not like the views of Diane Ravitch, but I believe in accurate history--World War II had not ended when the atomic bombs were dropped.