[Peace-discuss] On Bacevich's Quackery & That of Many Others

[C. G. Estabrook]

Ron--

I'm not the only one to be put off by Bacevich's maunderings. I hardly agree 
with Taranto's 'positive' points, but his criticism of Bacevich is generally apt.

And neither mentions Mideast oil - which the U.S. State Department called in 
1945 "the world's greatest material prize."

What if the major product of the Mideast were asparagus? --CGE

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Dr. Bacevich's Quackery
If you think American kids are ignorant about history, wait till you get a load 
of this historian.
By JAMES TARANTO

Andrew Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston 
University, has an innovative foreign-policy theory. "At periodic intervals," he 
argues in a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece, "the American body politic" succumbs 
to "war fever," which he defines as "a sort of delirium" whose symptoms are 
"delusions of grandeur and demented behavior."

He offers a medical history beginning with the Spanish-American War: "Gripped by 
such a fever in 1898, Americans evinced an irrepressible impulse to liberate 
oppressed Cubans." Once it was all over, "no one could quite explain what had 
happened or why."

Then, "in 1917, the fever suddenly returned. Amid wild ravings about waging a 
war to end war, Americans lurched off to France. This time the affliction passed 
quickly, although the course of treatment proved painful: confinement to the 
charnel house of the Western Front, followed by bitter medicine administered at 
Versailles."

Bacevich: Demand a second opinion!

This account of America's entry into World War I is incomplete, to say the 
least. It ignores that the debate over the U.S. role in the war had gone on for 
years. President Wilson had striven to preserve U.S. neutrality, declining to 
enter the war and attempting to mediate a peaceful settlement even after the 
German sinking of the British passenger ship Lusitania in 1915, which killed 128 
Americans [NOT BLOODY LIKELY].

Further, although there was "bitter medicine administered at Versailles in 
1919," it was not the U.S. that had to choke it down. The heavy reparations 
imposed at Versailles failed to pacify the Germans, leading to . . . well, 
nothing, in Bacevich's account.

Bacevich's medical history skips straight to the 1960s, which "brought another 
bout" of the fever. World War II? Korea? Nope, nothing much happened until "an 
overwhelming urge . . . landed Americans in Vietnam." [THAT'S THE SORT OF 
NONSENSE WE'VE COME TO EXPECT FROM BACEVICH.] Fortunately, Saigon fell to the 
communists, which "seemed, for a brief interval, to inoculate the body politic 
against any further recurrence." Unfortunately, "the salutary effects of this 
'Vietnam syndrome' proved fleeting."

"By the time the Cold War ended," Bacevich recounts, "Americans were running 
another temperature, their self-regard reaching impressive new heights." He does 
not elaborate, but we remember the 1990s as a fairly peaceful time. [IF EITHER 
HAD TO EXPLAIN KOSOVO, IT MIGHT BE ILLUMINATING.]

"Then came 9/11, and the fever simply soared off the charts. The messiah nation 
was really pissed and was going to fix things once and for all." So "Washington 
set out to redeem the greater Middle East. . . . Half a dozen years ago, 'wars 
of choice' were all the rage in Washington."

Were they really? Half a dozen years ago would be 2005, two years after Iraq was 
liberated from Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. By that time, there was no clamor 
for more "wars of choice." To the contrary, opposition was mounting to the 
continuing American presence in Iraq. The next "war of choice" didn't begin 
until just a few months ago, in Libya. (Bacevich obliquely acknowledges that 
last point, writing that "the post-9/11 fever . . . lingers most strongly in the 
Obama White House, where a keenness to express American ideals by dropping bombs 
persists"--though our recollection is that the "keenness" for intervention in 
Libya emanated from the State Department rather than the White House.)

Describing the complexities of American military intervention as a "fever" is, 
at best, an extremely simple-minded metaphor, the sort of thinking one might 
expect from a Cindy Sheehan or a Michael Moore rather than a serious academic. 
[TARANTO HAS NO REASON TO GIVE ANY ATTENTION TO ANYTHING SHEEHAN OR MOORE 
ACTUALLY SAID.] But to call it simple-minded gives it too much credit. Consider 
this passage:

Of course, at the first signs of self-restraint, you can always count on the 
likes of Sen. John McCain or the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal to 
decry (in McCain's words) an 
"isolationist-withdrawal-lack-of-knowledge-of-history attitude." In such 
quarters, fever is a permanent condition, and it's always 104 and rising.

A fever cannot be "always 104 and rising." Either it hits 105 or it stops 
rising. Bacevich's command of arithmetic is as poor as his command of history. 
His diagnosis is sheer quackery. [BUT THEN THERE'S A LOT OF THAT GOING ROUND.]

(Disclosure: This columnist is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial 
board.)