Most of my friends will immediately recognize this title, that of Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 nonfiction book about what comes after the Cold War. When published, it was a sensation, although the number of people who actually read the magazine article summarizing it greatly exceeded those who waded through his 339 pages of dense politics and philosophy. I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Fukuyama for a private lunch one day (benefit of working in the Pentagon), so I was obliged to be in the latter group. With the benefit of that experience, I can strongly recommend the article, as the gist of his argument is there.
Frank’s work was widely ridiculed–again, by those who never read all of it–after the 9/11 attacks. He didn’t predict an end to conflict, just the fact that the Cold War proved two things: freedom is better than authoritarianism as a governmental system, and capitalism is best at economic production. Those truths have stood the test of time since he wrote them. But those who stopped at the bumper sticker (history is over, end of story) just didn’t get it. They didn’t know history, and they were wrong because of it.
I used to think not knowing history was practically criminal. For example, I would hear people say, “why do I need to know who went to war with whom?” (they never got the who/whom part right, but that’s a different argument for a different day). I often quipped back with a quote from Leon Trotsky: “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” Otherwise peaceable Palestinians who lived in Gaza are suddenly realizing what happens when someone starts a ruinous war on your behalf. You don’t get to opt out, you just get to suffer. But lately I’ve decided there is something worse than not knowing history; it’s learning bad history.
See, if you don’t know something about history, you can honestly learn about it and fill in the gaps. But if you have been taught something about history that is either factually incorrect or seriously biased, you’ll continue to insist you’re correct. You will resist the correction. Several current examples suffice:
Kissinger’s War Crimes.
Henry Kissinger recently passed. To say he was controversial is an understatement, as much as it would be to say he was important. Yet most of the press coverage focused on the allegation he promoted or encouraged various war crimes. The most prominent of these charges was that he extended the Vietnam war by “carpet bombing” neutral Cambodia, killing tens of thousands and undermining the Cambodian government so that it fell to the vicious Khmer Rouge. These are three factual statements, although seriously shaded to hide the truth. Kissinger did promote the extension of the war by bombing Cambodia. Many people did die in those attacks, although the number is suspect for reasons I will explain. The Cambodian government did collapse under attack by the Khmer Rouge. What is the bias?
The main supply line between North Vietnam and the Viet Cong guerrillas in the south was the famous Ho Chi Minh trail, a network of roads and jungle paths in Cambodia which paralleled the border. Note the bolding in Cambodia. The US bombing didn’t extend the war into Cambodia; the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) extended the war into Cambodia. The US Air Force simply followed. As to casualty figures, the Air Force was largely bombing jungle trails, so it used carpet-bombing tactics. The idea that tens of thousands of innocent Cambodians were wandering these trails night after night, when they knew bombs were falling, strains credulity. While most of the people killed were just doing a job, moving things from here-to-there, they were involved in the war effort. Finally, the US went on to support a coup d’etat which replaced Cambodian King Sihanouk with General Lon Nol, but neither leader was able to resist the Khmer Rouge, who overran Phnom Penh just as the NVA overran Saigon. Cambodia’s fall was as inevitable as South Vietnam’s.
Bombing an area militarized by an opponent is not a war crime (a lesson being recalled currently in Gaza’s hospitals, mosques, and schools). Neither is killing civilians engaged in combat support efforts. And the postwar history of the Khmer Rouge demonstrates there are things worse than US meddling. Kissinger’s legacy deserves a critical assessment, but war crimes? Sorry, no.
The Nakba.
Many press reports covering the “bigger picture” of the current war in Gaza mention the Nakba. The term means catastrophe in Arabic, and it is used as a descriptive nickname for what happened to the Palestinian Arabs in 1948. As the media “contextualized” the story, the nascent Jewish state forced a little less than a million Palestinians from their homes and turned them into stateless refugees. Again, it’s a factual statement, but leaves the full truth wanting. These stories remind me of my visit to Hiroshima two decades ago. As I walked into the Peace Museum, I was struck by the story it told: on a bright, sunny day, people were going peacefully about their lives when suddenly a thousand suns exploded above them. Seriously, no mention of the war going on, the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor, the Rape of Nanjing, the brutality of the Bataan death march or the various atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army. Just rainbows and unicorns and BOOM. Missing something?
In a similar fashion, the Nakba was preceded by the Palestinian Arabs rejecting the UN two-state solution and joining with five Arab armies in an attempt to kill all the Jews and destroy the Israeli state. They failed and were forced to flee. At the same time, several hundred thousand Jews were expelled from Arab countries where they had lived for centuries, and they primarily went to Israel for protection. A catastrophe? Yes. Traumatic? Of course. But this is what happens when you attempt to eradicate a people and fail; they simply won’t return to the peace table until their security is ensured. But the many pro-Palestinian protests you see at American universities stem from teaching only the Nakba, not the rest. Which is why many students draw the wrong conclusions.
The 1619 project.
Nikole Hannah-Jones’ 1619 Project is an attempt at re-evaluating all American history by tracing our roots not to 1776, but to 1619, the beginning of English chattel slavery in Virginia. The New York Times News division (not Opinion) promotes the project, suggesting they see it as historical fact, not simply an alternative view. There is an associated educational curriculum being used by primary and secondary schools across the nation. The crux of the project is that race, and specifically race-based slavery, is the appropriate prism to view the development of the United States. In the end, everything is about race. The American Revolution? Designed to protect southern slavery against the British abolitionist movement. The Second Amendment? Arms citizen-slave owners against possible slave revolts. America’s police system? Drawn from the fugitive slave patrols. America’s justice system? Incarceration of black men to prevent their development, just as in the old South. American capitalism? From the Plantations. I could go on, but you get the point.
Many professional historians have pointed out the serious fallacies in these arguments. Some proponents of the 1619 Project have backed off, suggesting they only wanted more–and more serious–consideration of race. Who can argue with that? But that’s not what they put forward. These factually wrong ideas are now out there, circulating in the young minds of America. We’ll see more incoherent and violent results in years to come.
Think not? As I wrote this post, the Economist covered a new poll of Americans 18-29. Not youths, young adults. Twenty percent thought the Holocaust was a myth. Another thirty percent couldn’t say whether the Holocaust was a myth (or not). And the results didn’t adjust by education: that is, having an American college degree didn’t make you more knowledgeable about the truth. How could that be? Secondary school history curriculum is perfunctory, and if you cover the Nakba, are you going to cover the Holocaust? It gets worse in college, where educators increasingly teach critical theory focused on oppressers-and-oppressed, leaving Israel in the former group. Which begets the ill-informed pro-Hamas rallies on today’s campuses.
Want to argue whether Henry Kissinger’s narrow focus on the Cold War was brilliant or myopic? Worthwhile. Does the Israeli war against Hamas end up radicalizing more Palestinians than there are now? Good question. What is the lasting effect of slavery on modern America? Start the debate! The examples I cite aren’t designed to illuminate, but to confuse. They stake out extreme positions, lacking context or just being plain wrong.
Coupla’ thoughts:
Those who emphasize the centrality of the Nakba curiously fail to note the violence perpetrated against Jewish settlers in Palestine between ~1870 and the 1940s. There had been Jews living in Palestine for millenia, alongside their Arab neighbors, sometimes in peace, sometimes not. The lands of the Levant that were ruled by the Ottomans (to become the Palestine Mandate under Great Britain) were not the jewel of the Ottoman Empire by a long short. As under the Roman’s (and presumably, the Byzantines, Ummayads, Abbasids, Seljuks, Mameluks, etc) the Ottomans found Palestine an impoverished and troublesome corner of their empire. When, in the latter 1800s, Constantinople was approached by a group of European Jews who hoped to make a home in Palestine, they welcomed the opportunity. Those Jews and their children and grandchildren formed a small but vibrant minority in Palestine, founding Tel Aviv and establishing industries, banking and introducing modern ideas about agriculture and husbandry. By and large they got along well with their Arab neighbors and particularly enjoyed warm relations with the Druze who lived in the northern parts of what became Mandatory Palestine. When Great Britain agreed in principle to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine, Arab resistance hardened, egged on by the rabidly anti-semitic Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, resulting in attacks on Jewish communities through much of the 1930s. Jewish ability to mount a robust, organized defense in 1948 stems from the self defense cadres formed in the 1930s. When the new nation of Israel responded to invasion by Arab armies in 1948, they were already primed by a decade of Arab violence to respond in the manner they did. What is surprising is their restraint.
About the 1619 project; I hoped it would be an honest study of the importance of Black Folks’ contribution to America’s founding and evolution. Instead it appears to have been a “theory” built to embrace a conclusion.
Totally agree. How anybody could forget (or not know) the long history of the Jews in Judea and Samaria is beyond me. It speaks to something conscious, not just ignorant, which is why some suggest it is clearly anti-semitic.
Isn’t the Christian world about to celebrate the birth and life of a Jewish child, to Jewish parents in the Judea and Samaria region? Hmmm.
Yes. But I will say this: when the Romans decided (circa CE 70-135) to create something called “Syrian Palestine” and make it Jew-free from the river to the sea, they did. It was centuries before Jews returned in numbers.
Many years ago, an Israeli gentleman told to me that in 1948 the Palestinians were subjected to a propaganda campaign, that included public announcements, warning them of imminent massacres of Palestinians by the Israelis. According to him, Israel did not force them out.
Regarding the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a very important point to remember is Japan’s refusal to capitulate. The US government estimated that a continuation of the war would have cost additional 1 million American lives, (and countless Japanese, including civilian). To force this additional sacrifice on a nation that did not start the conflict was unacceptable and contributed to the decision to drop the bomb.