BAGHDAD ON THE HUDSON

Donald Rumsfeld Was More Right than Wrong About the American Revolution and Its Aftermath (Thomas Fleming, 7/28/03, History News Network)

In the July 19 New York Times Cornell historian Mary Beth Norton scathingly rebuked Donald Rumsfeld for comparing unrest in Iraq with unrest in United States at the close of the American Revolution. She sneered at his claim that "roving loyalists" still resisted the new government, and looting and burning roiled the nation. I have long been an admirer of Ms. Norton's work. She is the foremost authority on woman's history in the colonial and Revolutionary era. Her recent revisionist book on the Salem Witch Trials consigns to history's dumpster previous versions of that tragedy. But I disagree with her attempt to paint the Defense Secretary as a complete ignoramus. Although Rumsfeld overstated the case -- he was making an offhand remark, not teaching American History 101-- the American Revolution was a war with a turbulent postscript. [...]

All in all, Secretary Rumsfeld's description of a restless, violent Revolutionary era America is not as farfetched as Mary Beth Norton maintains. Revolutionary situations tend to spawn such disorder in any time or place, especially when people sense a government is malfunctioning or defunct, as in Iraq.

Let me add that I share Ms. Norton's dislike of Donald Rumsfeld; he tends to be arrogant and needlessly flippant. But the secretary's personal failings should not deter us from supporting the strategy that America is pursuing in Iraq. In essence, it seeks to confront the enemy in his bailiwick, rather than wait passively for him to attack us on our soil. This "forward" strategy won the Cold War. It is basic to our war on terrorism. If we abandon the initiative and allow the hostile remnant of a discredited regime to intimidate us in Iraq, we are on the road to disaster.

For the most part, the sorry state of education in America doesn't really matter. Few people are educable and those who are will educate themselves, regardless of the schools. But in one area, the are for which public school was instituted in America, education really is failing the Republic: that area is our own history, politics, philosophy, etc.--what used to be called civics. Because people are so ignorant they fail to understand what a delicate thing was our Founding and how easily we damage that which was handed us. Likewise, we fail to comprehend how difficult it must be for other nations to emulate us and what kinds of actions must precede their own democratic experiiments. One of the most dramatic moments in our own early history was the Newburgh Conspiracy--a moment where you realize why George Washington is the great man of our history and how easily that history could have been quite different. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 1, 2003 9:43 AM