Iran and the next administration
There is nothing but the proverbial bad choices involved with Iran. My hunch is that the United States will not act during the final year of the Bush administration, especially as Iraq improves and the Europeans slowly consider more sanctions.
But should Sen. Hillary be elected and have to negotiate with an Iran with enough enriched uranium to make 5-6 bombs, I’m sure that there will be grumbles about the Iranian “mess” left for her to sort out, but much silence that during the Democratic primaries there was even talk of impeachment should Bush have bombed the facilities—a tactic that I agree would be disastrous.
Few were complaining in 2001 that Clinton on his watch had left Bush a nuclear Pakistan with bin Laden and al Qaeda under its umbrella. At some point, some campaign strategists should warn the Democrats that they are slowly boxing themselves into a corner. By trashing Iraqis they only play the bad cop to Bush’s good (besides appearing as contrary to their traditions of advocating sympathy to the “other”), who can then plead with Baghdad to deal with us now or face liberals who are not so liberal about the notion of Iraqis being able to govern themselves.
And as they stay fixated on the 2005-2006 war, the Democrats continue to pile up footage that will be inevitably used during the late summer of 2008, when the course of the war may in fact be even more promising. If Iraq is quiet, a sound bite with Hillary claiming Petraeus was disingenuous and not truthful, with some sort of foreboding voice-over won’t look good.
Consequently, Democrats need to bring in some pro like Carville who might advise them to cool the rhetoric, take credit for pressuring for the shake-up that led to Petraeus and the change in tactics, and then growl but stay mum on Iran—if for no other reason that, if Bush acts, they can criticize him now if it doesn’t work, and if it does, privately sigh relief later when in power that they won’t have to do much.
The Bateman Files–Case Closed
I was once more under-whelmed by Mr. Bateman’s fourth and final attack on Carnage and Culture.
Despite the promises and braggadocio, nowhere does Robert Bateman critique the book as he promised at the outset. Perhaps he will do so at some future date, but for now after thousands of words, we are left only with a Media Matters partisan, raging at the wind for mysterious untold reasons.
He had oddly alleged, six years after the book appeared, that suddenly he became outraged by its thesis, and therefore went of all places to Media Matters—apparently assuming it was the logical forum for a historian to review books—to demonstrate how Carnage and Culture’s thesis of how a 2,500 year cultural tradition in the West resulted in military advantage was flawed.
But that did not follow.
Bateman—if he were scholarly and intent on demonstrating a counter-thesis—might have tried to argue that there is no such unique Western tradition of exceptional military practice—or, that if there were, it neither reveals special preeminence nor offers real advantages, then or now—or, again if there were a dynamic Western way of war, it accrues from either the borrowing or theft of others’ ideas—or is a result of exploitation—or perhaps an artifact of geography—or only a relatively recent phenomenon.
But instead of exploring such alternatives to the arguments of Carnage and Culture, Bateman simply reverts to still more ad hominem attacks. And here he unfortunately reveals a pattern of behavior unbecoming a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army, which, one would hope, might at least serve as a reminder of how any officer and gentleman should not conduct himself in the public arena.
Other disturbing characteristics appear in LTC Bateman’s four serial attacks on Carnage and Culture.
Not content with past use of words like pervert, feces, and devil, Mr. Bateman, in exasperation at his repeated inability to fault the thesis of the book, now questions my patriotism for registering for the draft, instead of volunteering to join the military, some 36 years ago (more below).
Second, sadly Bateman cannot be relied upon to tell the truth, but consistently alleges that I wrote things that I did not— hence the frequent resort to paraphrase in absence of quotation marks (see replies 1-3, and, once more, below)
Third, there is something seriously wrong with Bateman’s ability to grasp an argument, and to express a logical alternative to it. For example, last time he stated that I am as pernicious an influence as Howard Zinn. But when I reminded him that Bateman writes for Media Matters that reflects the same general ideological worldview as Zinn’s, he suddenly now reverses course, praises Zinn’s patriotism, and now suggests that I am not like Zinn, after all.
Media Matters, as Mr. Bateman has belatedly learned, is apparently not the natural forum to attack a fierce critic of American politics and culture like Howard Zinn—and thus perhaps the recent about-face.
Fourth, he has very little knowledge of either historical facts or geography. In the world of Robert Bateman, a Sicily or Spain lies in the heart of Europe; there are simply no major battles of the Second Punic War for years after Cannae; the key to the battle of Yarmouk is Muslim infantry; Manzikert is not near the border of the Byzantine Empire; and if an English translation of a Latin text he read differs from my own in Carnage and Culture, he never imagines that an author himself translated it from Latin, much less that it would be incumbent upon Bateman, if he is apparently concerned, to recheck the Latin for its accuracy—and any other of the translated quotations in the book from Greek, Italian, or Spanish.
———————————————————-
[Again, like the third reply, these are abbreviated responses, since the point of Bateman’s harangue was political and personal; and, as the theme of these attacks showed, he actually has little interest in Carnage and Culture per se.]
Among many professional historians, the book has a horrid reputation (and Hanson’s personal reputation as the thinnest-skinned writer out there only exacerbates this evaluation). Indeed, Carnage and Culture is one of the few works of history to ever prompt an entire book written in rebuttal almost immediately.
[Still more heat, still less light. I commented earlier on Bateman’s affinity for Halloween-like hyperbole. The book was once “feces”, but now evolves to merely “horrid.”
We also are again subjected to the grandiose bluster in the paranoid style like “few works of history to ever…” (e.g., cf. the prior “I take down one of the most profound perverts of the historical record in the modern era”). But why all the psychodrama?
He confuses assertion with explication: if Bateman believes the above, he simply can go over the reviews, summarize them, and then show how their critiques of the book resonate.
In fact, the book’s reviews are a matter of record. It has sold over 100,000 copies in dozens of languages, and is discussed and debated in not one, but in a variety of books.
Many military histories—whether by a Geoffrey Parker or a John Keegan—often evoke book-length responses. I don’t know which book Bateman is referring to that took issue to Carnage and Culture, but I welcome any genuine criticism and hope the controversy over the nature of Western conventional military advantage is one that is debated and explored.
At least in one case, a historian who was planning to attack the book after hearing an early lecture I gave outlining my proposed thesis, instead wrote me a complimentary letter, in admiration making the odd request to see my work in its rough draft form two years before publication. I gladly consented, sent him Carnage and Culture’s original draft— whereas he used that ms. in progress, without acknowledgment, to frame his own book’s immediate counter-argument.
So I have welcomed all sorts who seek to refute the book’s thesis, since I think it is sound, can be easily defended, and will stand the test of time.
As far as “thin-skinned,” this seems sadly a case of the habitual bully suddenly shocked that someone chooses to defend himself. In part, I reply here to demonstrate the poverty of his thinking in hopes that he will learn in the future to concentrate on research, writing, and avoid the quick-fix of “taking down” others as a way to garner notoriety.
In all my replies, I have tried to avoid resorting to the language Bateman favors. Again, the reader can compare the past exchanges and make his own determination about the temperament and manners of the respective authors.]
So it was, in this case, that I very early stumbled upon these lines about the present day written by Victor Davis Hanson:
Mercenary armies in America and Europe are the norm. They are not necessarily entirely professional militaries, but outlets for the disaffected of society who seek economic opportunity alone in serving, with the realization that those of a far different social class will determine where, when, and how they will fight and die. (Page 449)
This, as you may have now surmised, got my dander up.
Calling me names is one thing. But calling the men with whom I have served for the past 18 years “mercenary,” and claiming that the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who manned the walls through the 70s, 80s, 90s, and into the 21st century are “the disaffected of society” pisses me off. You cannot seriously write a book in which you say that the service members who stood tours in the Sinai Desert, fought and died in Mogadishu, gave up years of their lives living in tents in the Balkans or aboard ships drilling holes in the Adriatic, Pacific, Atlantic, etc., did so solely to “seek economic opportunity” and not expect people to look closely to see what other sort of tripe you are pushing. So, annoyed, I wrote to Eric and asked if he would mind lending me some space. He agreed, and here we are.
[After three lengthy attacks, Bateman now suddenly suggests that his “dander” arose to such a degree that he “wrote to Eric” at Media Matters, not because, as he once alleged, of the thesis of the book, but because I was supposedly “calling” him “names.” This final resort to find some sort of victim status is a disturbing symptom of our modern malaise.
Of course I never called Bateman names, much less any of the military whom I have supported unwaveringly in print in all my work.
The quotation he extracts is part of a discussion over the future of the Western military tradition, in which the use of mercenary denotes the end of wide civic participation in the military in Western societies. It clearly was a lamentation that civilian society is increasingly becoming divorced from those who defend it. It was written during a time of peace, when a national discussion was underway over the connection between economic need and enlistment—and public apathy about the connection.
Pace Bateman, I show empathy for soldiers who serve in harm’s way on behalf of all of us who are often more privileged (“e.g., those of a far different social class will determine where, when, and how they will fight and die.”). The chapters in Carnage and Culture on the US military (Midway and Vietnam) are sympathetic to our soldiers; the chapter on Vietnam takes on the traditionally stereotyped view of Vietnam soldiers as disturbed or amoral, and instead argues that they were as stable and courageous as any in World War II.
Of course, I worried and still do that a professional military class, and many who volunteer to serve under them, are increasingly not appreciated nor even well known to civilians. Since I wrote that in 1999, things have improved, and wartime for a while brought us together, but not enough to allay concerns. The worry—neither mine alone nor original—about the divide between soldier and civilian is central to scores of critics, as diverse as Robert Kaplan, Charles Moskos, and Josiah Bunning. And dozens of remedies have been proposed, ranging from reinstitution of the draft and increased public education to expansion of ROTC on campuses and programs for civilians to visit military facilities.
Bateman has an unfortunate habit of somehow putting himself at the center of almost everything (note at the beginning here the collective US military is dubbed “my men”); thus a generic remark about worries over the military/civilian divide becomes, of course, commentary about one LTC Robert Bateman.
After the appearance of Carnage and Culture, I have been invited to speak on the book at military institutions such as the US Naval Academy, the US Air Force Academy, the Army War College, and dozens of others, as well as being asked to visit with soldiers on duty at Quantico, Camp Pendleton, the USS John F. Kennedy, Lemoore Naval Air Station and in Iraq to name a few. I mention that for a reason: of the many hundreds of officers I have discussed the book with, LTC Bateman is the first—and so far the only one—either to see himself in the text, or to suggest that it was anyway unfair to military personnel.
In truth, through these replies LTC Bateman has brought far more embarrassment through his language and misrepresentations to those he represents than any paragraph that expresses worries about the neglect of military personnel by civilian society]
Hanson’s polemic position in Carnage and Culture, it turns out, is really more about his personal pining for a myth of his own creation. He seeks an idyllic pastoral past, rather like Lake Woebegone, and like that place, largely exists only in the fantasies of its creator. In Hanson’s vision, even a name can evoke the image of the stalwart yeoman, which of course stands in contrast to the slacker youth of today. In discussing the future (circa mid-2001, when this book came out), Hanson even manages to cast aspersions on our present day soldiers, the ones who have joined since 2001. This is what Hanson wrote about them (Note: Here Hanson is referring to a few of the naval aviators who fought and died at Midway in June 1942.):
Even their names seem almost caricatures of an earlier stalwart American manhood — Max Leslie, Elm Massey, Wade Clunky, Jack Waldron — doomed fighters who were not all young eighteen-year-old conscripts, but often married with children, enthusiastic rather than merely willing to fly their decrepit planes into a fiery end above the Japanese fleet, in a few seconds to orphan their families if need be to defend all that they held dear. One wonders if an America of suburban, video-playing Nicole’s, Ashley’s and Jason’s shall ever see their like again.” (Page 351)
He wrote both of these passages without, apparently, noting the complete illogical contradiction contained within his own words within this single book. Those men he lauds, the naval aviators, did not join at the outset of the war. They were long-serving officers. They were men who had joined the peacetime military voluntarily, during the height of the Great Depression in the mid-1930s. In other words, by Hanson’s logic and words, they were just as mercenary as the “Nicole’s, Ashley’s and Jason’s” who have fought and died in Iraq and Afghanistan these past six years…
[The problem of logic belongs to Bateman once again. “Nicole’s, Ashley’s and Jason’s” refers to a generation in toto; it does not refer to those who enlisted in the US military. That’s why I deliberately prefaced those symbolic names with “an America of _____”, and not “a military of_______”.
I have no apologies in expressing worries that the generation who fought WWII, given the ordeal of the Depression and the acceptance of a more tragic vision of life, was more likely than our own contemporary one to accept certain finalities of the human experience—that it can very hard, that war is unfortunately part of the human condition, and that we struggle, age, and die in ways we don’t like. Everything from the ubiquity of cosmetic surgery and the decline in educational standards to the obsession with video-games and the fixation on pseudo-celebrities like Paris Hilton and Anna Nicole Smith by millions of youth are symptomatic that our much greater affluence and leisure do not necessarily create more engaged citizens.]
Indeed, I am not the only one to do this. Here is an opinion about the importance of documentation with which I completely agree. In this case, the reviewer is talking about the “popular, mass market” book by Tom Ricks entitled Fiasco. But, obviously, the passion this reviewer has for rigorous documentation in history comes through clearly:
History is not the impressionistic art of autobiography, memoir, or essay, but is to be offered as an account of what happened with sources that provide the means of checking the historian’s veracity. Once journalists decide that they are no longer writing dispatches of the moment but real histories in the midst of a controversial and hotly debated war — and are intending to hype their work as a best-selling exposé — then they become historians and so are obligated to inform the reader, and posterity itself, where and from whom they obtained their primary evidence.
This being Altercation, you already knew who had to have written that blistering commentary about the importance of documentation in best-selling works of historical import, don’t you? Victor. Davis. Hanson. (Policy Review, 23 December 2006) Once again, apparently without a trace of irony.
[Here Bateman outdoes himself in intellectual dishonesty. My worry about some of the methodology of citation used in the Ricks book had nothing at all to do with notes per se which is never mention in this excerpt. The problem is the very different issue of Ricks use of unnamed sources to buttress often very controversial claims about an ongoing war.
It matters little that these anonymous sources are formally on occasion listed by Ricks in notes, underscoring the very point that it is not the structure of citation per se that is the problem, but any evidence that cannot (ever) be cross-checked since the source is known only to the author.
In Carnage and Culture, the veracity of every quote can be checked, since it is cited by author, work, and page. In contrast, what would be the reaction should a historian use quotation marks to record verbatim a speech or conversation by an Italian at Lepanto or a Spaniard at Tenochtitlan, only to direct the reader to a endnote at the back of the book where he would then find documentation something like Ricks’ “a rower” or “senior conquistador”)?
Bateman has conflated two entirely different issues of footnotes and identifying the source of direct quotations, and then used a quote to prove something that is entirely extraneous—cf. his earlier twisting of my argument of the need to emphasize the battle experience in military historical narratives to prove that I think decisive battle alone constitutes war.]
Last week, I also expounded upon the similarities twixt Mr. Howard Zinn and Mr. Hanson. Now, I should note that unlike Mr. Hanson, Howard Zinn came to his opinions about war through direct personal experience in the Second World War. Moreover, Zinn’s experiences were the result of choice. Because he had a job working in the defense industry, Zinn was exempted from the draft. Yet, during the height of World War II, when thousands upon thousands of airmen were being shot from the skies over occupied Europe, Zinn volunteered for the Army Air Corps. He was accepted, trained, and then deployed to England as a bombardier. (In WWII era aircraft, this is the officer who pulled the trigger that dropped the bombs.) He manned a .50 caliber machinegun in combat over Germany, braved flak and enemy fighters, and looked through a Noreen bombsite and dropped bombs in combat. More than 25,000 of his peers died in the air over Europe doing much the same thing during the course of his war.
[I am once more confused. In the last reply Bateman demonized Zinn. I replied that this was odd since he writes for Media Matters, which often echoes a Zinn-like worldview. Now he suddenly has reversed course (“I should note..), and is praising Zinn.
But I need no lectures from Bateman about the air war. My father flew 40 missions on a B-29 over Japan. He had been drafted after graduating from the College of Pacific. But in the upside-down world of Robert Bateman, is his war record suspect since did not quit school and volunteer during the first year of the war? Those in the arms industry were exempted from conscription because someone needed to make munitions—in the manner that some adult males of military age were needed to produce fuel or to grow food—if the war were to be won. And many of these key industries required a great deal of physical strength, long hours, and sacrifice.]
Hanson, who turned 18 two years before the end of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, apparently had better things to do at a time when America was at war and desperately needed smart young men in the ranks. Hanson’s own idea of “civic militarism,” which he espouses in his book, was, apparently, not one he felt compelled to exhibit in any sort of personal manner. He felt it sufficient to wait for the State to compel him with the draft, should it choose to do so, rather than volunteer for military service, as had Zinn.
[Unlike Zinn, I see the history of the United States and its military as one of exceptional morality, a constant striving for the promise of the Constitution that has left the world a far better place since 1776.
Like my father, I registered for the draft on my birth date at 18 in September 1971, sought no exemption, waited to receive a lottery number sometime in February 1972, was not called up, and finally was informed by the selective service that the lottery numbers were to be abolished in 1973. By 1972 there were few, and by 1973 essentially no, American ground troops fighting in Vietnam. By 1972-3, I simply followed the example of my grandfather, who did not enlist, but was drafted in WWI (he was gassed in the Argonne and for the rest of his life partially disabled), my father, and my uncle (transferred to Marine corps after being drafted by the army, and killed on Okinawa). According to the logic of Robert Bateman, my family is one of dubious patriots because they felt it “sufficient to wait for the State to compel … with the draft, should it choose to do so, rather than volunteer for military service.”
At the time, I had two elderly grandparents in their mid-80s, whose small family farm where we lived was in disarray. I spent weekends and summers working it. Upon immediate completion of graduate school, I went back home to try to save what had been in my family since 1870, during the general agricultural depression of the early 1980s.
One can support—and harm—the United States in a variety of ways; according to one’s station. I have always supported this country wholeheartedly and especially its military. To suggest, as does the moral censor Robert Bateman, that millions of Americans who were drafted in WWII were somehow less patriotic than those who immediately volunteered ignores all sorts of individual circumstances, and is an insult to their memories. Some who volunteered in WWII ended up in non-combat scenarios; others who were drafted ended up in nightmares like Okinawa.
But as Bateman envisioned, we are now a long way away from a promised scholarly discussion of Western military advantage advanced in Carnage and Culture.]
That, ladies and gentlemen, is probably a crucial difference. On the one hand, there is a man who fought in war, Zinn, and he has a problem with war, but not the warriors.[1] On the other side is a man, Hanson, who decided not to fight in his generation’s war and has no apparent problems with war, but does refer to those of us in the U.S. Army (and the other services) as “mercenary” and describes our motivations as being that solely of people, “who seek economic opportunity alone in serving.”
[More of the false intimacy. “That, ladies and gentlemen…” sounds more like a magician in mediis rebus that a critique of a book. And what does “no apparent problems with war” mean? The themes of the earlier Western Way of War were the grotesque nature of battle that often escapes formal histories, why we have a moral duty to look at fighting from the perspective of the combatant, and the worry that this lethal tradition might be turned against itself.
I tried to bring that same moral concern to Carnage and Culture. One who studies the horrors of wars usually wishes to prevent them, by learning how and why they start, and how they might be deterred. According to this puerile way of Bateman’s thinking, the military historian ipso facto must love wars—in the manner the oncologist must love tumors or the virologist the plague.
Here we have come full circle. Robert Bateman chose to find resonance with Media Matters, as he put it, by “taking down” a “conservative”. He promised to critique Carnage and Culture and its theme, but never explored whether there was a uniquely lethal western tradition of warfare over some 2500 from the Greek to the present that is the consequence not of race, accident, or geography, but of cultural practice—one that gave the West inordinate political dominance not commensurate with its population or land.
We never heard any sustained critique of that idea at all.
Instead, we’ve now endured four episodes of Media Matters-type rambling accusation, hodge-podge anecdotes, and finally the raising of the “bloody shirt”. And so after all the bumper-sticker promises of scholarship, references to Bateman’s sojourn at West Point, his teaching at Georgetown, his tour of Iraq, his Pentagon fides, his resorts to invective, the scary warning that I was to be forewarned that Robert Bateman was taking me down, we end not with a bang, but a whimper that the now hurt name-caller retreats to the status of a victim, and the author of a work of military history is somehow tainted because nearly four decades ago, I once registered for the draft, but did not volunteer to serve in a war in which the American role was nearly over.
I tried to follow the Tet offensive closely in the papers, but I was 14 at the time.
Robert Bateman for a few weeks perhaps will gain some modicum of the attention that he sought by these serial hit pieces. Yet sadly the accompanying embarrassment will be longer-lived and won’t be the sort of notoriety he envisioned when he “wrote to Eric.”
In the end, he has managed to do a disservice to more than his own reputation.]
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22 Comments
Jack Marcotte:Essential vdh
Wile your response to Batemen and your intent to even respond to such as Batemen raised questions as to why?—it is now clear that Batemen is a precipitant or the result of an insidious and ongoing degradation of the fabric of American Citizenship and the knowledge of what it means to be an American. You were not only right to confront him it was and is essential that you do so.
The knowledge that went into the Constitution of the US and the levelheaded sound thought as demonstrated in the Federalist Papers no longer appears in our school systems nor certainly in our public discourse.
Today, we are lucky if we can understand what young Americans are saying when listening to the dialogue of inner city high school students. That is in addition to the fact that even when understood the language represents the result of an education no longer concerned with the responsibilites that must be present if individual freedoms are to survive. If individuals are to “advance”.
In most cases the level of thought and problem solving skills were probably higher in the late 1800’s for all Americans (black or white) than they are today.
The advancement in American technology that has fueled world growth due to a talented few Americans should not be attributed to the many when it is so obvious that some Americans especially most minority’s today readily accept the roles of victims to insure their status as recipients of an unearned wage. Their “caretakers” provide nothing but expect their “votes” in this self destructive parasitic relationship.
One only has to listen to the campaign language of the Democratic party candidates to know the above to be true. The “it takes a village” concept and the “class warfare” created by the language of those who seek power by dividing and pitting Americans against each other is as old as man. It has never succeeded in advancing mankind–only in marginalizing the many to suport the power of the few. Its results are eventually revolution and death. America itself is a high water mark in this never ending cycle of man’s progress and failures.
That Americans, “disadvantaged” or not would allow this kind of flim flam to appeal to their human weaknesses (that are no longer pointed out by hard working parents) to sink them into something less than what Americans are supposed to be is the “war” that must also be fought and won if American exceptionalism is to triumph into the future as it has in the past.
Being an American must mean something other than being a “victim” and being “owed” something that is not earned.—if we all are to survive into the future.
In this particular battle there appear on the horizen three especially important and essential American writers who with crystal clear thinking point the way. Victor Hanson, Thomas Sowel, and Walter Williams. All would do well to listen to what they have to say—and make sure our children and grandchildren know their work as a continuation of and explaination of what it means and what it takes to be an American..
In this “War”, all Americans could confront the “Batemens” whenever and where ever they raise their self serving thoughts that take away from individuals their access to the difficult and hard truth, no matter the diffucluty of the path when the real truth is known.
A John Riggins comment “we had better be prepared to strap it on” or something like that.—It was about football–but it is also about life–seems to sum it up.
Nov 17, 2007 - 8:39 am mikesf:Game set and Match. Bateman was in way over his head. In fact I have some doubt as to whether he really understood the main thesis in Carnage and Culture since he scarcely mentions it. Personally I came away with a deeper appreciation for the American Soldier after reading the book. As far as I am concerned, Bateman’s assertion that the book slanders our soldiers is nonsense or in Bateman’s vernacular - feces.
Nov 17, 2007 - 8:46 am L Nettles:“and if an English translation of a Latin text he read differs from my own in Carnage and Culture, he never imagines that an author himself translated it from Latin, much less that it would be incumbent upon Bateman, if he is apparently concerned, to recheck the Latin for its accuracy—and any other of the translated quotations in the book from Greek, Italian, or Spanish.”
Reading that made my day. That’s the way a scholar responds.
Bateman misses and entire theme of C&C about the civic support of the military, to him if you are not in military you don’t count, as if the military springs forth miraculously equipped to perform its duties.
Nov 17, 2007 - 9:10 am Publius:Bateman’s passages were painful enough to read, even without Victor’s comments.
His style is incredibly pompous and self-referential. With all the snide insults, one wonders whether he has ever actually read a scholarly book review.
The flip flop on Zinn was truly hilarious. He could have just honored Zinn’s military service and still been revolted by his anti-American, communist rantings since then - but instead, Bateman had to cowtow and cover his behind for what is apparently his future post-military career plans.
It’s hard to reconcile the self-discipline and leadership required to rise to Lt. Col. in combat arms - with the puerile and silly things this gentleman wrote.
I imagine in years to come he will be very embarrassed by his incivility and total lack of intellectual rigor.
God speed the day.
Nov 17, 2007 - 11:25 am A.W. Murphy, MSgt,USAF (Ret):The usual gravamen for failed retired military types is the “you can criticize me all you want but don’t question my fellow soldiers.” Batemans use of that tired cliché is all anyone who did wear the uniform for any length of time needs to question his critique.
The notion that writing about, studying or questioning military tactics is exclusively the province of former soldiers is ridiculous. Indeed, the great English Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson borrowed lessons from a little know amateur tactician, who correctly identified a serious flaw in sea battles and who also never set foot on a Man-of-War, and adjusted his tactics accordingly. Simply because someone doesn’t spend time in uniform doesn’t subtract from their legitimacy as a writer or critic.
People like Bateman who can rightfully put (LtCol, Ret.) behind his name might be given way more credit for knowledge than is appropriate. From my experience there was and probably still is a substantial number of commissioned officers who were either inadequate - or simply stupid.
Indeed, many of the weakest lived in an environment where they were rarely question depending on their rank and/or position. Many inferior officers whose careers stalled at the LtCol or COL level may argue they were “victims” or “overlooked” when in fact they were bypassed due to their sub-standard work or an utter lack of militaristic skills. Even today, with all the high tech weaponry and sophisticated tools we take into combat, the idea of one guy at the top with the guts, brains and balls to do the job still counts.
People like Bateman see their careers stall and finally end not because they weren’t appreciated for their superior intellect or outstanding leadership skills – they were left behind because they couldn’t separate reality from the fiction inside their heads.
I hope, now that you have squandered so much time and effort into spanking this loser, we can get back to more serious issues. And, LTC Bateman, next time you decide that you’re smart enough to play without a helmet please start in the minors and not the bigs – you’re just not varsity material son.
Nov 17, 2007 - 12:55 pm Anonymous:All good points Dr. Hanson.
My guess is that Media Matters and Bateman’s main problem with yourself and your career is that you are a populist and they, as Machiavelli points out in the Prince are the nobility. Who hate/loathe the people.
Unsurprising. Bateman’s/Media Matters main arguments are they are the Aristos and you the peasant. Bateman/Media Matters don’t like your argument of military supremacy through culture of the West because it implies a superior mobilization of resources and shows how the West has been able to defeat non-Western adversaries time after time in general terms..
I would offer one counter-argument to your thesis. That the cultural supremacy is a mere by-product of the profoundly different marriage-family patterns of the West and non-West.
In the West, mostly, common men have been able to marry, have children of their own, and pass along property and advantages to their children. Your mention of the telling detail of the Sultan’s admiral carrying his entire fortune with him at Lepanto says a lot.
This leads to superior mobilization of resources and continuous innovation in resources and their usage. Over time, decisive. It explains why Rome was able to mobilize more resources than Carthage. Why Roman men would risk death. To have a family of one’s own and pass on wealth to their children. Instead of non-Western families where one Big Man (a Hugo Chavez, Fidel, Kim Jong Il, Xerxes, Ghengis Khan, or Saddam) have all the children and a man’s wife can be taken away at any time. Where high position means Eunuch status.
Eunuchs don’t have children to pass on property and continuously improve. The whole point I suppose and Eunuch-Big Man-serf/slave societies are very stable and long lasting: Egypt, China, Islam, etc. but don’t handle change, innovation, or challenges of societies where brains, brawn, and opportunity are widely distributed.
In that manner, military traditions of the West are a byproduct of the wide dissemination and common-man orientation, rather than the deep cause. That a society oriented around widespread common-man families will have a Western military tradition and ones around Big Man societies will have Eastern ones — i.e. armies like Xerxes.
The attraction of the Big Man society (and the Harem, palaces, and Eunuchs groveling that go with it) for organizations like Media Matters speak for itself.
Nov 17, 2007 - 3:51 pm DAN:Bateman disgraces everything, the officer corps, West Point, the uniform, Georgetown. Everything.
He’s a stereotypical Colonel Blimp.
And I’m glad that VDH mentioned all the psychodrama, all the chest-thumping before hand, all the threats that VDH was about to be “taken down,” by no less than one LTC ROBERT BATEMAN.
It was like the savages beating their chests, rattling their shields, it like the medicine man shaking his bag of bones.
Bateman is out there in the field waving his spear, uttering his warlike cries, while VDH is steading his Lee Enfield.
Suppose it was no surprise how that little skirmish was going to end.
Nov 18, 2007 - 1:15 am Jimmie R Green:Bravo, Mr. Hanson. Your response to LTC Bateman is indicative of why you are one of the most respected historians of this generation.
Nov 18, 2007 - 6:04 am Peter:Bateman’s personal attack is simply no match for your scrupulous attention to detail, the well reasoned arguments you presnt, and your respect and admiration for the young men who go to war.
Jimmie R Green (Medical Corpsman, 2Bn 503 Inf., 173d Abn Brigade, 69/70)
I’ve enjoyed reading this series. I also appreciate the recognition you gave to people who manned the essential services in WW2. Many of my kin fought overseas, but others also worked extremely hard at home in industry and farming.
Nov 18, 2007 - 12:50 pm Tom:Dr. Hanson,
Nov 18, 2007 - 1:25 pm Raymond Barry:I have followed this “Debate”? for the past several weeks. I this the comments posted above clearly demonstrate who won. MSgt Murphy summary of LTC Bateman career is dead-on, and Dan’s analogy of spear vs rifle, provides a vivid visual of this scrimmish.
In the end, to borrow from Bateman’s fondness for barnyard references, reading his arguement was like watching someone try and polish a turd.
I just wanted to tell you that your book Who Killed Homer about the plight of Classics Studies has inspired me to get working on my Homeric Greek again. By the way, what do you think of Jane Harrison? I read her Prolegomena every once in a while and get a big kick out of it.
Nov 18, 2007 - 2:20 pm Jeffrey S. Neher:I believe your thoughts that the Bush administration probably won’t act militarily in Iran are correct. The more likely scenario is that Israel is going to have to act. They are the biggest losers in the “what happens when Iran becomes nuke-ified” game. With or without nukes, Israel will have to continue the fight in proxy against Iran. The nuke question is only answered with how bloody and escalated will the war become? The only wild-card I see out there is an increasingly concerned Europe over the Muslim immigration that has gone unchecked for decades. With Sarko and Merkel, and even Brown to a lesser extent, at the head of the big three in Europe, we may find a more aggressive Europe on the horizon. We’ve seen glimpses of it in the tougher stands they’ve advocated on sanctions regarding Iran.
From those who claim to know, it appears Iran may be on the verge of another revolution. No one knows for certain, and certainly no one knows the time-frame involved or what the resulting revolution would resemble. The conventional wisdom is that the youth of Iran are pro-western, if not in social values then in economic values. This matters particularly since Iran’s youth make up such a large percentage of the population. This side of a full-scale invasion and destrction of Iran, waiting for and aiding the revolution is probably the best bet. After some point in the future, I don’t believe we will have to worry about the nukes….not with Israel on guard…..
Nov 18, 2007 - 6:02 pm Barry Meislin:Israel will have to continue the fight in proxy against Iran.
If Iran’s nuclear program—for developing weapons to either actually use or intimidate, pressure, threaten and extort—is intended to erase Israel from the map (along with Iran’s policy of arming and training Hezbullah, Hamas, and Syria to the hilt), how exactly does that make Israel a “proxy”?
Nov 19, 2007 - 12:49 am R. E. Samson:The combination of Iran & LtC Bateman brings to mind a magazine article I read at Barnes & Noble yesterday, claiming to correct the lies of the movie The 300. The magazine, titled Coexistence, presents what is clearly an Iranian view of this episode greatly at variance with the Greek. I commend the article to Mr. Hanson’s attention and address — calling it an alternative interpretation of the events is akin to suggesting Gen. Grant had an occasional drink — and the presence of this article in a magazine on prominent display at an American bookseller has implications worth consideration. Regrettably, their website (Coexistencemag.com) does not make the contents of any articles available - you have to go the your local B&N or Borders and see this article for yourselves.
Nov 19, 2007 - 6:51 am Mal Byrne:“People like Bateman who can rightfully put (LtCol, Ret.) behind his name might be given way more credit for knowledge than is appropriate. From my experience there was and probably still is a substantial number of commissioned officers who were either inadequate - or simply stupid.”
Ditto.
Nov 19, 2007 - 9:38 am Ryan M:So, let me see if I’ve got this straight:
1. Bateman reads Carnage and Culture.
2. Bateman completely misunderstands the thesis of the book.
3. Bateman misinterprets an innocent discussion over the future of the Western military tradition - as a personal insult against his own military service.
4. Bateman writes leftist hit-piece “Altercation” seeking soap-box to air his perceived grievance, under guise of scholarly criticism.
5. Bateman writes four-part “takedown” - which instead only shows Bateman’s complete lack of basic reading comprehension, logic, and critical thinking skills.
6. A very patient VDH responds point -by-point to Bateman’s hit-piece, and confirms that Bateman is little more than a shrill, childish, and intellectually dishonest ideologue.
Mr. Hanson, you deserve a lot of credit for taking the high road in this “debate.” You also deserve a lot of empathy for having to continually defend your scholarship against these intellectually dishonest sorts.
Nov 19, 2007 - 3:10 pm GGA - Dublin, Ohio:Dr. Hanson -
First, congratulations on your recent national award! With apologies to Bill Sammon, I note that it was “misunderstated” by President Bush as follows: “The 2007 National Humanities Medal to Victor Davis Hanson for his scholarship on civilizations past and present. He has cultivated the fields of history and brought forth an abundant harvest of wisdom for our times.” Amen to that; I could not agree more.
Second, thanks again for your scholarly and thorough refutation of those vile hit pieces in your last few blog entries. It was a delightful experience to see such nonsense utterly collapse under the bright light of wisdom. To beat back such nonsense is, unfortunately, necessary; but to do so eloquently and without rolling in the mud yourself is a testament to your character. Any fair minded person can see that easily enough, and the differences between scholarly arguments and intellectually dishonest fulminations could not be more obvious.
Third, thank you for a whole new appreciation for the magic that is the box of raisins in my pantry. I realize “Fields Without Dreams” is a bit dated, but the insights and lessons therein are timeless. I only wish there were some maps or pictures to get a better sense of how Rhys Burton (and kin) raised buildings and worked the land, vines, pipes, ditches, etc.
Finally, I hope you are feeling better and are through with the stones. All the best for a relaxing and enjoyable Thanksgiving holiday.
Kind regards,
Nov 19, 2007 - 3:58 pm Publius1:GGA - Dublin, Ohio
Mr. Hanson, your intelligent and even response to Bateman, regardless for correction, alone makes his polemics look silly.
For others here, we are looking for contributors:
Nov 20, 2007 - 1:01 pm sulla:http://publius1.wordpress.com/
Congratulations for the National Humanities award!
Re your multi-part series of responses to Bateman: well said, sir.
Nov 21, 2007 - 2:00 am Ian F:Bateman is not worth your time. You have shown in the past 3 blogs that he is only doing this to attack you personally and make a name for himself. His arguments lack substance and even logic. His historical claims are ridiculous and he doesn’t even know how to footnote (or he purposefully doesn’t footnote because he makes these things up).
Nov 21, 2007 - 9:12 am Peter Boston:If Bateman were not so typical of what passes itself off as the intelligentsia of today’s Left then he would just be laughable. But, alas, it appears that we must first undergo a self-inflicted mini postmodern Dark Age before the accursed Boomers die off.
Nov 21, 2007 - 11:43 am Rob Mandel:Professor,
I am a proud owner of C&C, and have referenced it many times in my high school history classes (as well a A War Like No Other, Soul of Battle, and Wars of the Ancient Greeks. I must say, an invaluable resource you are sir.) Sadly, LTC Bateman brought a knife to a gun fight. I am saddened as I respect all our servicemen and women to such a degree that I have offered an open invitation to all military recruiters to come into my classroom. No other outside guests are allowed.
How dominant was Western culture in military affairs vis-a-vis the rest of the world? Omdurman and Plassey.
Nov 21, 2007 - 5:02 pm