August 2004
Response to Readership

Isn't the Iraqi government making the same mistake with Sadr that the Weimar government made with Hitler, trying to rein him in by promising him a position in government? I see only trouble ahead with this situation, Sadr's forces neither defeated nor humiliated, but legitimized. Shouldn't the Imam Ali shrine have been bombed weeks ago?

I don’t agree about bombing the shrine, but its occupants still should have been utterly defeated, along with those in Fallujah. Our theory is apparently—‘we can defeat them any time we wish,’ and, in fact, usually do.

But they don’t define victory or defeat by military reality, but rather by surviving encounters with the all-powerful Great Satan. At some point, in the next few months, the terrorists will try to destroy the new government. Then we will either have to finish them off or simply leave. And I’m hoping it is the former.

All these problems originated in April 2003, when our misplaced postbellum laxity earned us no thanks. Some of us worried then that without conquering the Sunni Triangle we hadn’t created an atmosphere of omnipotence and thus emboldened once cowardly and weak terrorists, who thought killing an American with impunity suddenly was both easy and heroic. No, at some point a few thousands killers still have to be disabused of their murderous intentions, by death, exile, or imprisonment.

What do you think the ancient Greeks would think of the modern Olympics?

Hanson: They would like them I think. Even the ancients’ own commercialization, political infighting, athletic cheating, judicial corruption, etc. were not unlike our own. But they really would appreciate our like effort to get diverse people together for a bit, forget differences, and just celebrate human excellence and athletics. No, I think the Greeks are smiling at us.

And by the way, the much-maligned modern Greeks did an excellent job. I have expressed much criticism of their past easy anti-Americanism, but they put on a wonderful two weeks despite often unfair and strident pre-game prejudices about their competence. I’m hoping that the accruing well-earned confidence will allow them to evolve beyond ankle-biting the United States out of envy and resentment. They don’t need to do that any more and should not, and perhaps their great recent success, along with their soccer laurels, will jump start their evolution into a mature and confident state.

Even though Hellas was under Spartan hegemony, Sparta was having serious problems of manpower and stretched well beyond its limits in many ways before Epaminondas began his campaign to free the Helots. Yet, history seems to portray him as being the destroyer of Spartan hegemony. Do you see history (that written by actual historians and not journalists) as portraying Reagan similarly?

Hanson: Yes, both Sparta and Russia were in decline. But declines can last a long time. And only a few visionaries like an Epaminondas or Reagan grasp that resolute action can be a catalyst and thus save lives in the process. A Carter re-election would have resulted in a Cold War for another two decades at least, and God knows how many more Afghanistans, Ortegas, and Iranian hostage-takers.

Isn't a "unified" Iraq doomed to fail because of religious and tribal conflict?

Hanson: Doomed? Nothing is foreordained. Look at the sometime inexplicable events in South Africa, Libya, or what is going on in China and India. Amazing things happen all around us. If a visionary emerges with good people around him, the situation can be stabilized. Our problem is that the necessary medicine is seen as worse than the disease, so the patient gets no relief as he takes a turn for the worse.

What is the reason for the current mayhem being perpetrated by Muslim against Muslim in Iraq?

Hanson: Take your pick: religious faultlines, score-settling after 30 years of Baathist divide and conquer, tribal vendettas, ethnic hatred, outside agitation, Islamic fascism—it is all there and more. But rather than sorting it all out, we must establish the principle that the government that will be elected in a few months is the final and sole arbitrator of force, and unfortunately because of past misplaced laxity the tab to establish that idea is getting higher by the hour. Mr. Sadr’s nine lives should have run out long ago.

If John Kerry wins the election, have you seen any indications that he will have the moral clarity and sense of mission to follow through for the Iraqi people, continue the war on terrorism, and actively oppose Middle Eastern autocracy and fight for Western reform?

Hanson: I wrote about that in the current National Review magazine. In short, after the fumes of Bush’s resoluteness are exhausted about 2005-6 he would return to Carterism. Compare 1977-80 or 1993-98, and you will find that anytime a Democratic President has professed that the old deterrence was passé, our enemies got the green light, whether in Afghanistan, Teheran, Central American, the Sudan, or Yemen. So I shudder when I hear about sensitivity, since I heard it before when Carter bragged that he was no Ford or Nixon and Clinton said he was no Reagan. Sound fuzzy and soft here at home, but abroad such proclamations about a new multilateralism bring a lot of creepy people back out of the woodwork.

In your estimation how many people have lost their lives because of leftist policies and media coverage?

Hanson: Robert Conquest spent a lifetime trying to ascertain just that. Tally up Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and the rest of these mass murderers and you can get near 100 million. And they did not operate in a vacuum—as you imply given their reliance of useful idiots and  fellow travelers. My UCSC dorm was papered with Mao and Fidel posters; we were forced to listen to Radio Peking in my Politics class in 1971 by an idiotic adolescent Harvard-trained professor. As an 18 year old, I often wondered how he would have fared in the rice paddies of the Cultural Revolution.

I just finished Fields Without Dreams, which, like The Land was Everything, I found to be an informative, passionate, and moving account of farming and farmers and what we owe to both of them. So I cannot help but wonder about the state of things today. What is a ton of raisins going for, and is it near enough? Is your family farm still in operation? I take it you are now in a position to supply a better flow of "off farm" income, but do you still get a chance to climb on a tractor every now and then?

Hanson: Well, here it goes:

a) As of this week, I think we will get $1100 a ton on 100% of the crop, a drastic increase from $500 a ton last year, but still $200 less than what we got in 1980 when I started, when costs were half what they are now. Vineyards were pulled in great acreages last year—and more would have gone out if the poor farmer could have burned his stakes and dead vines. But now we are in a postmodern world where you cannot burn treated grape stakes, shred them, or do much of anything with them, so it is costly to go out of business in the sense it takes money to destroy a money losing Thompson vineyard.

b) My brother and cousin retired after 30 years last year, sold off some land, and called it quits after realizing that the fruit business really is in the hands of a few large corporations. The family as a whole managed to hang on to about 100 acres of the 180 we used to farm. I have 43 acres of raisins on the home place and now rent it out to a friend. My son just returned at 21 and has the madness in him, so I expect soon we will give it a go together and lose some more money on it.

c) I was on the tractor last weekend. When the family sold off all the equipment, my twin kept the Massey 265 and I the little Ford 3000. I hope to buy an old Massey 275 to pull a disk, and in 2-3 years farm the 40 with my son. I will try to budget for the accruing losses by writing I suppose.

d) Thank you for kind note!

Where do our generals of today fall: the camp of Bradley, Ike and other techno-bureaucrats or the camp of fighters and warriors like Patton?

Hanson: Both. But we are not allowed to fight the enemy to the finish, and so our Pattons are Pattons for a day, and then quickly pulled out of Fallujah and Najef. The colonels I met at the Army War College and the officers I saw on the USS Kennedy are certainly Pattonesque, but they work in a system now where audacity can quite literally get you fired. Of course, should we really be at war, then we would turn to such men in an instant in our hour of need. But we feel we are not yet there. But another 9-11? Then, yes, suddenly we would find Pattons a plenty and probably let them do their work. If Mr. Sadr is not caught, then he will become a charismatic Castro-like figure, who survived his Bay of Pigs and force the interim government to turn on us. I fear that may be happening as we speak.

What are your thoughts about Clinton’s new book?

Hanson: As Callimachus said, “a big book equals a big evil.” In short— windy, self-indulgent, disingenuous, ponderous, self-serving—and probably ghost written at that. I knew that when I saw him hold up his “rough drafts” and  “notebooks” which seemed as legitimate as Hillary’s billing records mysteriously washed up on the White House floor.

It strikes me that liberalism is quite close to fascism. What is the possibility of liberalism in the United States becoming the seed of future fascism?

Hanson: Well, it is not classical liberalism, but government-enforced utopianism that worries you—or the new Left-wing idea that a coercive bunch of graduate-school intellectuals and one-world engineers knows what is best for us all. We are seeing it in the EU. Indeed, we are fortunate for Europe, since it is a step ahead of our own Left and provides a valuable crystal ball for us, in the sense we can see where Palo Alto, Cambridge, and Madison wish to take us—and how their dream is unraveling daily.

My sense is that Michael Moore's works are utterly deceitful, though I have not seen Fahrenheit 911.  I understand my own judgment is problematic on the current film.  Nonetheless, descriptions of several scenes by friends and the media leave me troubled, specifically the mother who was pro-war until her son was killed in combat in Iraq, upon which she changed to an anti-war view. One can feel a bit silly discussing highfalutin concepts of freedom and all the Iraqi lives saved with someone who has suffered so grievous a personal loss. If you met her on the street, what would you say to her? Moreover, do you believe that, practically speaking, we can sustain even a broadly multi-ethnic population?

Hanson: I don’t know how my grandfather dealt with the death of my namesake on Okinawa just 90 days before the war’s end, when the war’s verdict was not really in doubt. How, why, does someone from a farm in Kingsburg end up machine-gunned on Sugar Loaf Hill? Why did my cousin, Holt, end up sleeping at Epinal with 5,000 others for the duration? We the living can say little, other than it falls to a few to save the many, and I would say that the face of Islamic fascism and Baathism is the same as Hitler, Tojo, Stalin, Mao, and Ho Chi Minh, and all the autocrats and killers which have been stopped by Americans this century. It is our duty to remember their sacrifices. In bleak moods, I often go to Wal-Mart, witness the frenzy, and say to myself did all those B-17 crews burn up for this chaos? But in fact they did— and a good thing too that people can shop in peace and without coercion. So yes, we owe everything to our soldiers. In a world of Michael Moore who represents both the ignorance and the popular pathology of the times, it is easy to find cheap answers to such inexplicable questions, but in fact every one who died in Iraq did so for the same cause that we saw in WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam—a desire to ensure freedom of the individual abroad so that the war is not brought to our own shores.

We will survive only under one culture, no matter how many races. The worry is instead many cultures, not many races. The Balkans, Rwanda, and Iraq show us just how pernicious  multiculturalism is, that failed concept that says ‘I won’t surrender my essence to the common good, but at heart remain a tribalist with first loyalties not to ideas and shared values, but to color, birthplace, and religion.’

Re: Michael Moore. Go back and look at Triumph of Will. He is the same sort of propagandist who snips and cuts, distorts and fudges for a “higher cause.” After 9-11 when he said there were mostly non-Bush voters in the WTC, when he recently said the killers in Iraq were Minutemen, when he said to the Germans that Americans were stupid, when he said we deserved our losses in Iraq, and so on—I mean when in contemporary pop culture have we seen such an odious figure? He combines the worst traits of an Oliver Stone, Noam Chomsky, Howard Stern, and Gore Vidal—and all wrapped up in one. His sad appearance, buffoonery, and childlike ignorance naturally draw on our sympathy, but he in fact uses that pity as well to earn a pass from censure. So yes, we have not seen anything quite like him in a while.

What now in the war on terrorism? Should we turn our attention toward the Bekaa Valley and Syria, or to focus on Teheran, which is clearly the vatican of Islamo-fascism?

Hanson: Well, all three must be dealt with at some point, albeit with differing strategies that reflect our own temper and aims. I am convinced that Iran wishes to do as North Korea and become a regional power by virtue of its unpredictable and mad suicidal threats to nuke infidels—leaving others to wonder whether those threats were PR or serious as it blackmails what it wants from Europeans and its neighbors.  I fear that it is not really wise to wait and be sober in dealing with the mullahs, since it will be ultimately calamitous when they get nukes, which they most surely will.

Most see us in a pause, or that the war has gone cold. While we have had successes, I think the next wave will crash soon, and we will be at it again. One cannot read daily of gassers, bombers, and killers arrested hourly worldwide and not imagine that some will not get through. And when they do, there will be a few bold and honest folk who will say, “Who trained them? Who gave them sanctuary? Who wanted them to succeed? Who sent them money” And the answers to all that will inevitably be Iran, Syria, elements in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

Near the end of "Fantasyland,” you wrote "Let us face it: the Left in this country has gone absolutely crazy. " Jefferson wrote that judges are "the miners and sappers of our liberty." I once thought that remark was hyperbolic, but now realize that it was prescient. I wonder whether admirable societies of the past, which came to ruin, were brought low by the same harpies.

Hanson: Many. Read the Satyricon and contemplate the sick sarcasm of an Encolpius or Eumolpus. Hellenistic romance novels have the same effect. I often wonder what Demosthenes felt like when he was slurred by Athenian grandees who said he was crazy to think Philip wanted all of Greece, or a poor Truman and Reagan who were caricatured by the campus Left. There is a real illness in this country, a mood of a cynical, smug, ‘gottcha’ that is characteristic of an overeducated but ill-informed and ignorant class. Reading the NY Times or listening to NPR is to tap into this shrill bunch who delight in seeing American frailties, without ever appreciating just how far we have come in comparison to what goes on outside our borders, where of course none of these elite critics would chose to live.

The new-new left seems to derive its animus from a spiritual emptiness brought about by the material success of Western culture. Haven't we seen all of this before? Isn't Gibbon's observation about Christianity filling the spiritual vacuum of a materially successful Rome an appropriate analogy to what is happening today? 

Hanson: Yes, in the sense that Western secularism—by its successful protection of the individual and promotion of free markets and expression—often leads to a degree of leisure and affluence that many simply cannot handle and need guidance beyond mere logic and reason. The Roman elite of the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries A.D. were not unlike our own—in an empty way equating material success with transcendence. So Christianity filled a great void, though Gibbon saw it as mostly pernicious in its erosion of civic militarism, embrace of pacifism, and the corruption of the church.

Can you identify the collaborative forces behind the demonization of Israel and their historical origins?

Hanson: I wish I could, really I do. I wake up some mornings and think I am on another planet. A democracy—liberal society, with a free press, tolerance of religions, equality for women, the entire promise of the Enlightenment— is besieged by the 7^th century. And? Europeans give money to Hamas. Our campuses call the grandchildren of the Holocaust Nazis.

Israel is the barometer of our times. I welcome disagreement and like challenges, but when I meet people today who hate Bush with a pathological venom or launch into an anti-Israel fit, I just turn off and stop it right there. Israel’s problem is its success and confidence; to the Western cowardly mind that inhabits lounges and coffeehouses, it is chic to trash it at a safe distance. Call in Israel counter-terrorism experts when your nation needs security advice, but otherwise slur the Jews. So yes, in hating Israel we are back to the old “the Jews did it”—augmented by crass concern for oil, fear of terrorism, and Islamic demography. Europe is usually where it all starts, this class-bound, aristocratic society that we always must watch when the latest utopia—Napoleon, Marx, Hitler—is proposed.

Where did you and how did you learn to write?

Hanson: Still learning. I paid a lot of attention to Cicero, especially Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Longinus, and others in their remarks about style, particularly areas we now ignore—like cadence, variation in vocabulary, repetition, and alliteration. At about 22, I discovered that all those apparently boring classes in Greek and Latin composition in grad school had relevance for English as well—and what sometimes worked when trying to copy Demosthenes or Caesar in classical languages might also be possible in English as well. Or so I thought.

Emulation is not bad, especially when models are masters like Thucydides or Tacitus. Why classicists of all people would adopt the jargon and obfuscation of corrupt French postmodernism is beyond me, given their training and exposure to the Greats; yet about half the books written in classics by academics now are unreadable.  In contrast, the old school of academics could really compose—a Moses Finley, Bernard Knox, or Russell Meiggs. The greatest prose stylist in my field was a rather obscure genius, Eugene Vanderpool, whose journal articles on Attic topography were almost perfectly composed.

My late Ph.D. thesis advisor, Michael Jameson, who sadly just passed away this past week, wrote English prose that was sometimes stunning in its clarity, though rarely acknowledged as such given his unheralded area of ancient slavery and agrarianism. I always tried to read all that he wrote, not just for the content or method of argumentation, but also for his cadence, vocabulary, antitheses, and imagery. He was a master stylist, though I rarely heard many admit such, given the academic world's rare interest in prose per se.

So I tried to notice the rare stylist in academic prose when in my 20s. Even when someone like Peter Green has attacked things I wrote, I appreciated his Asiatic style and the verve of his often savage prose and invective, a real polemicist at the bema so to speak, who at least mastered classical tropes and showed a conscious effort to write well and entertain as well as inform his readers. I was just reading his 30-year old work on the Sicilian expedition, and there are some great purple passages in it. The younger bunch of critics who write for the so-called “wider audience” simply cannot write, and their gobbly-gook explains why so many now turn off the ancient world—and why free-lancers and journalists, not academics, now inform the public of the classical world.

If we consider your ideas on the success of western armies in battle, how then did the Soviet Union, that giant anti-western force, defeated the German army in the Second World War.

Hanson: Well, start with nearly a third of a million GMC trucks. Millions of tons of food, oil, and assorted raw materials were shipped in from the UK and USA. Then remember all through the 1920s Russian and Germans collaborated on military weaponry. The T-34 tank had American-designed components in it. Long before the 1950s Soviet were stealing, and improving upon, US and UK designs. Finally, recall also that 18^th century Russia was quasi-Western and modeled much of its industry and technology on the West. Marxism is Western to the core, so I think your anti-western rubric is a little off.

Russian science is rooted in the West, as is its language, religion, and much of its cultural history, especially on its European borders. Remember also that Hitler’s meddling may have doomed an invasion that his generals otherwise might have pulled off; and the much heralded drive from Moscow to Berlin by the Russians took four years, although the Anglo-Americans traveled about the same distance from a Normandy beachhead to the heart of Germany in one year—while fighting the Japanese at the same time, conducting an air, naval, and supply campaign against the Germans often on three other fronts, and supplying the Russians with material. The Russian soldier paid a terrible price to stop the Nazis, but the American and British militaries operated in multifaceted ways unthinkable by the Russians.

Regarding your recent column, "Let Europe Be Europe," which countries ARE our allies, if not the Europeans?

Hanson: Well, surely the United Kingdom and Australia. If one looks at the history of the 20^th century, those two are worth a dozen continental countries at a time of crisis. Japan and Taiwan. Perhaps at times South Korea. Eastern Europe is in our camp; so is Italy, and places like Denmark and Holland have responsible governments. We are really talking about Germany, France, Belgium, Sweden, Turkey, and a few others as former allies, soon-to-be former friends, and now de facto neutrals.

Do you know or have a guess as to the kill ratio in Iraq? (Americans to insurgents)

Hanson: I do not. Rumors of some 3,000-5,000 insurgents killed in Najef and Fallujah might put it as high as 100-1 in those limited theaters. Historically wars are not necessarily won by kill ratios, inasmuch as such statistics are interpreted different ways. At Tet, it was at least 50-1 in favor of the Americans, yet that military victory was considered a loss for a variety of political reasons.

I am curious to know if you have read Thomas P.M. Barnett’s “The Pentagon’s New Map” and, if so, what you think of his theories?

Hanson: Sorry, I have not gotten to it yet.

I would be interested in your comments on the persistence of a division of opinion and approach between Europe and America. I have read that John Adams, then ambassador to France, negotiated a treaty with the Bey of Algiers, which one could characterize as protection money and Thomas Jefferson attempted to organize the Europeans to suppress the Barbary Pirates. America, at the beginning, showed a significantly different attitude to tribute and bribery than the then jaded Europeans. I am bemused by Kerry's contention that he can paper over such a long running dispute with his immense personal charm and wit.

Hanson: I wrote a controversial article in Commentary Magazine two years ago, “Goodbye, Europe.” Nothing since has changed my mind.

Re: the Barbary Pirates. Well, in the beginning our ancestors tried some bribery with the Bey, but finally got disgusted and built a flee t instead. We should remember that.

My favorite historical point of reference is the French attitude toward the Christian resistance at Lepanto, or, better yet, de Gaulle’s landing on the blood-soaked beaches of Normandy and then immediately seeking to find a back channel with the Soviets to triangulate with his liberators. Kerry should read Bradley’s or Patton’s memoirs about dealing with allies.

Kerry cannot do much with the Europeans, and I fear his efforts will be seen as obsequious and counter-productive. A better tact would be to smile, pledge undying support, praise the French—and then do very little in common, and draw down troop levels in Europe, quietly withdraw peace-keepers from the Balkans, and don’t pick up the phone when the French call asking for stealthy aid, transport, lift capacity—anything. So the rule? Much quieter, with a much bigger stick.

Why has no one in the government or the conservative press proposed a scenario that solves the terrorist problem in any conceivable time frame? The temptation to believe that the GOP wants the terror/jihadist issue to remain foremost because it's good for their candidates is strong, though one hates to believe Americans could be so Machiavellian.

Hanson: They have a plan actually: root out terrorists at home; drain their swamps abroad like Afghanistan and Iraq; strong-arm fence-sitters like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and Egypt through bribes and veiled threats; and then galvanize the West against Iran and Syria, promising them an eventual show-down unless they change. Fifty million are now liberated from the Taliban and Saddam, and there has been no 9/11-like attack, so they are doing something right. Again, the problem will not be resolved until Syria, Lebanon, and Iran insist that terrorists leave to avoid bringing the ire of the United States down upon them. I think had Gore won, we would not have had the Patriot Act; Afghanistan would still be under the Taliban; Pakistan would be pro-terrorist; Saddam would be harboring terrorists; Libya would be on the WMD path; and Saudi Arabia would be still bribing and abetting al Qaeda—and the Europeans would be whining about the lack of American leadership and the necessity of America going it alone sometimes.

The subject of military contractors and their apparent expansion during the past quarter century and especially the last three years has been a hot topic. As a classics expert, could you comment on this growing reliance on such corporations as MPRI, DynCorp, Blackwater, Krull, among them, and what this bodes for U.S. military operations in the future?

Hanson: I worry about it, inasmuch as civic militarism is the basis of Western success. That does not mean necessarily a draft, but rather combatants who are subject to rights and responsibilities that reflect the values of the society at large. The problems with an overreliance on civilians are that they can become freelancers, and can have loyalties to profit first, our national interest second. So while I am not paranoid over their use, the increasing percentages of outsourced military tasks is disturbing to say the least. I do think we need 2-3 more divisions, more air wings, and more Special Forces—and most of all a great deal of redeployment out of Europe, Japan, Okinawa, and even South Korea to utilize what we have overseas more effectively and to end this terrible syndrome of dependency/resentment/immaturity on the part of our so-called allies.

Lately I have been reading about the adverse affect that musicians have been making on the election. Put frankly, they have been trying to throw Bush out of office. Do you think that this could change the outcome of the election?

Hanson: No, I don’t. But I’ve been really disappointed because as a farmer who saw lots of the underbelly of America, I always appreciated the down-and-out, populist take of a Bruce Springsteen in his “Nebraska” album or a John Fogerty in “Bad Moon Rising” or “Stuck in Lodi.” There is something uniquely American in the folk, working-class lyricism of Creedence or Springsteen, that sometimes is true too of Neil Young, Bob Seeger, and Bruce Hornsby. But when I see what Springsteen or Linda Rondstadt is doing, I sigh, shrug, and accept they are part of the half-educated Hollywood groupspeak, where millions of dollars and celebrity status are supposed to privilege your art to the level of political acumen. Nothing Springsteen has ever said suggests that he is widely read or informed on foreign policy. He is a creative artist and should reread Plato to remember the difference between inspiration and erudition. Every time any of these actors or entertainers – with the exception of Dennis Miller who reads a lot and has a fine mind – pontificates, it is as embarrassing as Barbra Streisand’s fax machine.

What is the real story behind Amiri Baraka's claim that various countries knew about 9/11 and warned Bush about it?

Hanson: Do you believe anything that fellow has written? Almost everything he has done from his days as Leroi Jones is tainted with flagrant racism and anti-Semitism that would have gotten anyone else ostracized, not praised. At best, such a vague claim is like saying in 1944 that in retrospect someone warned Roosevelt that Hitler was big trouble or admonished that the Japanese might attack the Seventh Fleet. True, but so what?

What is news is that the Right is no longer the ideology of conspiracy; it is the Left who spins tales about “them.” Next I expect him to suggest that our drinking water is contaminated with strange chemicals on government spec. Michael Moore, for example, has simply combined the art of McCarthy with the style of the John Birch Society and become a national slanderer who represents everything the Democratic Party used to abhor.

Are there any books that you especially recommend as overviews of WWI or WWII?

Hanson: John Keegan wrote well on both. Churchill is still good. Always start with Martin Gilbert. Gerhard Weinberg is brilliant on WWII.  The bibliography is enormous. Carlo d’Este and Williamson Murray both have good books on WWII.

Might we want troops in Europe fifty years from now when it is a nuclear-armed outpost of Turkey?

Hanson: I had not approached the subject in those apocalyptic terms. If you are right, it is pretty bleak and suggests we are back to Lepanto I suppose.

You once wrote that "A quarter of Americans now see France as an enemy _ not an ally or even a neutral _ and the number is growing." Could you cite a reference for this?

Hanson: Last May a CBS poll reported 31% of Americans saw France as an enemy; those figures are corroborated by a number of others.

Looking to expose my young sons to Ancient History as a result. Do you know of any good literature on ancient Greece/Rome for elementary school children?

Hanson: Yes, there is an entire series of great children’s books written by Don Nardo, who has emerged as the premier practitioner of that important craft.

Do you have advice for the novice who has decided to study the classics. Besides the primary works, which secondary writers would you recommend that represent the best of traditional scholarship?

Hanson: For general knowledge and accessibility to the public, start with a Bernard Knox, Peter Brown, Donald Kagan, or Paul Cartledge. As for stylists who write engaged prose a Peter Green is a good read. Some historians who can distill esoteric knowledge in imaginative and creative ways are Robin Lane Fox and Barry Strauss. If you wish to read surveys, start with the Cambridge Ancient History, and anything by the late Russell Meiggs or G.E.M. de Ste. Croix. One Marxist materialist, wrong as he may be, is always worth a dozen postmodernists, who know very few primary sources and have even less common sense. In an earlier incarnation I used to find the work of Peter Garnsey, Anthony Snodgrass, Robin Osborne, and Robert Sallares very, very good. Good luck!

Do you think that Saudi Arabia is progressing towards a civil war, because there appears to be much dissension and fractionalization within the Saudi Kingdom.

Hanson: Something like strife I suppose is beginning. It is almost as if at the eleventh hour, the Saudis, to save their skins, said, ‘All you foreigners go home for a while. We will eradicate all those whom we once bribed and subsidized. And then come back when they are gone.’ I have the suspicion that a lot more killing is going on in the kingdom than is being let on.

I am involved in a vigorous debate with a friend of mine over the decision to disband the Iraqi army after the three-week war last year. Could the army have been used, under new leadership, for domestic policing, etc. to keep order? Do you think this might have kept Najaf or Falluja from happening?