Current Affairs and Classics

I read the essay "The War for the West" at your website.  It would seem to me that this struggle is exactly the same as described in pages 1-3 of the Introduction to Strauss' Natural Right and History.  Do you see it that way?

Hanson: In some sense yes. Strauss was concerned about the ability of the West to persevere against those who did not share its success. But in several books I have worried about the combination of affluence, leisure, suburbanization, and the rise of therapeutic education that can create citizens that seek harmony and consensus at the expense of ideals and principles.

Given the radicalism of the leaders in Iran and their desire to squash Israel, do you think that the United States give Israel carte blanche to go in and bomb the reactors before Iran goes 100% nuclear?

Hanson: Given Iran’s public statements and the fact its natural gas burn-off alone would fuel several power plants, Iran’s nuclear program can only exist to provide weapons, and those nukes will only be to blackmail states in the oil-rich gulf and force the United States to withdraw from the area. Israel is a sovereign state with its own concerns and would not sit still while an Islamic lunocracy prepares weapons to destroy it; we would have to warn the Iranians that acquisition of weapons is paramount to an attack by Israel that we would not prohibit.

In light of the latest developments in Fallujah and the Shi'i South, do you still think that we're basically on the right track in our Iraqi War Plan?

Hanson: Long-term, yes. Short-term our stand-downs were terrible errors that cost us several weeks. Whether we like it or not, Fallujah will have to be cleaned out, whether now or later. And I’d prefer now when our troops are on the move, the enemy is shaken, and we have a few weeks before the transfer. I fear Fallujah was a terrible, terrible mistake. (These thoughts were recorded in early May)

Do you attribute the defeat of the Spartans at Leuctra more to the unorthodox leadership of Epaminondas, i.e. deep columns on the left of his formations? Or was it the final straw for a Spartan culture already in decline from its own inability to adapt in general and manage the resources acquired from conflict in the prior decades?

Hanson: I wrote about that at length in an old article in 1988 in Classical Antiquity and again in the Soul of Battle. Of course, both factors played a role at Leuctra. But the definitive appraisal of Epaminondas has not been written—the most remarkable man of action the ancient world produced.

Do you see any similarity between Hector's tactics in the Iliad and Robert E. Lee's tactics at Gettysburg?

Hanson: Never thought that way, since the Iliad seems almost non-tactical to me. I wrote about the nature of its war in a book called Hoplites. Homeric warfare has an immense biography; start with Pritchett and van Wees, and the brilliant work (in German) of Latacz, whose influence I think I saw a little in the battle scenes of the (really bad) Troy, the movie. Someone advised them that there were in fact massed battles in Homer, but otherwise they ignored a great human story and fabricated a very bad one.

Just curious how FDR's Secretary of War during WWII, Henry Stimson, would fare against Donald Rumsfeld for excesses committed by the military during their tenure.  Would the FDR-idolizing liberals revise their view of FDR should Stimson prove to have allowed worse abuses?

Hanson: Rumsfeld is quite simply the best Secretary of Defense we have had and we will sorely miss him when he leaves, which I hope will be in 5 years. Stimson lacked both the intellectual power and  sense of Rumsfeld—and Stimson was a good man. As for your question—it wasn’t close; Stimson would have been fired on day 30 of the war in today’s climate.

Were there major wars where combatants gave up advantage in order to be more humane or follow perceived rules?

Hanson: Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War I, the Bosnian and Serbian bombings, Mogadishu. And we will see more, a crux that will present our planners with a host of trade-offs and philosophical issues about what constitutes real morality in war. Not shooting the first 500 looters was seen as lenient, but they ruined $13 billion of infrastructure, and created a climate of lawlessness with us today in Iraq.

Will the US be unable to control events in Iraq after the transfer of power and will the society dissolve into a massive internal conflict.

Hanson: Again, the United States with its vast power certainly has the ability to do pretty much what it wishes; the key will be how well the administration is able to galvanize American public opinion to continue to sacrifice blood and treasure for a worthwhile goal that is essential to our long-term security—but is caricatured hourly here and abroad.

At what point are the ethical problems up and down the chain of command going to compromise the battle for hearts and minds in Iraq and elsewhere?

Hanson: I’m not sure what you refer to by ethical problems. I have seen no ethical lapses(but plenty of pragmatic ones) in the conduct of the war other than the prisoner abuses, whose chain of culpability is still mostly unknown.

Rather than over generalize, I would like to restrict my question to one work -- Xenophon's Hiero, which formed the basis of Leo Strauss' “On Tyranny” -- and the extensive correspondence with Kojeve and a letter from Eric Voegelin.  Given Xenophon's military pedigree and the simpler nature of his dialogues, I am curious as to what your opinion is of the reading that Strauss gave it.

I was impressed. Who reads, after all, the Hiero anymore? Strauss is much misunderstood, perhaps because his writing is so opaque and hard to digest. He also translated, I think, the Oeconomicus. His daughter is a prominent and fine classicist as well. So much has been written about Strauss lately in connection with so-called neo-conservatism, that it is impossible to say anything without caricature. Peter Berkowitz’s essays have been the best I think. I know Strauss primarily for what he wrote on Thucydides, and don’t quite know why he has gained this sinister reputation.

Do you and Donald Kagan differ in your views of what happened and why at Arginusae?

I am writing now on Arginusae for a book on the Peloponnesian War, and wrote a dictionary entry on it for the new Cambridge classical dictionary soon to appear. I don’t think we disagree at all. The trials robbed the Athenians of an entire cadre of irreplaceable generals and their loss was later felt at Aegospotami with disastrous results.  I might take a harder view of Theramenes and a more positive view of Alcibiades’ talents, but the rare  value of Kagan’s narratives is that he is pragmatic and full of good sense, and so most often right in all the important assessments.

Since the US largely funds the UN, which seems to represent little if any of our beliefs, perhaps abandoning the system is better, forming instead a UN exclusively of democracies.

Hanson: Or just requiring the General Assembly members to have approved consensual governments? Let the rest form their own shadow UN and leave the one we founded. Criminal states took it over and they should now leave town and form a United Thugocracies. Where is Gary Cooper when we need him?

Where can I learn more about Arab countries and their own treatment of Palestinians?

Hanson: There is a vast literature on the subject, albeit one highly politicized. Cleansing Kuwait of Palestinians in 1991 is not called “ethnic cleansing” but known as “deportation” or “population repatriation.” Good luck.

Many modern historians consider classical periods to be inappropriate models for today's US government and believe that we should instead learn about the balance-of-power politics, concessions, and constraints followed by European nation-states between 1648 and 1915. What is your response to these historians and why does classics often provide more insights for the modern world?

I think the value of classical political analogies is that they go to the heart of human nature and emphasize emotion, self-interest, and natural affinities rather than institutions and doctrine. Let me explain: in the empirical observations of a Thucydides, Aristotle, or Polybius we understand why property owners are opposed to the propertyless, the faults and pathologies of both narrow oligarchs and unrestrained democrats, the difference between natural and earned privilege, and the power of rhetoric in an assembly. In other words, all our current problems of consensual government are delineated in classical political landscapes. It is true that the mechanics of republican government were learned as much from latter consensual regimes as from the Greeks, but the natural tendencies of democrats, aristocrats, and oligarchs—and how to deal with them—are first and best seen at Athens and Rome, and that is precisely why the Founding Fathers paid such attention to what went both right and wrong in classical societies. The volatility of the current polls over Mr. Bush’s Iraq policy could come right out of Book II of Thucydides in the mob’s hate/love relationship with Pericles as he went from the prewar bluster, to the Funeral Oration, to the first Spartan invasions, to the plagues, and onto censure and fine.

Do you think that Jonathan Pollard should be released in the near future?

I think the US should make a systematic review of all Americans who have passed top secret documents to foreign countries, collate the sentences meted out, and the actual time served, and then treat Pollard no better or worse than we have done to others in similar circumstances. And at present I don’t know what such a survey would produce, much less whether he has been singled out for exceptional treatment. I understand there are gray areas between allies, as there was with the British in World War II; but it is in the interest of Israel as well to be able to say that it has no systematic plans to gather inside knowledge of US policy and seeks not to fathom our intentions through illegal activity. It has enough strong allies in the United States without relying on clandestine and illegal conduits. So as an American I am upset that another American would knowingly pass secrets to any foreign power, even one as friendly as the Israelis. Again, I am talking about the principle of the matter rather than the exact nature of the information passed, whose value and importance I have no real idea about.

When is the USA going to hold Egypt accountable for its part in the 'arms smuggling tunnels' going from the Sinai into Gaza"?

Hanson: When we ask them to stop the repugnant anti-Americanism in their state-sanctioned papers, to cease their creepy anti-Semitism, announce that a quarter-century of a-billion-dollar-a-year bribe money is enough already—and generally accept that we are in a war against Middle East fascism and fundamentalism in which Egypt today occupies the same position as did Franco’s Spain in 1941. I confess I am nauseated by the sanctimonious lectures of a Jordanian King and an Egyptian autocrat on matters of freedom and the rule of law—especially when they are both on the dole. The poverty of our current Middle East policy is nowhere better seen than in the protected status given these two governments on the grounds that they are moderate and pro-US simply because they are not as bad as Syria or Iran.

Why do the Canadian government and people unhesitatingly criticize American involvement in international affairs and avoid inclusion with the U.S. like the plague?

Hanson: They do because they can and there are no consequences. When Americans feel secure in their own culture and believe in right as they see right, they will demand intellectual honesty and maturity from such opportunistic elite critics—and bite back. Nothing has emboldened Canadian and European censors more than the sense that American elites will always trump their own easy invective when abroad. The Cannes film festival’s hysterical applause for Michael Moore should be taped and played in every high school—the smug, in-the-know, chic Euro chortling over the buffoonish idiotic American who fawns for more faux-praise. It was right out of a Henry James novel: something like—“Eh, Monsieur, we are amused by your Neanderthal antics and how you spew disgust for your no-good country.”

Is there any potential of US allies with the wherewithal to truly help us in Iraq?  Are we alone capable of working our way out of the dilemmas we face there?

Hanson: No to the first; Yes to the second. If we win, we will have allies coming out of our ears; if we don’t, we won’t have a friend who will say a kind word on our behalf.

In “Carnage and Culture,” you describe a policy of utter destruction of the enemy. We (Americans) seemed to have taken a different course after WWII. What happened?

Hanson: Nuclear deterrence for one in the shadows of Russia and China. Differing ideas about the nature of war in a globalized, televised world for another. And we fight wars for security more than abject survival, in the sense that Visigoths are not pouring over our borders. Yet another 9-11 or several might wake Americans up in a way Pearl Harbor did. We shall see. All bets are off if the Chicago Tower or the Golden Gate Bridge were to go down. Your concerns are my own, and I worry daily about our dilemma.

Would the election of Kerry embolden and enthuse terrorists even more than the results in Madrid a month ago?

Hanson: Enthuse is the wrong word. Let us just say that rightly or wrongly our enemies would interpret his victory as a repudiation of Bush’s tough policy. For those who find Bush at times wobbly in Fallujah or Najef, remember the alternative. After the primary it was clear that the Democratic party for some crazy reason concluded that good news from Iraq was bad news for it. Ask yourself whether the present Democratic hierarchy would like to hear in July that WMD was found en masse, that Osama was caught, and that the transfer went smoothly?

On the Black Athena Project by Martin Bernal, what is your opinion of his distinction between an "Aryan model" of scholarship and the alternative (I apologize for not knowing the name) he offers?

Hanson: I addressed his work in Who Killed Homer? with my co-author John Heath. Mary Lefkowitz in two volumes published the definitive repudiation of Bernal.

You've made recommendations about undergraduate studies but what about specific graduate schools that you highly regard that might teach history, political science, classics, and the humanities in general without a p.c. slant?

Hanson: I think Chicago is still the most reliable; but the key is the particular department. They vary widely and depend on individuals. Yale’s ancient history program is unique—but largely because of the three-decade stellar record there of Donald Kagan. In turn, if I were to do German history, I would look to Harvard— but only if Steven Ozment were still there. Barry Strauss at Cornell makes its small ancient history program worthwhile. And so on. Hundreds of programs with great people are unnoticed, but excellent.  So one has to look at people rather than places per se— and that applies to graduate, law, and medical schools in general. How undergraduates can glean information like that I don’t know. And whether going to a place with less prestige and a superb faculty is better than enrolling in a blue-chip school with many mediocre professors is also problematic. Finally, I don’t think we learn all that much in graduate school and the quicker out, the better. At 40 one is judged by his teaching and scholarship, not the name of his PhD program—and those skills are mostly acquired on the job by reading and writing and working with students.

How did previous military leaders deal with such foes, like in the Missouri conflict during the Civil War or in other cases where the US military faced guerilla forces that disregarded the rules of combat?  What are our real obligations toward the Geneva Convention agreements, for example, when it comes to opponents who disregard all conditions of organized warfare?

Hanson: In some ways it is irrelevant, since we live in a postmodern, CNN, NPR world where all the rules have changed. We worry about the 21^st century global audience, while our foes appeal to the ghosts of the 8^th century. Still, we can win this war and abide by the Geneva Convention and will. Remember, we could have taken Fallujah and followed the Geneva Convention, but chose to back off—a terrible setback. Right now the problem is will, not the Geneva Convention.

America, Russia and Classical Greece employed slave labor in agriculture.  Why such different results?

Hanson: I wrote at length about just that topic in The Other Greeks. Remember classical slavery was not predicated on race or pseudo-ideas of racial inferiority, and slaves were mostly attached to small landowners in a family client-like relationship. Terrible, yes—but not the race-based chattel slavery of the plantation.

How do you rate Colin Powell as a general?

Is Abu Ghraib prison the work of perverted minds or merely very efficient intelligence procedures?