November 2005

Response to Readership

Did Christianity give the West a leg up? I think Christianity was simply along for the ride, and that it was the concept of citizen-soldiers and their responsibilities that led to the West’s rise.

Hanson: Perhaps, since much of what Christianity drew upon — from the liberal traditions of the city-state to the Neo-Platonist architecture of Catholic exegesis — was due to an enlightened Hellenic tradition. In Who Killed Homer?, my co-authors and I argued precisely that: what you call a “leg up” was due to the Greeks. Of course, the Sermon on the Mount, as Donald Kagan once pointed out, is a long way from the civic militarism of the Greek polis and its creed of “help your friends, hurt your enemies.” And thus it required modification into some sort of Augustinian jus in bello if the West was not to commit suicide in face of its barbarous enemies.

Did Pericles' conservative and defensive strategy at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War doom Athens from its start?

Hanson: It doomed it to a tie, which Pericles thought in the long run might lead to eventual victory, given the fact that Athens was the more dynamic power, growing in influence while a parochial Sparta was in crisis and had to preempt to stop the natural processes underway. Athens' problem was that it had no ability to deter Sparta from humiliating Athenians by crossing into their chôra and doing pretty much as it pleased, as we know from the gripping plays of Aristophanes.

Now Pericles and his followers who stuck to his strategy could say all they wanted that such rope-a-dope strategy was working, given Spartan inability to either prompt battle or ruin the agriculture of Attica, coupled with the magnificent work of the fleet in keeping the empire intact.  Still the psychological effects of an enemy at the gates, coupled with the plague, did terrible damage to the body politic of the city.

After 421 B.C. it was clear that while Athens had a good chance of not losing, it could not really win — that was left a half century later to the brilliant Epaminondas who defeated the Spartan army, created autonomous cities in the Peloponnese, freed the helots, ending the exceptionalism of Sparta for good.

Why should we care about a few high-flying administrators who feel that diversity is the engine that runs the university?

Hanson: I think you are referring to the essay I wrote for the Claremont Review — to much anguish and anger from the academic elite — about the Presidents of UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, Colorado, and Harvard. Why should we care, you ask? Let us count the ways:

1. Hypocrisy weakens the moral authority of the university at a time when it is asking the public to pay more in annual tuition increases than the rate of inflation. If university presidents pay out $50 million in blackmail money to feminists, or hire their girlfriends in specially created jobs or retain professors who preach hatred despite fraudulent credentials, or de facto call for racial quotas by calling for increased enrollments of groups that have not qualified for admission and can only be admitted by denying opportunities to those who have, then the position of the university erodes and we are all the losers.

2. The key to the competitive edge of the United States is meritocracy, since science and commerce don't much care for the ethnic profile of an inventor or captain of industry. The only hope for our continued unrivaled standard of living is for our university to inculcate a culture of race-blind merit and a curriculum that is highly rigorous and not therapeutic. The Chinese and the Indians don't much care for Chicano Studies or Feminism courses, but seek to better us in science, engineering, humanistic study, and history, the elements of a sophisticated competent citizenry. If one were to really care about minorities, then one would live among them, associate daily with them, and ensure they had the tools to compete head-on with the prep school elite, since only rigorous education can close the gap of privilege. Instead, we witness grandees who jet around talking about diversity while allowing race hustlers to teach fluff, and offering no real concrete mechanism for the underprivileged to catch up, and each day, each hour, showing no inclination to live among the so-called "other."

3. There is also a crisis in modern liberalism and university presidents tragically are symptoms of this conundrum. Progressives so often now are elitist and privileged. Are we to believe that Harvard female professors are victimized and in need of $50 million of compensatory money? How can one talk of multiculturalism when UC Santa Cruz blue-collar employees are without a raise for 3 years, while their president hires a girlfriend for nearly $200,000 a year in a newly created job, while billing tens of thousands of dollars for the couple's moving expenses? What we are witnessing is a new professional elite of college presidents whose patterns of consumption and tastes are no different from corporate CEOs whom the university so often critiques. Diversity and liberal platitudes, then, become the cover that allows one to live a life far differently in the concrete than what is professed in the abstract. And this too does its part to discredit the university at precisely the time we need it the most. I find the corporate CEO much more intellectually honest in his zeal for profit than the left-wing college president who shares the same appetites but is disingenuous about his position.

4. Imagine if we had different presidents and how they might energize the United States itself in their idealism and principles: just think of what some of our presidents under consideration might have done:

A Larry Summers could have said "Harvard believes in free speech, especially on matters controversial and integral to the university. Of course, I will not apologize for talking candidly nor will I post facto use our alumni's money to buy off a group after my scalp." Or imagine Dr. Hoffman at Colorado saying the following: "Ward Churchill might get away with praising the murderers of Americans on 9/11 and demonizing the dead; he might have gotten away with questionable academic citizenship in using the work of others; he might have gotten away without having the requisite PhD degree required at a research university such as Colorado; and he might even have gotten away with providing inaccurate information on his employment forms wrongly attesting to an authentic Native American pedigree. But he cannot get away with all of that, not at a great university like Colorado, so I am terminating him and welcome his legal challenge." A humble UC Berkeley President might be intellectually honest and so confess: "In a perfect world enrollment should roughly reflect the state's ethnic make-up, at least for a while longer until intermarriage and assimilation make the old racial rubrics superfluous. But how, with limited slots at Berkeley, we tell the Asian students that despite their superior grades and test scores we must curtail their presence to ensure more African-Americans and Hispanics, I simply don't know. It's a dilemma, since it is intellectually dishonest not to confess we are working with a zero-sum game: someone's rejection is needed for someone else's acceptance, and in a world of no good choices, now we err on the side of racially blind criteria. "

So yes, university presidents have enormous influence well beyond the campus, and can inspire rather than depress a nation.

Would explain your use of the term "right-wing" which seemed to be a reference to the "conservative" populace of Thebes? I understand the latter term as it applies to the resistance to cultural change within a community, but I'm not sure I understand the former term.  Is this a reference to something like a racist, or xenophobic, component in the Boiotian culture?  Is this a reference to a political, perhaps federalist, point of view?  Or something else entirely?

Hanson: Not at all. The Boiotians were no more racist or exclusionary than any of the other landlocked poleis. What I meant by conservative or right-wing was that for most of the sixth and early fifth century the Boiotians were aristocratically ruled by a so-called dynasteia; then for most of the post-Persian War 5th-century followed a more broad-based oligarchy — at a time when the Athenian empire was spreading democratic fervor abroad. From what we know in Athenocentric literature (cf. the favorite topoi of Athenian dramatists about the murderous and incestuous House of Oedipus), the Boiotians were violent, blinkered, and unimaginative, an exaggeration to be sure, but also partly a stereotypical take on agrarians across time and space.

By 371 B.C., however, Epaminondas and Pelopidas had turned the Boiotian confederation into something quite new, a revolutionary state intent on ending the property qualification, instituting democracy among the Boiotians, destroying the Spartan state, freeing the helots, and providing autonomy to the city-states of the Peloponnesus. I discussed the unique position of Thebes in The Other Greeks and the revolutionary movement of Epaminondas in The Soul of Battle.

Is it accurate to say that the cooperation of four nations — Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran — would take us a long way toward "eradication" of the global jihadist threat? While that cooperation is needed, the assessment of its impact seems too optimistic. Radical Islam will always be with us until there emerges within Islam something analogous to Christianity, a religion, remember, that at one time excluded and executed "heretics" and practiced zealous, sometimes brutal missionary works. Can Muslim leaders curb similar impulses in Islam? If Islamic communities can't separate jihad from their religion, do you believe there is hope of a separation of mosque and state?

Hanson: We have little problem with a Turkey or the 200 million plus Muslims in India. So just imagine: Pakistan shuts down the border with Afghanistan, hunts down Osama bin Laden and others, while Saudi Arabia ceases funding the charities and madrassas; Assad is out and a reform government in Syria stops sending terrorists into Iraq while Iran became democratic and renounces terrorism and the bomb. That would radically change the Middle East.

We must detach radical Islamicists from Islam by killing the terrorists who attack the West, defeating the insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq, and then discrediting the appeasers who live in or wish to visit the West. We are making good progress, but the day is coming for so-called moderate Muslims to pick sides and either condemn the radicals in their midst who count on either appeasement or stealthy support, or suffer guilt by their silence.

The world wishes to know from Muslims abroad and inside the West what explains their silence: is it secret admiration for radical Islamic fascism that gives them some sort of psychological glee at seeing a dominant West attacked? Do they really wish a new caliphate? Or are they simply in fear of assassination should they speak out? Buddhists did not tolerate the Bushido strain outside of Japan during World War II; in the same way Wahhabism must be likewise discredited if Islam is not going to be tarred by those fascists who speak the loudest and most threatening in its name.

Why do you say it is no accident regarding Iran becoming a nuclear threat? Is it a deliberate policy?

Yes, and it has many advantages — if the Iranians can get away with it: blackmail Arab oil producers to cut production and increase profits; supply terrorists with nuclear material and then deny the link; use the nationalist angle of whipping up sinking public confidence in the mullocracy by proclaiming a Darius-like Achaemenid, rather than Islamic, bomb; threaten Israel; get blackmail money from Europeans in missile range. And those are just the rational inducements.

There are the looney considerations as well: lose 10 million Iranians to wipe out Israel, and thus be forever rewarded in Paradise as the Islamic destroyer of the Jews. So we should all be very worried about this lose/lose situation in which doing nothing creates a nightmare and doing something means that the United States, as the world's sheriff, is trashed once more as a "preemptor" even as we have our hands full in Iraq and Afghanistan and world oil prices skyrocket. I assume China will do all it can to ensure Iranian oil stays on the market and that means opposing us in way they can to their own self-interest.

I have seen comparisons of the Paris "riots" to the American 1960's civil rights era, Rodney King, et al.  Is riot the correct term in this case, or does it mislead people into these false comparisons?  Do we want to equate the Muslim rioters to a Martin Luther or Rodney King?

Hanson: Well, if we must compare, Rodney King is the more apt referent, since both riots started over perceived police brutality, and both had no sustainable or coherent agenda. But remember that we solved most of the French-like problems between 1950-80, not all to be sure, but at least our open economy provides jobs to those who are not rejected for employment on the basis of race or religion. In France an ossified job market exists only for a privileged few. I wrote about the comparison in this week's Tribune piece that will appear on Monday, and argued we can learn a lot from the liberal French and their illiberal hypocrisy.

I had a very heated argument with a good friend, a recently retired J.A.G. Captain, regarding the Spartans.  I had read that commanders encouraged homosexual relationships because lovers would be more likely to fight fiercely to protect that lover.  My friend said this is nonsense propagated by agenda-minded academics. What has your scholarship revealed?

Hanson: You may have been thinking of the 300 paired "lovers" of the Theban Sacred Band who were famous for their prowess at a number of key battles in the fourth century, and known from Plato to Plutarch. There are also numerous references throughout classical literature to Spartan attachments among males, especially older hoplites and younger pages, as a sort of one-on-one training partnership among elite warriors of the Spartan Similars. But the key is the connotation of the frequently used terms "eromenos" ("the beloved") and the "erastes" ("the lover"); that is, while these words denote an active and passive role usually predicated on age, and have counterparts in the civilian world of homoeroticism, still it is not clear quite in the military context what such partners "did." While the pairing may have been physical (though I doubt sodomy was part of the equation), I think it is just as possible that it was often not, but more an idolized "buddy" system. The subject, even in the age of "gender studies,” remains controversial and still murky.

I've purchased and read your book--it is one of those rare histories that combines interesting but telling facts with a view that helps one navigate the history of a period at least as confusing as our own.  Now I can try Thucydides with some hope of appreciating him. Can you recommend a translation of Thucydides?

Hanson: I am not unbiased in this regard, since I wrote the introduction and a few small entries for Robert Strassler's edition (Crawley translation) of Thucydides, published as The Landmark Thucydides (The Free Press/paperback edition) that has headers and footers on each page, footnotes, sidebars, a running chronology, maps, appendices, etc. and is designed to make a difficult historian accessible to a modern audience. Strassler (a businessman) did a wonderful job and we await his edition of Herodotus next.

As Hugo Chaves continues to drift towards more autocratic socialist rule of Venezuela he has also increasingly taken political/economic shots at the U.S. in order to garner attention and gain political traction at home.  The U.S. has generally ignored Chaves thus far. In your opinion, where would Chavez "cross the line" with the U.S., gaining responses in the form of real economic sanctions?  How about military action?

Hanson: I think we are playing it smart. His unworkable policies are propped up only by astronomic oil prices. But as they decline a bit, and as his entitlements escalate, he will face the dilemma of a Peron, and turn Venezuela even with its oil into an Argentina. So we should let the pot stew and back off.

If he starts to assassinate his opponents like Castro did, confiscates U.S. property, and goes back to the old 1960s pattern of fanning Marxist guerillas, then we should consider economic sanctions. I can't see military action a la Noriega, and think it would be counterproductive.

For now Chavez is a populist icon who vents collective frustrations, but has not yet formed a sort of broad anti-American coalition, despite his oil, at the nation state level. In fact, in a strange way, he does the U.S. some good. The more juvenile he sounds, the easier it is for us to seem mature and sober.

And the free trade pacts are a gift to Latin Americans; if the U.S. chooses not to open our markets up, we can always say that we wished to, but Chavez torpedoed that. He should learn from the Chinese communists something about economics, but so far has not had to given his petrol wealth. As a general rule, U.S. military action inside Latin America is a bad idea unless it is done against fascists like Noriega who have no popular support, since the PR downside is considerable.

Could you explain your title in a recent article "Crossing the Rubicon"? Most people remember that the moment Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon with his army as the point when the Roman Republic died and the Roman Empire was born. So, a different figure of speech for a title might be more judicious so that people don't think you actually want Bush to destroy republican government in the U.S.

Hanson: The use of Caesar's crossing the Rubicon river in northern Italy ("the die is cast") is an expression now in English meaning taking belated and risky — but decisive — action to bring matters to a close. It does not imply, as some angry readers alleged, support for dictatorship by its usage; quick check of how it is employed in thousands of contexts will show more often a generic reference, not an ancient political one.

And furthermore, one can make a clear argument that by the prior creation of the extra-legal and dictatorial triumvirate, Crassus, Pompey, and Caesar had already a decade earlier destroyed the essence of republican government and that for all of Pompey's appeal to republican values, his "republican" forces were by 49 B.C. fighting for his supremacy against Caesar's — not, for all his impressive rhetoric, for a return of government power to the Senate and constitutional framework as in the past.

I read and very much enjoyed your book "The Soul of Battle". In it, General Patton was contrasted with the other allied generals for his strategy of lightning thrusts deep into German territory. However, I recently read in an article by Paul Johnson, that this was just the strategy favored by Montgomery (only more so) earlier, but vetoed by Eisenhower as too risky, given the German's brilliance at counterattack and the possibility of the advancing forces being cut off by a German pincer movement. Might it be that Patton's strategy had been in the air for some time, and that good timing aided his brilliance?

Hanson: Well, sort of and sort of not. Monty argued that given the British northern position in Normandy, and its far more direct route into the Ruhr, that the Americans on his right should do spoiling actions, while (mostly American) materiel and manpower supported his single thrust into Germany. This was unlikely, however, for a variety of reasons: Monty had no history as a thruster, but was a set-piece sort of general; British manpower reserves were nearing dangerous levels; the American public would not allow a British army to spearhead the attack when the overwhelming percentages of the dead were American, as well as the far greater numbers of men and supplies. And when Monty was given a modified chance for such a bold single thrust (Operation Market Garden) in September, typically the plan was too complicated and required audacity beyond that inculcated in his junior officers, and so the British and American heroism displayed on the way to and at Arnheim was nullified by the cautiousness of British armored columns who hesitated and delayed, resulting in the defeat.

Patton, influenced by the prewar writings of German blitzkriegers and other mavericks in the British and American army, grasped that mechanized divisions (truck transport as well as armor) when combined with close fighter support (including tank to plane radio communications) had revolutionized the old method of broad infantry advance, and made traditional worries about flank attack that usually impaired speedy progress irrelevant. The irony of Patton was that an unfortunate 3-4 minutes of his brilliant career in Sicily had precluded him from a prominent role in Normandy, and his position to the right of Hodges made even his brilliant advances less logical as the best position from which to enter Germany.

All that being said, despite the conventional wisdom that he might have been cut off had he crossed the Rhine in August, there can be a very good argument made that German defenses were in shatters in mid-August, and had 3rd army been supplied, Patton might well have caused havoc across the Rhine and ended the war by December 1944. While he might have made tactical mistakes, it's very hard to doubt his strategic vision. His tragedy is also that his bellicose rhetoric, so necessary to his success, also disguised his real humanitarianism, as a man who hated loss of life, and understood only audacity in war can end the killing quickly. He continues to be misunderstood in the manner that Sherman is as well, two great Americans who saved thousands of American lives and won reputations as amoral for their efforts.