- Noam Chomsky on the war in Iraq

Folks,

Here are a couple of articles that I’ve been meaning to send out for a long time now. I thought they were both really eye-opening and I give them both a four-star rating.

Sympathy for the Devil by By Hsing Lee ****

This is a really interesting article, taking a line of inquiry into our national energy agenda, from 1609 to the present! By following the money, the author ties together US policies, bin Laden, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Bush dynasty, oil business, and a lot of other things. “We must put an end to fascism once and for all, by cutting it out at its source… the Bush administration and their neo-conservative friends, the Skull and Bones, and Wall Street.”

The Historical Trajectory of Iraqi-American Relations (Word doc 74K) ****

Adapted from Josh Kane’s The Burning of a Nation

These are lecture notes from a student at UW, and lay out a fairly extensive history of Iraq and our involvements therein. Though the notes are rough and need editing, the material is eye-popping for me, as I did not know much of that history.

Long articles, but well worth the read!

OK, that’s enough for one night. I’m sure you have plenty to keep you all busy for a while.

–C

The New McCarthyism


Folks,

Here are a few
articles on the New McCarthyism that’s taking hold in our country. I’m sure,
sadly, that there will be much more on that to come.

Then there’s this warning about the Patriot Act to users of the Santa Cruz Public Library:

Ugh.


–CMSNBC
surrenders, cancels Donahue
“It’s not a coincidence that this decision
comes the same week that MSNBC announces its hired Dick Armey as a commentator
and has both Jesse Ventura and Michael Savage joining the network as hosts.
They’re scared, and they decided to take the coward’s road and slant towards the
conservative crowd that watch Fox News.”

---

Passenger’s
Anti-War Sign Gets Snippy Response
Fri March 14, 2003 07:42 AM ET WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - An airline passenger has complained to U.S. authorities that a
government baggage screener left a note in his suitcase criticizing his lack of
patriotism after finding a “No Iraq War” sign inside his bag.
Seth Goldberg,
a 41-year-old New Jersey man, said on Thursday he believes a screener with the
Transportation Security Administration slipped a note into his suitcase before a
March 2 flight out of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
“Don’t appreciate
your anti-American attitude!” was neatly hand written on the standard notice TSA
places inside all the bags that screeners open. (Via reader Mark
LaVerdiere).
* * *
#2:
With some 15,000 to 20,000 folks at the rodeo
drinking beer and having fun, things can get a little out of hand at times. It
happened when a tape of Lee Greenwood’s song Proud To Be An American was
playing. Some rodeo fans were standing and others were sitting down. Felix
Fanaselle and his buddies chose to remain seated.
“This guy behind us starts
yelling at us (because) we’re not standing up,” said Fanaselle. “He starts
cussing at us, telling us to go back to Iraq.”
The 16-year-old said the man
seated behind him started spitting at him and spilling his beer on him and his
friends.
“By the end of the song, he pulled my ear. I got up. He pushed me. I
pushed him,” said Felix. “He punched me in my face. I got him off me.”
When
the dust settled, Fanaselle had been handcuffed and released. He and John
McCambridge were cited for “mutual combat” and fighting in public. That’s a $200
fine. Fanaselle’s lawyer says you don’t have to stand for a country and western
song.

---

Oscars
blacklist stars in bid to prevent peace protest speeches 

By ANNETTE
WITHERIDGE/The Scotsman

THE backlash against prominent stars opposing any
attack on Iraq has impacted
on this year’s Oscars, with organisers drawing up
a blacklist of people who
will not be allowed a platform to air anti-war
views.

Meryl Streep, Sean Penn, Vanessa Redgrave, George Clooney, Dustin
Hoffman and
Spike Lee are among those who will not be speaking, amid fears
they could
turn the ceremony into an anti-war rally.

In a move
denounced by some as a return to McCarthyism, star presenters have
been
ordered to stick to scripts, while winners, who the producers have no
control
over, could find their acceptance speeches cut if they say anything
much more
than a brief thank you.

Officially, executives say that politics is a
turn-off for the show’s
television audience. But in the wake of a public
backlash against actors such
as Martin Sheen, from the West Wing, who have
voiced opposition to war,
producers do not want to upset advertisers who have
paid more than £50
million for adverts. In previous years, high-profile
presenters have grabbed
the spotlight to promote their political causes.
Richard Gere urged China to
end its occupation of Tibet and Susan Sarandon
and Tim Robbins appealed for
HIV-positive Haitians to be allowed into the
United States.

Sarandon and Robbins are also among those on this year’s
unofficial
blacklist, along with Ed Norton and Dennis Hopper. The only
anti-war
campaigner on the presenters’ list so far is Salma Hayek, the star
of Frida
and a best actress nominee.

Gil Cates, one of the ceremony’s
producers, wants the ceremony, which takes
place on 23 March, to celebrate
the Oscars’ 75th anniversary rather than the
anti-Bush/Blair movement. And he
admitted he thought it “inappropriate” for
stars to use their slots to
spotlight world problems.

But Tom O’Neil, an Oscar historian, said:
“Political tantrums are inevitable.
You’re dealing with a class of people who
have unchecked egos and who are
invited on talk shows to be experts on
everything from high art to pop cul
ture.”

Top of the loose-cannon
list this year is the Bowling for Columbine director,
Michael Moore, a
favourite to win the documentary feature award.

Last month, Moore thanked
the French for not supporting the proposed Iraqi
invasion while accepting an
award in Paris. And on Saturday, he used the
Writers Guild of America awards
in Los Angeles to voice his opinions of
George Bush, the US
president.

Worryingly, for the Oscar producers, Moore won loud applause
after telling
the audience: “What I see is a country that does not like
what’s going on.
Let’s all commit ourselves to Bush removal in
2004.”

If Moore does not win an Oscar, insiders claim Hollywood will be
reverting
back to the witch-hunting 1950s, when Senator Joseph McCarthy and
his cohorts
destroyed the careers of supposed Communist sympathies. The “Red
scare”
stories saw off Charlie Chaplin, who left Hollywood for Switzerland,
and a
host of other high-profile celebrities.

McCarthy-supporting
actors included the former US president, Ronald Reagan,
and the director Elia
Kazan.

(c) 2003 The
Scotsman

–CWASHINGTON — This is Bush’s
war.

That’s not a statement of contempt. In 1999, congressional
Republicans did express a certain contempt when they called the NATO bombing
campaign in Kosovo “Clinton’s war.” Meaning, it’s his war. It’s not our
war.

But to call the campaign in Iraq “Bush’s war” is a statement of
political fact. President Bush has made this war his personal cause. He has
staked his entire presidency on it.

A triumph in Iraq will be his
triumph. It will give him the political capital to do anything he wants —
dividend tax cuts, Medicare reform, anything. Bush will stand astride the world
like a colossus. Just as his father once did.

But this President Bush
understands, as his father did not, that political capital is a fungible
commodity. It has to be invested in a big agenda. The father had no interest in
big agendas. He was the “kinder, gentler” president. He lacked “the vision
thing.”

No one can say this Bush is not bold. Last fall, he did what few
presidents do in midterm elections. He took a calculated risk by making himself
the central issue in the campaign. It could have ended badly, in which case the
election would have damaged Bush’s political standing. But it didn’t. And the
president saw his stature immensely enhanced.

The 2002 campaign was a
trifling wager compared with Iraq. This is Texas political poker, the ultimate
high-stakes gamble. Bush has everything riding on it — his reelection, his
legacy, his party’s future. Not to mention the life and death of hundreds of
thousands of combatants, the future of the Middle East and America’s role in the
world.

Make no mistake about it: This President Bush is a big-agenda man.
His agenda is nothing less than remaking the world.

It is impossible to
make any political predictions without first knowing what’s going to happen in
Iraq. Nothing about Bush’s economic program. Nothing about his judicial
appointments. Not even the 2004 Democratic nomination. Well, maybe one
prediction: If Saddam Hussein is still in power next year, there is no way Bush
can get reelected, short of the Democrats nominating Al Sharpton.

It’s
Bush vs. Hussein. Only one of them can come out alive. Politically, at
least.

To claim victory, the administration will have to show proof of
two things. First, that Hussein is out of power — that he has been eliminated
or is under U.S. control. The administration’s goal is not justice. It’s regime
change. Second, there really are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

But
even if Hussein is ousted and weapons of mass destruction are unearthed, any
number of things could go wrong.

Massive war casualties. Israeli
involvement, causing the Middle East to erupt in flames. Chaos in Iraq. A
difficult and costly American occupation. Popular revolts that bring down
pro-American regimes in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan or Egypt. Terrorist
reprisals against the U.S. homeland. Guerrilla attacks on American occupation
forces. Gasoline rationing and skyrocketing energy prices. If any of those
things happens, the political consequences for Bush will be
devastating.

This war is the toughest and riskiest decision any president
has made since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Which leads to the obvious
question: Why is Bush doing it?

The necessity of war with Iraq — at
least, war now — is not obvious to most of the world. Or to many
Americans.

People outside the U.S. have reached a harsh conclusion: This
is a war for oil. Isn’t Iraq believed to have the second-largest proven oil
reserves in the world? Aren’t Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney oil men?
Doesn’t the oil industry contribute huge sums to the Republican
Party?

Steve Kretzmann of the Institute of Policy Studies in Washington
puts it this way: “If McDonald’s, the world’s largest consumer of potatoes,
announces in advance that it’s going to buy Idaho, and that the purchase has
nothing to do with potatoes, what would you think?”

The slogan of the
antiwar movement, from Austin to Australia, is “No Blood for Oil.” Last
November, a reporter asked Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, “Mr.
Secretary, what do you say to people who think this is about
oil?”

Rumsfeld gave a typically dismissive answer: “Nonsense…. It has
nothing to do with oil. Literally, nothing to do with oil.”

How can that
be? “If it were about oil, it would be the simplest problem in the world to
solve,” Jim Placke of Cambridge Energy Research Associates said. “The Iraqis
would cut a deal instantly, a deal that would be very financially
attractive.”

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz recently said,
“If the United States had wanted access to Iraqi oil, we could have dropped our
whole policy 12 years ago, lifted the sanctions and let Saddam Hussein have his
weapons of mass destruction.”

After all, there’s plenty of oil available
elsewhere in the world. More Iraqi oil production would drive down prices — and
profits. The oil industry wants stability — “a stable price in a reasonable
range,” Placke said. And what is war but the ultimate instability? Peter
Hartcher of the Australian Financial Review put it this way: “The oil industry
wants oil, but they don’t want to go through a war to get it.”

There’s a
reason why the rest of the world readily accepts the idea that this is a war for
oil: They have not heard any other convincing explanation. But the American
public dismisses the idea. By 2 to 1 in last month’s Gallup poll (65% to 33%),
Americans said oil is not a reason to take military action against
Iraq.

Have Americans heard a more convincing explanation? Yes, they have:
9/11. “September the 11th should say to the American people that we are now a
battlefield,” Bush said at his March 6 news conference. The idea is that the
United States, as a matter of its own national security, must disarm Iraq in
order to prevent another 9/11.

But is 9/11 the real reason why the Bush
administration wants war?

Recent books by Bob Woodward and David Frum
suggest that the administration had made the decision to confront Iraq long
before 9/11. The real motivation, some analysts say, is idealistic. For years,
neoconservative intellectuals like Wolfowitz and Richard N. Perle — figures of
great influence in the Bush administration — have been promoting the idea of a
new world order, based on the predominance of American power.

And the
weakening of the United Nations. “Present at the Destruction” was the boastful
cover line of a recent issue of the Weekly Standard, the nation’s leading
neoconservative publication. Meaning: Let us now celebrate the U.N.’s impending
downfall.

As Hartcher said, “This is about the neoconservative view, the
idealistic view, the Wilsonian view, that the world would be a better place if
only America can make it that way.”

It’s about remaking the world. By
force. Forget all the talk about the U.S. exercising “soft power” through wealth
and trade and cultural influence. That’s Clinton-era nonsense. Hard power is
what matters. Did you catch the test of the new MOAB weapon, nicknamed “Mother
of All Bombs”?

What if the rest of the world does not want to be remade?
Right now, U.S. power is unchecked. No country can stop us. The only leverage
other countries have against the U.S. is the United Nations. And the Bush
administration is determined to prove that the U.N. is
irrelevant.

There’s only one check on Bush’s bold agenda: the American
people. Bold agendas make Americans nervous. Because the fact is, Americans have
no ambition to dominate the world. Their ambition is simple. They just want to
feel safe.

William Schneider, a contributing editor to Opinion, is a
CNN political analyst.

Folks,

For a little change of pace, something a little less dry, I thought you
might like these January comments from Kurt Vonnegut. He certainly hasn’t
lost his edge.

–C

—–Original Message—–

Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!@

By Joel Bleifuss | 1.27.03 print | email | comment

Kurt Vonnegut | vonnegut.com

In November, Kurt Vonnegut turned 80. He published his first novel, Player
Piano, in 1952 at the age of 29.
Since then he has written 13 others, including Slaughterhouse Five, which
stands as one of the pre-eminent
anti-war novels of the 20th century.

As war against Iraq looms, I asked Vonnegut, a reader and supporter of this
magazine, to weigh in. Vonnegut is
an American socialist in the tradition of Eugene Victor Debs, a fellow
Hoosier whom he likes to quote: "As long
as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal
element, I am of it. As long as there is
a soul in prison, I am not free."

-Joel Bleifuss

You have lived through World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Reagan wars, Desert
Storm, the Balkan wars and now
this coming war in Iraq. What has changed, and what has remained the same?

One thing which has not changed is that none of us, no matter what continent
or island or ice cap, asked to be
born in the first place, and that even somebody as old as I am, which is 80,
only just got here. There were
already all these games going on when I got here. . An apt motto for any
polity anywhere, to put on its state
seal or currency or whatever, might be this quotation from the late baseball
manager Casey Stengel, who was
addressing a team of losing professional athletes: "Can’t anybody here play
this game?"

My daughter Lily, for an example close to home, who has just turned 20,
finds herself-as does George W. Bush,
himself a kid-an heir to a shockingly recent history of human slavery, to an
AIDS epidemic and to nuclear
submarines slumbering on the floors of fjords in Iceland and elsewhere,
crews prepared at a moment’s notice to
turn industrial quantities of men, women and children into radioactive soot
and bone meal by means of rockets
and H-bomb warheads. And to the choice between liberalism or conservatism
and on and on.

What is radically new in 2003 is that my daughter, along with our president
and Saddam Hussein and on and on,
has inherited technologies whose byproducts, whether in war or peace, are
rapidly destroying the whole planet
as a breathable, drinkable system for supporting life of any kind. Human
beings, past and present, have trashed
the joint.

Based on what you’ve read and seen in the media, what is not being said in
the mainstream press about President
Bush’s policies and the impending war in Iraq?

That they are nonsense.

My feeling from talking to readers and friends is that many people are
beginning to despair. Do you think that
we’ve lost reason to hope?

I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just
war, might as well have been invaded
by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has
happened, though, is that it has been
taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup
d’etat imaginable. And those now in
charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no
history or geography, plus
not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka "Christians," and plus, most
frighteningly, psychopathic personalities,
or "PPs."

To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical
diagnosis, like saying he or she has
appendicitis or athlete’s foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask
of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley.
Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their
actions may cause others, but they do not
care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!

And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom
and on and on, who have enriched
themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who
still feel as pure as the driven
snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these
heartless PPs now hold big jobs in
our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick.

What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in
government, is that they are so
decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the
simple reason that they cannot care
what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves!
Privatize the public schools! Attack
Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich!
Build a trillion-dollar missile
shield! *censored* habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss
my ass!

How have you gotten involved in the anti-war movement? And how would you
compare the movement against a war in
Iraq with the anti-war movement of the Vietnam era?

When it became obvious what a dumb and cruel and spiritually and financially
and militarily ruinous mistake our
war in Vietnam was, every artist worth a damn in this country, every serious
writer, painter, stand-up
comedian, musician, actor and actress, you name it, came out against the
thing. We formed what might be
described as a laser beam of protest, with everybody aimed in the same
direction, focused and intense. This
weapon proved to have the power of a banana-cream pie three feet in diameter
when dropped from a stepladder
five-feet high.

And so it is with anti-war protests in the present day. Then as now, TV did
not like anti-war protesters, nor
any other sort of protesters, unless they rioted. Now, as then, on account
of TV, the right of citizens to
peaceably assemble, and petition their government for a redress of
grievances, "ain’t worth a pitcher of warm
spit," as the saying goes.

As a writer and artist, have you noticed any difference between how the
cultural leaders of the past and the
cultural leaders of today view their responsibility to society?

Responsibility to which society? To Nazi Germany? To the Stalinist Soviet
Union? What about responsibility to
humanity in general? And leaders in what particular cultural activity? I
guess you mean the fine arts. I hope
you mean the fine arts. … Anybody practicing the fine art of composing
music, no matter how cynical or greedy
or scared, still can’t help serving all humanity. Music makes practically
everybody fonder of life than he or
she would be without it. Even military bands, although I am a pacifist,
always cheer me up.

But that is the power of ear candy. The creation of such a universal
confection for the eye, by means of
printed poetry or fiction or history or essays or memoirs and so on, isn’t
possible. Literature is by
definition opinionated. It is bound to provoke the arguments in many
quarters, not excluding the hometown or
even the family of the author. Any ink-on-paper author can only hope at best
to seem responsible to small
groups or like-minded people somewhere. He or she might as well have given
an interview to the editor of a
small-circulation publication.

Maybe we can talk about the responsibilities to their societies of
architects and sculptors and painters
another time. And I will say this: TV drama, although not yet classified as
fine art, has on occasion performed
marvelous services for Americans who want us to be less paranoid, to be
fairer and more merciful. M.A.S.H. and
Law and Order, to name only two shows, have been stunning masterpieces in
that regard.

That said, do you have any ideas for a really scary reality TV show?

"C students from Yale." It would stand your hair on end.

What targets would you consider fair game for a satirist today?

Assholes.

Joel Bleifuss is the editor of In These Times, where he has worked as a
investigative reporter, columnist and
editor since 1986. Bleifuss has had more stories on Project Censored’s
annual list of the "10 Most Censored
Stories" than any other journalist

<snow-list@lists.riseup.net>
Fyi. If there is typical Vonnegut, here is one (larry
ebersole).
***
> By Kurt Vonnegut
>
> In These Times
> March 6, 2003
>
> The recent Kurt Vonnegut interview (Kurt Vonnegut
> vs. !*@) has become the most popular story at
> inthesetimes.com, where the article originally
> appeared, with hundreds of readers expressing their
> opinions in the Comments section. The interview has
> also been translated and reprinted in Aftonbladet,
> Sweden’s largest daily newspaper, and La Jornada,
> Mexico’s most respected daily newspaper. In light of
> this response, Vonnegut has agreed, on an occasional
> basis, to entertain readers’ questions. If you would
> like to submit a question, write to
> vonnegut@inthesetimes.com, and the editors will pass
> along your question to him.
>
>
> Dear Mr. Vonnegut
>
> What genuinely motivates al-Qaeda to kill and
> self-destruct? The president says, "They hate our
> freedoms - our freedom of religion, our freedom of
> speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and
> disagree with each other," which surely is not what
> has been learned from the captives being held in
> Guantanamo, or what he is told in his briefings. Why
> do the communications industry and our elected
> politicians allow Bush to get away with such
> nonsense? And how can there ever be peace, and even
> trust in our leaders, if the American people aren’t
> told the truth?
> -Peter Hoyt, Little Deer Island, Maine
>
>
> Dear Mr. Hoyt,
>
>
> One wishes that those who have taken over our
> federal government, and hence the world, by means of
> a Mickey Mouse coup d’etat, and who have
> disconnected all the burglar alarms prescribed by
> the Constitution, which is to say the House and
> Senate and the Supreme Court and We the People, were
> truly Christian. But as William Shakespeare told us
> long ago, "The devil can cite Scripture for his
> purpose."
>
>
> And what remains the best-kept secret from the
> Second World War, because it is so embarrassing, is
> that Hitler was a Christian, and that his swastika
> was a Christian cross made of axes, an apt symbol of
> a political party for Christians of the working
> class. And there were simpler, unambiguous crosses
> on all Hitler’s tanks and planes.
>
>
> Again: One wishes, for the sake of the whole planet,
> that the people in and around the White House
> nowadays truly mean it when they say, "Forgive us
> our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass
> against us," and that they respect as children of
> God the losers, the nobodies so loved by Jesus in
> the Beatitudes, in His Sermon on the Mount: the poor
> in spirit, they that mourn, the meek, the merciful,
> the peace makers and so on.
>
>
> But such is obviously not the case. George W. Bush
> smirks and gloats unmercifully as he boasts of his
> readiness to loose more than a hundred cruise
> missiles, what I call "Timothy McVeighs," into the
> midst of the general population of Iraq, nearly half
> of whom are children, little boys and girls under
> the age of 15.
>
>
> His domestic policies, whose viciousness is peewee
> in comparison with what he is so eager to do to
> foreigners who don’t look like him and talk like
> him, who don’t have names like his, nonetheless
> inflict pain on those Americans of the sort
> enumerated in the Beatitudes, by depriving them of
> decent health care and educations, and of food,
> shelter and clothing when times are bad. It seems
> quite possible that his opinion of the American
> people has been formed while watching the Jerry
> Springer Show, which is Republican propaganda of the
> most pernicious kind.
>
>
> But America was certainly hated all around the world
> long before this coup d’etat. And we weren’t hated,
> as George W. Bush would have it, because of our
> liberty and justice for all. We are hated because
> our corporations have been the principal deliverers
> and imposers of new technologies and economic
> schemes that have wrecked the self-respect, the
> cultures of men, women and children in so many other
> societies.
>
>
> It’s that simple.
>
>
> What are we to do when confronted by such hatred?
> Respond to Code Red and run around like chickens
> with their heads cut off.
>
>
> Keep in touch,
> Kurt Vonnegut
>
>
> Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in
> Space
> PO Box 90083
> Gainesville, FL. 32607
> (352) 337-9274
> (352) 871-7554 (Cell Phone)
> http://space4peace.org
> globalnet@mindspringcom

=====
"Intelligent and conscientious people have doubts — express yours
through conscientious objections to militarism and war. For info.
on this topic (not direct-services!), please do visit,
www.objector.org>."

Folks,

This is a good one, definitely worth your time. An excerpt:

I think we’ve made a fatal mis-turn in our foreign policy by abandoning the doctrine of containment-plus-deterrence (which won the Cold War peacefully), and adopting as the basis of our foreign policy preventive war. Preventive war, anticipatory self-defense, was the doctrine with which the Japanese justified Pearl Harbor. FDR, an earlier American president, said that it was a date that will live in infamy. And now the Bush doctrine is a doctrine of preventive war, which makes America the self-appointed world’s judge, jury and executioner. However benign the motives, it’s bound to have a corrupting effect on our leadership. I think the whole notion of America as the world’s judge, jury and executioner is a tragically mistaken notion.

Robert Kennedy called preventive war “Pearl Harbor in reverse.” Is that what we’re seeing now?

That’s what we’re seeing now. And no wonder we look to the rest of the world as a lumbering bully. I regard this with deep gloom.

‘Pearl
Harbor in Reverse’

Arthur Schlesinger, former JFK confidant and the country’s
preeminent liberal historian, views America’s war on Iraq with “deep
gloom”

By Brian
Braiker
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE

“The bane of ideology,” wrote Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. in his 1986
book “The Cycles of American History,” “is that it exalts abstractions
over human beings. It impoverishes our sense of reality, and it
impoverishes our imagination, too.” Schlesinger knows a few things about
ideology and its role in history: In 1962 the Pulitzer Prize-winning
historian and advisor to President John F. Kennedy witnessed first-hand
the tense unfolding and peaceful resolution of the Cuban missile crisis.
Today he is witnessing “with deep gloom” what he calls a dangerous shift
in American foreign policy towards the
ideological.

THE SON OF A prominent American historian,
the bow-tied Schlesinger followed in his father’s professional steps, and even
went on to live through a good chunk of it himself. An unrepentant New Dealer,
he taught at Harvard, his alma mater, from 1946 until 1961, when he was
appointed special assistant to the president for Latin American affairs. He won
his first Pulitzer Prize for history at the age of 28 for his book “The Age of
Jackson,” and his second in 1966 for “A Thousand Days: JFK in the White House.”
He is the general editor of a new series of biographies called “The American
Presidents” (Henry Holt & Company).


NEWSWEEK’s Brian Braiker spoke with Schlesinger about Gorge W. Bush as a wartime
president.



NEWSWEEK: How would you describe Bush as a
wartime president?