Giving Revisionists a Bad Name

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Richard Forno <rforno () infowarrior org>
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 07:08:28 -0400
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Giving Revisionists a Bad Name


Dave, a relevant (and quite good, IMO) WashPost editorial for your info and
IP if you like.....rf





http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24687-2003Jun23.html?nav=hpto
c_eo

Giving Revisionists a Bad Name

By Alexander Keyssar
Tuesday, June 24, 2003; Page A21

Last week, in a speech to business leaders in Elizabeth, N.J., President
Bush dismissed as "revisionist historians" those critics who have begun to
question the administration's rationale for invading Iraq. His national
security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, made a similar claim a few days earlier.
They both seem to think there is something suspect or illegitimate about
revisionist history.

Yet revising prevailing interpretations of historical events is precisely
what historians do. As new evidence becomes available, or new research
methods are developed, or the passage of time shifts our perspective,
historians revise their accounts of the past and their explanations of key
trends and developments: The writing of history is a continuing, collective
effort to attain closer approximations of the truth.

Indeed, revisionist history has a proud tradition in the United States --
despite the brief and ugly effort of Holocaust deniers to label themselves
"revisionists." In the past 40 years, for example, self-consciously
revisionist historians have profoundly recast our understanding of
Reconstruction. Older, white supremacist histories that depicted that
critical era as a struggle between heroic, well-meaning white southerners
and ignorant ex-slaves, unscrupulous carpetbaggers and vengeful northern
Republicans have been debunked by masses of evidence. In their place, we
find more accurate, if even less pretty, chronicles of blacks and their
allies struggling unsuccessfully to hold on to the rights that they were
supposed to have acquired through the 14th and 15th amendments.

Similarly, historians using new data have revised our knowledge of the
history of social mobility in the United States, of the dynamics leading up
to the Spanish-American War and of the personal lives of presidents from
Thomas Jefferson to John Kennedy. The Pentagon Papers, as well as other
documents and memoirs, have contributed to revisionist histories of the war
in Vietnam. For the past 10 years, the history of the Cold War has been
rewritten thanks to the opening of Soviet archives after the collapse of the
Soviet Union.

The issue here is not that President Bush has an inadequate appreciation of
the historian's craft. (This may be true, but it matters to only a few of
us.) It is, rather, that the president and his advisers want to promulgate
an official version of history and to deride as untrustworthy any challenges
to their account. This is not unusual: Participants in historical events
always have a stake in the way the story gets told, and they are quick to
usher their versions into the spotlight.

The first histories of war and of major political conflicts are almost
always told by the winners; the first sources of information tend to be men
(and occasionally women) who hold the reins of power. But those official
histories are always flawed and incomplete, precisely because the sources
are partial and self-serving. Sooner or later, revisionist challenges
emerge, provoking debates that are uncomfortable for political leaders,
although salutary for the society those leaders are supposed to serve. That
was true 30 years ago as the nation struggled with Vietnam, and it is no
less true now.

If, in fact, there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq this winter,
and if, in fact, there were few ties between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein,
our interpretation of this most recent war and why we got into it must
inevitably be reshaped. It is far too soon to tell how this war will look to
historians in future generations, but getting as close to the truth now as
we can is a matter of no small importance -- particularly as we face the
prospect of a prolonged and costly occupation.

It is understandable that the president and his advisers are unhappy with
criticism of their conduct of the war. But revisionist histories --
multiple, competing, conflicting accounts of important events -- ought not
be treated as suspect; they are instead expressions of intellectual and
political life in a democracy. The suppression of revisionist history has
generally been a mark of dictatorships -- from Hitler to Stalin to Saddam
Hussein himself. Or have we forgotten that?

The writer is Stirling professor of history and social policy at Harvard
University's Kennedy School of Government.


------ End of Forwarded Message

-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com
To manage your subscription, go to
  http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/