Fists of Time

Beyond "Beyond the Bonus March"

Following Freedom from Fear, I have been digging a little deeper into Depression/New Deal history.  I thank C-SPAN for recording and streaming an excellent series of discussions at the Roosevelt Presidential Library.  The most interesting of these talks was Stephen Ortiz, who has recently written Beyond the Bonus March and the GI Bill (NYU, 2009).  Ortiz's work is not very groundbreaking but offers some interesting questions and thought exercises.  Why, Ortiz asks, is Franklin D. Roosevelt's opposition to Bonus bills not more widely recognized?

(Note: although there were a number of bills in Congress to allow World War I veterans to immediately receive service certificate payment - some of which differed in various details - I am using the term "Bonus Bill" to refer to all of them generally.)

This question has both merits and flaws.  Of course, Herbert Hoover's reaction to the popularly-supported Bonus March (and General Douglas MacArthur's excessive use of force) is still decried to this day.  Because that incident helped deliver the 1932 election to Roosevelt, it is easy to assume that FDR supported the Bonus Army's demand for early benefit payments.

That assumption, of course, would be wrong, but let us not set up a straw man.  Is anyone actually making the assumption?  Any close reading of 1930s political history should at least gloss over FDR's views in favor of balanced budgets and opposition to advanced veterans' payments.  Ortiz is most interesting when he asks, more precisely, why the big news story of 1935-36 (the debate, veto, and passage of the Adjusted Compensation Payment Act) is hardly noted in today's history.  He cites large, front-page newspaper headlines, a Madison Square Garden rally, and a joint session of Congress that was presided over by the president himself (a unique historical event).  There is clearly a disconnect between the public's interest in the Bonus issue at the time and historians' interest in the issue today.

I have shared this experience during my historical research in college.  While studying 1970s Baltimore, I browsed newspaper headlines about rallies, strikes, and lawsuits that were - and are - historically significant but not a part of the big-picture history of the era that has emerged.  There is clearly something to be said about the forgetting of major controversies over the passage of time.

Nonetheless, I have quibbles about Ortiz's question.  I think that the question of FDR's 'forgotten' Bonus Bill veto can be resolved with a simple point: the veto was easily overridden.  It was a moot point.  On top of that, it does not appear to me that FDR's opposition was really that inconsistent with his program.  Early bonus payments - like the Share the Wealth or Townsend programs FDR also opposed - were massive expenditures.  Social Security was ostensibly contributory, and Harold Ickes' budgets were tightly run.  I wonder, too, if his defeat here actually foreshadows the difficult relationship he had with Congress in the late 1930s - a relationship widely acknowledged in New Deal history.

Additionally, I object to the idea that the Bonus March was a watershed in veterans' interest group politics.  Ortiz does acknowledge that the Grand Army of the Republic set a precedent for these politics but inexplicably writes off the political centrality of Civil War veterans.  It does not just suffice to cite Blight's Race and Reunion in this regard; I must point out that Civil War pensions constituted an enormous government expenditure, entitlement program, and political interest.

In spite of all of my objections, Stephen Ortiz's work is genuinely stimulating.  The question of the Bonus Bill ties into several different topics and questions about the Depression and New Deal: Hoover's similarities and differences with FDR; the question of the balanced budget; inflationary policies; silver; FDR's conflicts with Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and, at times, congressional Democrats.  New Deal history can, at times, be an endless list of events, legislation, and programs.  The topic of veterans' benefits bisects so many issues that it is quite unique.  Without reading the book, though, I wonder if it actually runs deeper that Stephen Ortiz even acknowledges.

Learning, and Recognizing, World War II

Sometimes you read and learn about something, and you can't stop seeing it and hearing it everywhere.  You might not have recognized it before, or it didn't resonate with you, but now you understand it.  That is the way that I feel after finishing Freedom from Fear and finally reading an extensive account of the U.S. experience in World War II.  (See my previous blog post about it here.)

In Freedom from Fear, David M. Kennedy discusses the German U-Boat threat to shipping vessels in the Atlantic Ocean, which resulted in the massive loss of the SS Port Nicholson.  Last week, I read that a treasure hunter says he has evidence to prove he has recovered the wreck.  Kennedy quotes Admiral Ernest J. King, who wrote, two days after that U-Boat attack, that "the losses by submarines off our Atlantic seaboard... threaten our entire war effort."

Kennedy writes about the troops who parachuted into France ahead of the D-Day invasion.  Days after reading about that, I heard about my town's loss of Bill Bladen, 86, who was wounded after jumping out of an airplane on June 6, 1944 and later in Holland.   According to Kennedy, members of Bladen's 82nd Airborne Division, "mindful of the slaughter of their comrades descending onto the Cotentin on the night of June 5-6, jumped over Nijmegen shouting, 'Remember Ste. Mere Eglise,' and with guns blazing."  (About that age discrepancy: according to a vernacular account I've heard, Bladen lied about his age to enlist.)

And then of course there is Red Tails, the new film dramatizing the experience of the 332d Fighter Group of the USAAF.  This group was an offshoot of the 99th Pursuit Squadron, which "distinguished itself in North Africa and Italy" and caused a "sensation, in both the white and black press."

Is there a name for the phenomenon of noticing things constantly after learning about them?

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Another note about our World War II veterans and Red Tails.  After Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy panned the movie as unrealistic, 91-year-old Tuskegee Airman Henry L. Moore wrote back with an epic rebuttal: "we really could fly them that way."

Bill O'Reilly and the Lavender Scare

Politicians and political commentators seem to provide a wealth of history-blogging fodder because they always seem to simplify or distort the past.  I'm trying to avoid blogging about these sorts of things, but the latest news about Bill O'Reilly's comments about gay rights and McCarthyism have me knocking my head against the desk.

Yesterday, O'Reilly (perhaps improbably) defended Ellen DeGeneres from attacks by social conservatives who want to boycott JC Penney for signing a business agreement with DeGeneres.  (Perhaps more accurately, O'Reilly may in fact be defending JC Penney, not exactly DeGeneres herself, subtly allowing himself to emphasize business rights as much as civil rights.)  In doing so, he compares would-be boycotters to McCarthy supporters who blacklisted Communists.

What a fascinating argument.  Perhaps O'Reilly has never heard of the "Lavender Scare"?  McCarthy and the hard-line anti-communists did more than blacklist suspected Reds.  They actually engaged directly in the persecution of homosexuals, coordinating their purge from federal government employment.  Comparing the persecution of DeGeneres to McCarthyism is quite appropriate - until you, ironically, leave out the part about McCarthy's actual persecution of homosexuals.  (Let's not even get started on Roy Cohn.)

We have already heard that Bill O'Reilly is not exactly the best historian.  I don't expect him to be a great historian, but I would like our society to have an improved perspective about history and sexuality.  This doesn't just extend back to the Lavender Scare.  Social conservatives (like a headline-making one from the next neighborhood over from mine) make claims about how marriage has "always" been.

Skepticism towards cheap, passing claims about the way things have "always" been is the fruit of a good education.  We might not need a 'gay history law' like California's, but acknowledging that both family and sexuality is historically fluid is a sound start.  As the Lavender Scare demonstrates, the history of sexuality, politics, and even foreign policy can be intimately intertwined.  After we acknowledge the diversity of sexuality, and the right to love one another, maybe that holistic version of American history will be common knowledge.

While You Were Protesting SOPA...

As prominent websites blacked out to protest SOPA on January 18, the Supreme Court of the United States delivered a landmark ruling to corporate copyright owners.  As media attention remained focused on the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act, the Court handed down its opinion in Golan v. Holder.

This timing was, ironically, advantageous for the entertainment industry.  While open access advocates such as website Boing Boing passionately condemn SOPA/PIPA, little attention was paid to the ruling in Golan.  Boing Boing, for example, had several posts on Golan as it headed to oral argument, but none in the wake of its ruling.  Similarly, Lawrence Lessig's twitter feed lit up against SOPA in December and January, but did not address the 6-2 court ruling.  The same goes for UPenn Cinema Studies professor Peter Decherney, who had written an amicus brief in the case and a New York Times op-ed on Golan in October, but has not spoken out prominently about the case's outcome.

Unlike legislation that has drastically enhanced copyright protection (i.e. the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, or the Digital Millennium Copyright Act), Golan has limited scope.  It pertains only to older works whose copyright status remain murky due to age and gaps in international law.  As the Conductors Guild famously argued in its amicus brief, an unfavorable ruling would mean that "student ensemble[s] no longer can perform Prokofiev’s [1936 composition] Peter and the Wolf or Stravinsky’s [1918 composition] Soldier’s Tale, among other titles."  While technically the ruling has limited implications, it enforces a trend toward unreasonable copyright extension and has educational implications beyond those of youth music ensembles.

Anyone interested in studying history should be concerned about this ruling.  Golan further restricts the amount of modern media that may be consumed, and studied, free of charge.  Imagine if we could view a vast library of early Twentieth-Century film online, without ads.  The educational value would be immense.  Sites like the Internet Archive and Wikimedia Commons, which currently house invaluable resources to historical researchers, are now threatened because they provide unlicensed versions of retroactively copyrighted content.  Unfortunately, the majority of the Supreme Court believes that corporations and the estates of long-deceased artists are more important than scholars who might use these types of resources.

The Golan ruling and SOPA represent a double threat to web-savvy historians and internet archives.  If SOPA were to pass, a site containing unlicensed, retroactively copyrighted content could be taken offline immediately without any due process.  The federal government itself might have to shut down its own websites.  This could conceivably happen if Time complained that the Smithsonian history blog Past Imperfect used items from their photo archive without permission, or if a major film studio that produced a video for the government found out that clips made their way into the National Archives Archival Research Catalog.

A ruling in favor of copyright holders does not mean that open access advocates should be resigned to failure.  The Court's right wing often defers (rhetorically, at least) to the authority of Congress.  Should our legislators actually follow the spirit of our Constitution - which offered copyright protection for "limited times," not lifetimes - they may reverse the trend towards copyright extension and begin to limit the unreasonable amount of time that copyrighted material is locked away for the benefit of corporations.

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(Note: while the actual opinion should be available at the Supreme Court website here (.pdf), it is currently unavailable - perhaps, if I might speculate, because of hacker interference?)

Oxford History of the U.S. Completism

Every few nights at bedtime, my toddler daughter inexplicably declines my offers to read children's books; instead, she asks for "Daddy's book": the huge tome at my bedside, David M. Kennedy's Freedom From Fear.  (It seems that when she's particularly tired, Kennedy's prose sends her quickly into slumber.)  I don't mind reading this to her every few nights; after all, it brings me closer to fulfilling my quixotic goal of reading every installment of the Oxford History of the United States series.

Although I have only finished two other editions of the Oxford series (McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom and Howe's What Hath God Wrought), I deeply appreciate how these books synthesize existing scholarship and explain important events in clear prose and concise detail.  (The writing is decidedly above the pre-school level, but actually accessible to adults - the books are often marketed to a general audience.)  Achieving all of those goals requires a delicate balance, but each book in the series consciously strives to fulfill each.

Much of the history in the series is familiar to anyone who took a college seminar in U.S. history, but all of these authors go through a level of detail that is illuminating without being granular.  For example, I certainly knew about the Japanese atrocity known as the Bataan Death March but not how it fit into the U.S. armed forces' maneuvering in the Pacific during the early years of their involvement in the War. (Don't worry - I read this part alone, silently, without exposing my youngster to this depiction of human suffering.)

I have already admitted that this goal of reading every installment is quixotic - I probably have about 5,000 pages of epic history to consume, not to mention all of the other books I want to read.  My unofficial goal is to finish each by the end of 2013.  Check back periodically for further updates.

Justifying the Need for Public Domain Re-Prints

The Washington Post published a review of a new Penguin edition of Ernest Poole's novel The Harbor (1915) this weekend.  I enjoyed learning about Poole and this forgotten book.  (A portrait of early 20th-Century working-class Brooklyn, the book is described favorably compared to other social realist works of the era; Poole won the first Pulitzer Prize for his next novel.)  What I missed, however, was any discussion of the value that Penguin might have added to the book.  Because The Harbor is now in the public domain, why should E-Book users even bother buying Penguin's version?  Project Gutenberg has a public domain version available here.  (Google Books offers a version here.)

Sure, many re-printed classics include essays and forewards, but these are typically dry and unappealing to the casual reader.  What, besides a soft binding, makes Penguin's version any better than the free online version?

I, personally, am not an e-book user and would probably be inclined to read Penguin's version instead.  It is undeniable, though, that e-book demand is surging.  In this context, re-packaging a public domain text seems pointless.

The Post claims that Penguin has "rescued [The Harbor] from oblivion," but, thanks to Project Gutenberg and open access advocates had already preserved the work for posterity.

How Important is the "Original," Survey Asks

I visited the Library of Congress Manuscript Division reading room yesterday to look at some archival papers for work.  The reference librarians on duty asked me to fill out a survey.  The questions on it entertainingly illuminated archivists' and historians anxieties about digitization and authenticity.

It is impossible to interpret the survey's precise intent and design by reverse-engineering from the questions.  (To be honest, I did not read all of the long (and small) print matter on the first page of the survey.  Not because of I didn't care, but because I had to answer 100 questions while on the clock.)  However, the questions seemed to broadly gauge researchers' attachment to original documents as opposed to digital and microform copies or printed transcriptions.

Was it important for me to see the original version of this document?  Why?  Sentimental attachment?  The tactile 'feel' of the paper?  The sound it makes in your hands?  The smell?  Does this documents connect you to your ancestry?  Is it important for civic engagement?  Oversight of government? (Rate 1-7, 1 for statements with which I agreed the least, 7 the most.)

The variety of questions struck me as a bit defensive.  I wonder if, based on these questions, researchers have criticized the Library of Congress for making certain documents unavailable for use.  I'm sure it has happened, but do people really whine that they are being denied the right to "feel" the paper or "connect" with their ancestry?

If so, enough with the indignance.  Archivists must make certain exceptions and allow researchers with compelling cases to access open, original papers that have been filmed or digitized.  Copying on microfilm and through digitization is useful and necessary as a preservation, storage, and distribution measure.

The most interesting question asked what, in my opinion, was a suitable life span for the document, and what I imagined was a likely scenario for that document's destruction.  Personally, I can't imagine acquiring an archival collection and then later getting rid of it, let alone destroying it.  (I understand from my archivist friends and acquaintances that deaccessioning actually occurs rather frequently.  Surely archivists have their reasons for deaccessioning certain papers, but, as a researcher, that power strikes me as God-like.)  Maybe this question was a Solomonic test of my devotion to historical manuscripts.  I answered that I thought a suitable life span was 10,000 years.  Why?  History is - will always be - relevant.

Perhaps tellingly, the survey was on paper - to my knowledge, it is not online.

On History and Science Fiction

Two new essays compare the study of history with science fiction.

At The New Yorker, cultural and literary critic Adam Gopnik discusses the life lessons that elaborately-constructed sf and fantasy epics can teach to young adults.  Among the genres' virtues are books' ability to allow these readers to "think historically":

...the fantasy readers’ learned habit of thinking historically is an acquisition as profound in its way as the old novelistic training in thinking about life as a series of moral lessons. Becoming an adult means learning a huge body of lore as much as it means learning to know right from wrong.

This is an interesting proposition worth considering. Authors such as Tolkein and J. R. R. Martin routinely inject their books with backstories, outlining past civilizations, wars, and animal species.  This is part of 'world-building,' elaborate descriptions of fantastic people, places, and things that are not of our Earth.  Such details are illustrative in a aesthetic sense but also allow readers to consider historical questions such as cause and effect or progression over time.  Gopnik says that Tolkein's work contains "an overwhelming sense of history," detailing ancient kingdoms like Westernesse.  This fallen kingdom underscores a "constant evocation of lost or fading glory" but also marks a dimension of time, the Second Age, that far precedes the events taking place in the Lord of the Rings series.

I agree with Gopnik's contention that there is utility in "learning a huge body of lore."  I don't mean this in the sense that young adults should cram and memorize; they are already asked to do this way too much before their standardized, multiple-choice exams.  I only mean that epic fiction may demonstrate that one's place in society is in part determined by past events.  (The conflicts in which we become trapped, as Terry H. Anderson recently showed me, and Tolkein would agree, is partially determined by centuries of struggle among past empires.)  Even in a time of quick-reference Wikipedia, a close reading of the "huge body" asks the reader to posit and consider.

I am skeptical that sf/fantasy epics can be directly equated with studying actual history.  The modern study of history requires the critical reading of both information and sources.  Sf/fantasy readers, postmodern literary critics notwithstanding, are likely to eschew the latter.  In other words, Historians will question medieval accounts of the First Crusade while Tolkein fans are unlikely to question his explanations of Middle Earth military conflict.  (It is exactly for this reason that Jon Gardner's novel Grendel was successful; it questioned the authority of mythology, repositioning the monster as protagonist.)

At History News Network, former Historian of the House of Representatives Ray Smock discusses Newt Gingrich's use of both history and science fiction themes in his political rhetoric.  It is a cautionary tale.  Plenty (and perhaps too much) has been written of Gingrich and his Ph.D. degree in History (most recently by Adam Hochschild's in the New York Times), but Smock adds a new dimension to the discussion (no pun intended).  Smock portrays Gingrich as "an avid reader" of sf, especially Asimov's Foundation trilogy:

the Foundation series was an inspired version of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall set thousands of years in the future rather than the past.  Newt was more fascinated by the fictional decline of an empire of a million planets than he was the real decline of ancient Rome.

Smock notes that Gingrich discussed the Foundation series in his 1996 book To Renew America and quotes him fairly. This fascination with Gibbons and Asimov, Smock argues, motivated Gingrich to speak of America's ills as not only national decline but the very fall of mankind:

He outlined his role as a visionary leader.  His “primary mission” was to be an “advocate of civilization”—a “definer of civilization”—the “teacher of the rules of civilization”—and “leader (possibly) of the civilizing forces.”  Newt saw his mission as “universal rather than national.”

Smock does not make too much of Asimov's influence on Gingrich's rhetoric, although he parts with a cheap shot: "to confuse science fiction with reality is to remain always a child." Smock should have resisted the temptation to demean the former Speaker of the House and instead state his inferred conclusion.  The invocation of both Gibbons and Asimov are bombastic overstatements emblematic of Gingrich's rhetoric on many different issues, from President Obama's personal background to the plight of the urban poor.  Furthermore, this style of writing and speaking renders him unfit for the duties of both Historian and President of the United States.

Both of these essays, intentionally or not, address the value of studying history.  What is the value of historical inquiry, or even knowing anything about the past?  Gopnik seems to suggest that the value is cognitive because adults must process and interpret many narratives, or massive amounts of information.  Smock (perhaps inadvertently) appears to argue that history should not be applied in "lessons."  If you constantly look at the contemporary United States as a falling Rome, you will certainly lose touch with reality.

By considering the recurring idea of decline, I wonder if the recurring tropes of sf/fantasy might actually undermine young readers' ability to think historically.  The plot of the Foundation series recalls a theme that Gopnik noted during his mention of Tolkein's Westernesse: the decline of a civilization.  If young readers are constantly reading about decline and military conflict, their perception of history may in fact be distorted.  On the other hand, perhaps I am reacting too strongly.  Both Gopnik and Smock ask young readers to eventually grow up and leave fantasy behind, employing the critical tools they have honed while avoiding direct parallels to fictional scenarios.

Book Review: Railroaded

There have already been several high-profile reviews of Railroaded (I especially recommend Gary Gerstle's review in Dissent) so I will not discuss the book in detail.  I would instead like to inform casual readers about the intensity of Railroaded.  The book provides a fresh interpretation of the Gilded Age - and industrial capitalism itself - but is stuffed with details that often render it impenetrable.

Author Richard White's basic premise is that the transcontinental railroads were failures because they lost money, ignored demand, wasted government subsidies, and plundered Native American land.  This is not just a book about railroads.  The implications are massive.  White (correctly) declares that these failures demonstrate that capitalism can be irrational.  He challenges key interpretations of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, especially Wiebe's Search for Order and Chandler's Visible Hand.  White does not entirely contradict Wiebe or Chandler; he allows that railroad barons formulated a rational, orderly veneer.  Railroaded openly promises to get in the very guts of corporations and expose their hidden corruption.

Those guts can be nasty, or at least unreadable.  In just a few dozen pages, readers will become lost among the many entrepreneurs, loans, scandals, and Congressmen.  I found myself skimming these passages, catching their general outline but confused by the level of depth with which they were described.  Richard White has obviously put in many years of research but much of it could have been synthesized or simply left out.

Railroaded is not all details.  Richard White has a literary flair.  Literary references abound.  (White particularly enjoys comparing corporate executives to Melville's "Confidence Man.")  This shouldn't be too surprising, as railroad barons soon captured the public's imagination; Twain's Gilded Age and Frank Norris's Octopus were directly inspired by them.  White's literary penchant also comes across in its "mise en scenes," asides that take the perspective of a diarist or memoirist who worked for the railroads.

The personal stories redeem Railroaded.  A few anecdotes are shocking or harrowing, such as the embezzler who was caught post-mortem, after stolen dollars had already passed down to his wife and father.  A worker and a woman are killed by trains in accidents that haunt their witnesses.  White workers trick a crew of African-Americans, lock them into a car, and nearly drive it into Puget Sound.  To top it all off is a compelling account of the Pullman Strike.

As engaging as many of the vignettes are, I question their inclusion in Railroaded.  The book is simply massive, inviting obvious comparisons to the very octopus it describes.  (This reviewer tasted the cheese and fallen right into that mousetrap.)  The book may have been more manageable without as many asides and anecdotes, or its discussions of Canadian and Mexican railroads.  In fact, this international perspective undermines one of White's key themes: that the intercontinentals helped create a U.S. national identity.

The intercontinental railroads indeed helped forged an American nationalism; Railroaded shows us how dark that national identity could be.  Anti-monopolism was subverted by competing railroads, who bought off congressmen.  (White cites a government finding that the Central Pacific alone allegedly spent nearly $5 million on bribes in the 1870s.)  Labor unions were typically racist.  If there is anything close to a hero in Railroaded (and there is not), it is Charles Francis Adams, president of the Union Pacific, a reform-minded railroaded executive who hid his disgust with prevalent business practices.  Adams's self-loathing is compellingly documented. In one private letter, he slammed the industry's "vicious practices."  "The railroad system," he said, "is wallowing in the mire."

Railroaded concludes with a quote from Adams's funeral eulogy by Henry Cabot Lodge: "business success - money-getting ... comes from a rather low instinct."  It is a fitting conclusion.

Book Review: Bush's Wars

After listening to Terry Anderson's panel at the latest AHA conference via YouTube, and seeing his latest book on the New Releases shelf at the local public library, I decided to give Anderson's Bush's Wars a read.  There have been a number of well-received books on the wars in Iraq and against al Qaeda over the last ten years, from Jawbreaker to Imperial Life in the Emerald City and Bob Woodward's trilogy-plus-one of books on George W. Bush.  Anderson suggested at AHA that he would be synthesizing these works in his short history of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  I finished reading Bush's Wars wishing that I had picked up one of those other books instead.  If you read or watch U.S. or world news daily, as I have before and since 9/11, you will learn little from reading this book.

The most interesting, and obvious, feature of Bush's War is that much - about one-third - of the book describes the events that actually precede those wars.  This unconventional choice is welcome, if not effective.  I learned much about both Iraq and Afghanistan in these opening chapters.  However, the themes introduced here are absent from subsequent chapters.  Anderson enjoys establishing that Iraq is an "improbably country" and Afghanistan was the "graveyard of empires."  If his intention is to show that both Iraq and Afghanistan are historically difficult to govern and resistant to occupying forces, it may suffice to say just that.

Most egregious is Anderson's treatment of the war in Afghanistan, which hardly earns a more than a few dozen pages.  Of those pages, none of them address events occurring after the battle at Tora Bora.  I began the book hoping to learn more about the ongoing struggle between the Taliban, U.S., and Afghan forces and was completely let down.

There are one or two passages that are actually illuminating instead of obvious.  Several pages are dedicated to the rise of David Petraeus and his formulation of the counter-insurgency strategy.  Anderson - like most reasonable observers - agrees that this development was a critical turning point in the Iraq War.  The story was often overlooked in contemporary news accounts because they were overwhelmed by the Surge and its political proponents and detractors.

The real lost opportunity here is the lack of long-range analysis.  The book purports to make sense of the conflicts, but it instead feels like a series of major events.  Anderson repeatedly insists that both Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Global War on Terror were "Bush's wars."  "Thus, only six months after the invasion, by the end of summer 2003, the 'cakewalk' in Iraq... had  become an insurgency," he writes. "Next it would become Bush's War."  The book's unconventional timeline - which hinges on several chapters of background information - actually undercuts this claim.  By focusing on George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton's policies early on, the George W. Bush administration appears to have been locked into unavoidable conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bill Clinton's pseudo-war, Operation Desert Fox, and the Republican congress's declaration of a regime-change policy, clearly guided the next president towards war.  (Ongoing skirmishes in the no-fly zone, events that this book glosses over, pushed the U.S. even farther in this direction.)  Terry Anderson even suggests that George W. Bush's cabinet was preparing for a possible war with Iraq since January 2001.  If all of this is accurate, I wonder if that war might have occurred with or without the 9/11 attacks.  Although it is unclear, perhaps Anderson is suggesting that a more competent president may have still waged war against Saddam Hussein but conducted the war in a way that would have prevented an insurgency or an invasion of al Qaeda terrorists.

In his concluding chapter, Terry Anderson rightly takes George W. Bush to task for his countless failures in the prosecution of the Iraq War.  "The Bush Administration was filled with cultural bravado and ignorance," he writes, adding "there is no alternative but to rank him as the worst president in U.S. history."  Reviewing the last ten years of war policy is highly unpleasant and sobering.  For readers aged 20-25, or anyone who might not have been politically cognizant during those regrettable years, this book will be catch you up to speed.  For everyone else, reading Bush's Wars will be like reliving a nightmare.