CONRAD BLACK: Doing Civilization's Work
Roberts, Andrew
mament policies of the left in Britain and on the European continent. As a counter to several hundred Soviet SS-20s aimed at Western Europe, NATO...
...I wouldn't be as sure as this author is that the SecuritiesandExchangeCommissionhasbeensucha godsend to the capital markets...
...But he was probably one of the most intelligent...
...This is not to excuse all of Pinochet's actions, and the author does not, butAllende was determined by the Congress that elected him, and by the Chilean Supreme Court, to have profoundly violated the constitution, effectively legitimizingthecoupd'etat...
...All of their efforts have faltered because of the racist and theocratic hatred that the Palestinians and Muslims have against the Jews, a hatred that nothing seems to assuage...
...If it doesn't, this part of the book will be something of an embarrassment...
...Reagan,theauthorinsists,wasnoutopian dreamer: He sought not a flawless defensive shield but a prudential "mix" of missile defense and nuclear disarmament...
...In the first place, the term "colonization" is not applicable...
...In an elegant coda to his marvelous book, O'Sullivan writes that it is "a spiritual element that best explains [Reagan, Thatcher, and John Paul] and their achievements...
...Carter knows all of that, of course...
...After all, he writes, adapting what Lady Thatcher said in her eulogy of President Reagan: "We have an advantage that they neverhad:Wehavetheirexample...
...GreatBritainwasupholdingelementalfreedomsforthe (white)English-speakingpopulationofSouthAfrica...
...But Reagan pointed out that a system of agreed global defense would protect everyone against what he called "some madman...
...Mr...
...should not have put on the airsofDisraelicomingbackfromtheCongressofBerlin in1878withtalkof"peaceinourtime,"andshouldhave been cautious and not at all triumphalist on his return fromMunich.Robertshintsatsomeofthis,andpraises Churchill'soppositiontoMunich,butcannotresistgivingorthodoxyalightbutperhapsexcessivecuffing...
...The purpose of this "wall," which is really a fence over most of its course, is to safeguard the Israeli populace from the marauding murder gangs that have terrorized Israel for years and have caused hundreds of victims...
...There is an enigmatic reference to PresidentKennedy'sassassination"inmysteriouscircumstances...
...Roosevelt admitted to the United States 15 percent of the Jewish population of Germany, and all of the Austrians whose passports were canceled after Anschluss who were in or could reach the U.S...
...Stalin got nothing at Yalta that his armies had not already obtained, and Roosevelt got the desired Soviet adherence to the United Nations, which he needed to help ease the U.S...
...The famous machine-gunning of demonstrators in Amritsar in 1919 is revisited, and General Dyer is credited, persuasively by this author, with heading off a second Indian Mutiny, and pacifying the Punjab in one stroke, after plenty of notice that such demonstrations would not be tolerated...
...Its purpose is the research and publication of the facts regarding developments in the Middle East and exposing false propaganda that might harm the interests of the United States and its allies in that area of the world...
...They enable us to pursue these goals and to publish these messages in national newspapers and magazines...
...Mr...
...It seems to beimplicitthathethinksthereisareasonablechance that this American-led intervention is going to work...
...Carter knows that, of course...
...Carter knows that, of course...
...Kennedy had a public relations victory that erased the Bay of Pigs debacle, just before the midterm elections, which helped produce the defeat of Nixon running for governor in California...
...Mr...
...Franklin D. Roosevelt's extramarital sex life, Winston Churchill's references to "wops" or "wogs," Clement Attlee's light anti-Semitism, and foreign secretary George Brown's chronic drunkenness are amusingly covered...
...One of the last memorable such efforts was in the last year of President Clinton's presidency, when he met with Mr...
...outofisolation,andStalin'spromiseof Soviet intervention against Japan (before the atomic bomb had been tested, and when a million casualties were expected in invading the home islands, based on the experiences in Iwo Jima and Okinawa...
...The Israelis have almost compulsively tried, time and time again, to find a solution to this never-ending problem...
...AndrewRobertsseemstoclingtosomeaspectsof George W. Bush's fading vision of democracy in Iraq...
...They must be the result, therefore, of malevolence...
...Stillshebears theburdenofthevehementoppositionandevenhatred they aroused, especially among the liberal intelligentsia...
...Doing Civilization'sWork THIS IS A VERY STIMULATING andoriginalbookthat combines this well-established author's gift for careful research with his taste for rational contrariety and love of the comical and the obscure...
...Thus welearnearlyonthatPanama,aprovinceofColombia thatisgenerallybelievedtohavebeenunjustlyseparatedfromthatcountrybyTheodoreRoosevelt,hadbeen the site of 50 uprisings or general revolts in 50 years, "surely some kind of a record,"andthatalltheU.S.did was withhold use of a railway to transport Colombian soldiers...
...Roberts is almost certainly right that President Truman was fully justified in using the atomic bomb, though he might have tried to drop the first one in an almost unpopulated area, rather than a small city (Hiroshima).HewasalsoprobablyrightthatthebombingofDresdenwasmilitarilyjustifiable...
...Carter asserts that peace wouldhavedescendedon Israel/Palestine if the Israelis had not "colonized" Judea/Samaria (the "West Bank...
...THERE ARE A NUMBER of entertaining, almost tabloid, historical treatments...
...Watergateandtheevaporationoftheadministration's executive and moral authority enabled the Democrats,whoinitiatedAmericanparticipationinthewar, to pull the plug on Saigon and deliver all Indochina to theCommunists,includingtheunspeakablePolPotin Cambodia (for whom, as Andrew Roberts delightedly reminds us, Noam Chomsky was for a time a dutiful apologist...
...WilliamHowardTaftisstatedtobemoretalented than his 1912 presidential opponents, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson...
...But he underplays the insanity of the Anglo-French plan to incite an Israeli attack in Sinai and then pretend to be peacekeeping neutral interveners, without being at all explicittotheAmericansaboutwhattheyweregoing B O O K SI NR E V I E W 7 6 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R M A R C H 2 0 0 7 B O O K SI NR E V I E continued on page 78 What are the facts...
...He did balk at allowing all of those so-called refugees - now miraculously swollen from the original 600,000 to 5 million - to "return" to Israel...
...All three, he says, "taught and embodiedthevirtueofhope....Inverydifferentstyles,allwere enthusiasts for liberty...
...The English-speaking country (by which he really means, mainly white and mainly Englishspeaking) that is cast out like Lucifer is what is now theRepublicofIreland.Thehypocrisyandnaiveteof Eamon Devalera, in thinking he could regain Northern Ireland if Germany invaded Britain successfully, is exposed when the Wannsee Conference minutes reveal that Heidrich intended to liquidate the4,000JewsofIrelandwhilehewasaboutiteverywhere else in Europe...
...While not having returned all of those territories (the Resolution did not call for that), it has returned all of Gaza and, more important, the vast Sinai, with its strategic passes, its strategic port, its strategic expanse of a huge bufferzone, and the oil fields that Israel had developed...
...So there can't have been any "colonization...
...It was never "Palestinian" land...
...901 Arlington, VA 22209...
...He also passes rather lightly over the largely bungled military execution of it...
...The Guardian reported the funeral of Ronald Reagan under the astonishingly tasteless headline: "He Lied and Cheated in the Name of AntiCommunism...
...Arafat and with Ehud Barak, then prime minister of Israel...
...Carter knows that, of course...
...He did not in his memoirs or to the knowledge of his most respected biographers...
...ItisalsorefreshingtoseetheBoermyththoroughlyexposedasthefraudthatitis.BravefighterstheBoers certainly were, but they were also racist and primitive authoritarians, and monstrous political hypocrites...
...He is right that Saddam Hussein was in gross violation of international law after ignoring his own obligations under the truce terms at the end of the Gulf War and 17 Security Council resolutions...
...So is the extreme anti-Americanism of some,includingtheapostateHenryJames,andthedisillusionedKeynes,whocalledtheAmericansa"breedof sub dagos speaking no known language intelligently...
...Therearesomequestionableassertionsandasides...
...There is a welcome emphasis on the astounding solidarity of the Commonwealth to the British cause, as volunteers in overwhelming numbers, even though Canada and (until Pearl Harbor) Australasia were undernothreatineitherworldwar...
...As a counter to several hundred Soviet SS-20s aimed at Western Europe, NATO proposedthedeploymentofasimilarnumberofAmerican cruise and Pershing missiles...
...Robertsrightlysaysthatanti-Americanism,initsmore extreme forms, is more like "Tourette's syndrome than rational criticism...
...The establishment of the new country was accomplished(intheparlanceofthe time),withthelossofonly"oneChinamanandanass...
...Nowhere does he mention that Israel accepted the Resolution and has fully complied with it...
...Jimmy Carter, our 39th president, has just written a book in which he purports to clarify the causes of the unending Israel-Arab conflict...
...This ad has been published and paid for by Facts and Logic About the Middle East P.O...
...The entire book is shot through with falsehoods, distortions, and omissions of facts...
...And he does not mention that the Arab nations rejected Resolution 242 out of hand and instead issued their famous "three no's:" No peace, no recognition, and no negotiation with Israel...
...Yasser Arafat, the "leader" of the Palestinians for decades, was the man responsible for many murders that he had personally authorized...
...General elections were held in Britain, Holland, Belgium, and Italy in the fall of 1983, and the peaceniksweredecisivelydefeatedeverywhere...
...Carter focuses on Security Council Resolution No...
...Jews have had a presence in the area since time immemorial and certainly have at least the same rights to live there as the Arabs...
...In the sort of wellturned, recondite phrase in which Andrew Roberts excels, he quotes Keynes, "`Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences,areusuallytheslavesofsomedefuncteconomist,'" and adds, "Yet for over eight decades...
...Mr...
...Carter's malicious book...
...Chamberlainnever should have pandered to the militarily insignificant poltroon, Mussolini...
...But it was not a strategic success and was invoked by De Gaulle as a reason for aninsubordinateandobstructionistforeignpolicyas soon as he had got France clear of the Algerian War, the following year...
...They must be the result, therefore, of malevolence - against Israel and against the Jews...
...Inordertoreduce stockpiles on both sides, Reagan insisted, "missile defense would have to be available to all nuclear powers...
...Shaw, the Webbs, Lincoln Steffens, Susan Sontag,andJaneFondaarealltakenverydeservedlyto the woodshed...
...restored the spirit of America...
...Nixon intended to retain this air warfare potential from Thailand, Guam, and aircraft carriers...
...Carter makes a great to-do about the "apartheid wall that snakes through of what is left of the West Bank...
...Lesssuccessfulisapartialrevisionofthestanding of Neville Chamberlain and the policy of appeasement inthelatethirties.Chamberlaindoesdeservecreditfor quicklybuildinguptheRoyalAirForce,andBritainand France could not have gone to war to prevent the Germans in the Versailles-created Czechoslovakia from adheringtotheGermanReich.ButChamberlaincould have insisted on more gradual terms, and something less humiliating and crushing to the Czechs...
...Carter blames Israelis for their lack of effort to compose their interminable differences with the Palestinians.Butthatisan outrageous lie...
...Reagan's argument, writes O'Sullivan, foresaw scenarios like those we face today: "an Iranian bomb, a nuclear device in the hands of al Qaeda, even the risk of an accidental launch by a nuclearstate...
...FLAME is a tax-exempt, non-profit educational 501 (c)(3) organization...
...NorweretheWesterngeneralsinFranceinWorld War I as odious as is generally thought...
...He goes to the heart of the fierce debateovertheStrategicDefenseInitiativebyexplaining that Reagan regarded SDI not as one facet of the nucleardeterrentbutas"thecentralelementinaglobalsystemofnucleararmsreduction...
...Almost all of our revenue pays for our educational work, for these clarifying messages, and for related direct mail...
...It would (as intended) have meant the end of the Jewish state...
...Hafez-al-Assad, the former tyrant of Syria, was also a mass murderer, personallyresponsibleforthe killing of at least 25,000 in the Syrian city of Hama...
...Mr...
...The episode is best known today by the flagrantly partisan treatment of it in the film Gandhi: "They've had all the warning they're going to get...
...It presupposes that Judea/Samaria (the "West Bank") is Palestinian territory, which those aggressive Israeli Jews have usurped...
...and established a "new conservative dominance in American politics" based on small governmentandlowtaxes...
...They yield over $1 billion in revenues per year, which would have made Israel independent of petroleum imports for the foreseeable future...
...242, which calls for return of captured territories in exchange for peace, recognition, and secure boundaries...
...The highlights were Roosevelt and Churchill (and King and Menzies), and Reagan and Thatcher and Mulroney, but Andrew Roberts elegantly makes the case that the United States and the old Commonwealth have carried most of the freight for Western civilization for more than a hundred years, and that is something all of those nationalities should remember withpride,andastatustheyshouldlongretain.This is an excellent book.B O O K SI NR E V I E W Announcing The American Spectator's Young Journalism Training Program Promoting Excellence in Journalism by Training the Next Generation of Writers & Journalists TheYoungJournalism Training Program provides practical, hands-on journalism training for journalists byjournalists.Program emphasisincludesnews writing, investigative journalism, writing and editing for the e-news media, and developing effective writing skills...
...It was an impressive trio,butmostpeoplewouldputTaftthirdinthatgroup, andtheleastsuccessfulofthemaspresident,thoughhe wasacapablechiefjustice...
...SUEZ, THE LOWEST MOMENT in the post-1941 Anglo-Americanalliance,isveryauthoritatively treated...
...Conceding that we face very different problems todaythanthepresident,thepope,andtheprimeminister did, O'Sullivan argues there is every reason to hope that we can overcome them...
...M A R C H 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 7 5 B O O K SI NR E V I E W A History of the EnglishSpeaking Peoples Since 1900 by Andrew Roberts (HARPERCOLLINS, 736 PAGES, $35) Reviewed by Conrad Black Conrad BlackistheauthorofFranklinDelanoRoosevelt: Champion of Freedom (Public Affairs...
...The events of 1972 indicated, as Roberts points out, that Nixon had found a winning formulaforpreservinganon-CommunistSouthVietnam: The reinvigorated Saigon army defeated the NVAandVietConginMarchandApril1972(between Nixon's famous visits to China and Russia), with close air support in the South and 1,200 air strikes a day on the North...
...And the old myth that a coterie of stuffed-shirted toffs in the high command swilled fine French claret in requisitioned chateaux while the poor working-class infantry perished like flies,onlytomovetheircommanders'drinkscabinetsa hundredyardsclosertoBerlin,isconvincinglyexposed...
...Carter knows better, of course...
...But there are certainly many, beginning with his not mentioning that in 1947 the United Nations advocated a division of the country into a Jewish and an Arab sector, with Jerusalem being internationalized...
...He does quite effectively debunk the Yalta myth, thatChurchillandespeciallyRooseveltweretakenover the barrel by Stalin, and swindled out of Eastern Europe.HeignorestheEuropeanAdvisoryCommission's role in demarcating the occupation zones of Germany (on1939borders,eventhoughtheTeheran Conference had already secretly agreed to move the western borders of PolandandtheUSSR200milesfurther west...
...Space does not permit to give more examples of the lies, and omissions in Mr...
...The painful gullibility of leftist pilgrims to the Communist dictators, especially Stalin, is exquisitely recited...
...It wasn't a particularly severepeace;Germanywasundoubtedlyresponsibleforunleashingthewar,andthepeacewas very sketchily enforced anyway...
...It is therefore not likely that the lies, misstatements, and omissions in his book are the result of ignorance...
...The treatment of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 is a very useful expose...
...And they were confident they wouldwin...
...Your tax-deductible contributions are welcome...
...The Tonkin Gulf incident was not entirely confected by Lyndon Johnson, though it was a fragile pretext for sending 565,000 draftees to Vietnam...
...It is a scurrilous comparison with the oppression of the black majority in South Africa...
...Though the famous British ambassador to TheodoreRoosevelt,CecilSpring-Rice,calledAmerican politics "dullness, occasionally relieved by rascality," thoughtful people in all of these countries, despite terrible pressures and abrasions at times, generally appreciated each other...
...ThisisnotacomprehensivehistoryoftheU.S.,UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, or even of theirrelationswitheachother.Butitisaveryextensive,wellwritten, and absorbing summary of the factors that have generally kept those countries working fairly closely through most of the 20th century, responding similarly to the greatest challenges of that century...
...JohnMaynardKeynes'stheorythat the severity of the Treaty of Versailles provoked a justly aggrieved Germany does not survive the critical airing it receives here...
...The Jews accepted that compromise...
...secretly set[ting] out to produce some [nuclear weapons] with the idea of blackmailing the world...
...The lionization of Salvador Allende and demonizationofAugustoPinochet,Nixon,andHenryKissinger,isconsignedtotheproverbialdustbinofhistory where it all belongs...
...Both are described as leaders who diligently sought peace with Israel...
...And FDR's performance toward Jewish fugitives from persecution in the 1930s and early '40s, is rather over-simply disparaged with a quote from an unauthoritative, journeyman British journalist (p...
...Astute observers at the time, including Charles De Gaulle and Richard Nixon, did not consider it any victory for the U.S., as Castro was effectively guaranteed safety, and festers on the island yet, and the Americans removed Jupiter missiles from Turkey, two clear advances on the pre-crisis status quo for Khrushchev...
...We have virtually no overhead...
...The fence has successfully done that...
...Candidates accepted into the program will have regular hands-on supervision, training, and editing, and will be published in TAS and Spectator.org.Are you an aspiring writer or journalist looking to take the next step in building a life-long career as a professional journalist...
...our world-historical view [of Versailles] has been influenced by the same defunct economist who promulgatedtheassertion...
...Conservatives as well as liberals criticized the president's position--liberals because they were weddedtotheideaofMutualAssuredDestruction,conservatives because they were convinced you could not "trust"theCommunistswithsuchknowledge...
...To learn how you can qualify to participate, write: Young Journalism Program, c/o The American Spectator 1611 North Kent St., Ste...
...Haig was more talented, Pershing more helpful to allies, than is commonly thought now, we learn...
...But that is quite incorrect...
...Arafat left in a huff and started his second intifada, which has killed and maimed thousands on both sides...
...Theyarenotsomysterious,Ithink...
...To receive free FLAME updates, visit our website: www.factsandlogic.org You deserve a factual look at . . . Jimmy Carter, Israel and the Jews Is our former President ignorant, malevolent - or both...
...Carter was certainly one of our most ineffective presidents, comparable perhaps to Fillmore, Polk or Harding...
...He could have sought cooperation with the USSR, which Stalin wished, instead of leaving that to Hitler...
...It is...not likely that the lies, misstatements, and omissions in his book are the result of ignorance...
...242...
...There are so many falsehoods in the book that it isn't easy to know where to begin.But here are just a few of the many distortions in it...
...Do we really think that Protestantism conferred an B O O K SI NR E V I E W 7 8 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R M A R C H 2 0 0 7 B O O K SI NR E V I E B O O K SI NR E V I E W M A R C H 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 7 9 advantageonBritishexplorersandtraders?Columbus, andtheSpanish,French,andPortugueseexplorersand adventurers, as well as the pre-Reformation British ones,woulddisagree...
...O'SULLIVAN'S SKILL AS A REPORTER comes to the fore in his dramatic description of the several Reagan-Gorbachevsummits,mostnotablythe one at Reykjavik...
...As FDR biographerTedMorganwrote,ifYaltahad been a good deal for Stalin, he would not have violated everyclauseofit...
...The mistake of the U.S...
...administration in withdrawing support for the Aswan Dam, which helped precipitate the Suez crisis, could have been played more strongly...
...Carter knows that, of course...
...Box 590359 I San Francisco, CA 94159 Gerardo Joffe, President105 to do...
...He does not mention that the largest contingent of Israelis are Jews expelled or forced to flee from their Arab home countries, where they had been living for centuries...
...The skullduggery of Harold Macmillan and some of Anthony Eden's other colleagues in government is laid bare, as is the mistake Eisenhower and Dulles made undermining their principal allies, Britain, France, and Israel...
...Thisauthorsetstherecordstraightonmanymisunderstood and often willfully misrepresented aspects of the Vietnam War...
...Barak declared his willingness to turn over 95% of the "West Bank" and the Arab quarter of Jerusalem to the Palestinians and to financial compensation to the "refugees...
...Not so, of course...
...Roberts tells us that there were severaldaysofwarnings...
...Roberts asserts that Eisenhower recognized his error...
...the Arabs rejected it and instead invaded Israel with five national armies...
...Devalera's ostentatious call at the German embassy to condole at the death of Hitler, when he had done no such thing three weeks before on the death of Roosevelt, is a famous incident, rightly retold here...
...The title of the book shows the bias that permeates it: Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid...
...JohnPaulII,besideshelpingbringdowntheSoviet empire, bequeathed to Pope Benedict XVI a Catholic Churchthatwaslarge,growingfast(particularlyinthe ThirdWorld),andbecomingmoreorthodox.AccordingtoO'Sullivan,Thatcher'sreputationishigherintherest oftheworldthaninBritain,buteveninhernativeland theIronLady'spoliciesthatdefeatedinflation,restored British industry, and helped win the Cold War are "almostuniversallyregardedascorrect...
...There were massive demonstrations against deployment in major European cities, but the West, led by Thatcher and Reagan, stood firm...
...In summing up the individual and collective achievements of the president, the pope, and the primeminister,O'SullivanstatesthatReaganwonthe ColdWarwithoutfiringashot;revivedtheU.S.economy,whichwentontoenjoymorethan20yearsofconsecutive economic growth...
Vol. 40 • March 2007 • No. 2
