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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (18063)	2/5/2002 12:08:02 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

This particular essay has little to do with anything of the present moment Hanson is discussing a real phenomenon, John. There is a clear divergence between the US attitudes, which have remained pro-Israel, and the European attitudes, which have grown steadily more pro-Palestinian. If you doubt it, compare the Mideast coverage in the NY Times and the Guardian or Le Monde for a few weeks, and you will see it clearly. No mention that American foreign policy is heavily driven by Jewish voters on the one hand and oil interests on the other Jews are only 3% of the country, John. If only Jewish voters cared, oil would trump Israel hands down. The question is, why does the rest of the country care? Why do the evangelical Christians, who are closer to 40% of the voters, care? That is the question. I thought Hanson's essay was an interesting attempt at an answer. Besides, I know he drives you crazy ;-) You see all of Said's anger but then a very explicit turn to see what can be worked out. I don't understand what this sentence means.

To: JohnM who wrote (18063)	2/5/2002 8:12:07 PM
From: tekboy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hanson is an example of a larger type: a serious scholar who often writes outside his specialty about larger or current issues. His work on classical military history is quite important (I was a classicist before I was a policy wonk), and has made a major contribution to that field. He has gone beyond that to expound on military history more generally, and recently to current politics and anything under the sun. The further he goes from classics, the less authority he deserves to have. That doesn't mean he's necessarily wrong, just that when he starts opining about the price of tea in China (or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), he's just another guy on a soapbox, not a professional talking about his own area of expertise. Others who have trod a similar path, and whose scholarly and popular contributions should be evaluated differently, include Donald Kagan, Paul Kennedy, Thomas Sowell, Glenn Loury, and David Gelernter. tb@thoughtpolice.com