Oliver Kamm

Last post (of the year)

Not entirely with levity, I leave you with this article (and its conclusion), from a paleoconservative site but by a proclaimed "left-libertarian", entitled "In Defense of Ron Paul: A Reply to Noam Chomsky". This passage is riotous:

"Chomsky even goes so far as to say he would reject Ron Paul's candidacy even if he ran for the Presidency against Madame Hillary. Say it ain't so, Noam! Ron Paul, a man of peace, integrity and liberty is somehow no more acceptable than a cutthroat careerist who kow-tows to the foreign policy elite, the Israel lobby, and the warmongering neoconservative freaks, who voted to authorize the Iraq war, and who supports the police and surveillance state? What's up, Noam? Is limited and decentralized government, respect for private property, the Second Amendment, and "isolationism" really THAT bad?"

Professor Chomsky and I have our differences, but it would be churlish not to welcome him to my side of this debate or to acknowledge that some of what he says about Ron Paul is quite sensible. I wish him, and you, a happy new year.

Man of the Year

Time magazine ludicrously and destructively named the assassin Vladimir Putin as its "Person of the Year". The Sunday Telegraph, on the other hand, gives what by any objective standards is the right answer, for the right reason. General David Petraeus "has given another last chance to a country that had long since ceased to expect one. And for that, Gen Petraeus is Person of the Year."

To speak of that achievement is not to prettify the quality of life in Iraq in 2007. But what General Petraeus has accomplished is remarkable. I have had the good fortune to meet him and listen to his assessment of Iraq's security needs. He is a thinking soldier who understood immediately that nothing could be accomplished without adequate manpower. He has secured important successes against the enemies of nascent constitutional authority in Iraq. In particular, he has achieved the crucial success of turning Iraqi Sunnis in Anbar province and elsewhere against al-Qaeda.

The significance is immense. I supported military intervention in Iraq, and have never altered that view. When I wrote this piece in support of US-UK policy, however, the prospects of success were bleak. The Iraq intervention was not a blunder, or a mistake, or - still less - a crime. But for several reasons - the belatedness of the operation; the culpable incompetence of the Bush administration; the inhumanity of Iraq's Islamist and Baathist enemies - it came close to catastrophic failure. General Petraeus has given us and Iraqis the opportunity of establishing something better: not the fully-fledged federal democracy that we hoped for after the fall of Saddam Hussein, but a decentralised and pluralist Iraq where constitutional authority has something more nearly approaching a monopoly of the means of force.

I'm particularly glad the Telegraph has formally acknowledged this point, because the British press (at least those parts of it that I read regularly) has been generally slow in adapting to developments from Iraq. I'm sorry to say that The Guardian has been notably at fault. This piece by Suzanne Goldenberg, before General Petraeus's Congessional testimony in September, is a nice instance of a failure to separate political prejudice from news copy, and was unworthy of the newspaper. General Petraeus's unexceptionable observations about the failure of the Maliki government at national level to advance conciliation were unrelated to the success or otherwise of the "surge". I hope Ms Goldenberg is now suitably embarrassed by her arch interpolation that "the testimony from Gen Petraeus and Mr Crocker follows on from a string of unremittingly bleak assessments on the persistent dysfunction of Mr Maliki's government and the continuing sectarian violence". The assessment she was alluding to was that of the Government Accountability Office - which General Petraeus had no difficulty in pointing out had cut its analysis short in order to meet Congressional reporting requirements. The period immediately after that survey's conclusion had been particularly successful for Coalition forces and therefore - as those are of course troops operating under a UN mandate - for the international community.

Had Tony Blair and General Petraeus been, respectively, the leading political and military figures in the Coalition's Iraq campaign from the outset, much more might have been achieved. As matters stand, there is a serious prospect that Iraq will not only be free of Baathist tyranny but will also be the scene of a decisive defeat for theocratic and atavistic forces that stand for everything we progressives oppose. General Petraeus has brought Iraq and Western foreign policy to this point and yielded this opportunity.

Alterman retrenches

A few weeks ago I commented on an article by the media columnist of The Nation, Eric Alterman. Alterman had purported to expose right-wing bias in media coverage of the death of General Paul Tibbets, pilot of the plane that dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima. According to Alterman:

"When Enola Gay pilot Paul Tibbets died November 1, the New York Times repeated Tibbets's contention that 'It would have been morally wrong if we'd have had [the atomic bomb] and not used it and let a million more people die.' That virtually no reputable historian would put the casualty figure for a US invasion of Japan anywhere near that high (leaving aside the question of whether an invasion would have been necessary) was not mentioned in the story."

In my post I explained why Alterman's remarks were unlettered and ignorant. I can name off the top of my head at least a dozen historians who would concur with Tibbets's judgement. These are not only "reputable" figures but leading and even definitive scholars in such relevant fields as the Truman administration, the Pacific War, American diplomatic history, modern Japanese history, American military history, and Soviet history. I cited, among others, my correspondent D.M. Giangreco, whose study in Pacific Historical Review, February 2003, of the administration's casualty estimates for a conventional invasion of Japan was described by the late Arthur Schlesinger Jnr (also a "reputable historian", as it happens) as "a masterful job of historical research and argument... You have demolished the claim that President Truman's high casualty estimates were a postwar invention."

In short, there was no way Alterman could sustain his claim. At the very least and most charitable, you have to conclude that his demonstration of media "bias" rested on having read nothing of the historiographical debates on the Pacific War that have taken place in the last twenty years. I'm grateful to Jamie Kirchick, who writes for The New Republic and blogs at Commentary magazine, for drawing my attention to a an odd and emotional reply by Alterman. Alterman begins by making clear that he's doing me a favour:

"[A]s for the right-wing blogger, I never heard of him either, but he's gotten some pickup among right-wingers, and I now I see that my friends at History News Network have now both run it and linked to it. I wonder if they know who he is or why he should be taken seriously, as I sure don't."

It's true that my post was linked to by a number of conservative writers in the US, such as Jonah Goldberg of National Review. That's life: Alterman had made confident assertions on a subject he didn't understand, I was the messenger of bad news that he had thereby made himself look foolish, and political commentators whose views I don't necessarily share (I of course am a left-winger, not a right-wing blogger) kindly thought this information was worth sharing with their readers. There is no inherent reason that Alterman should have heard of me (though we write for one or two of the same publications, and in his agitation he has evidently forgotten that he's linked to this blog in the past), nor do I expect him necessarily to take me seriously. But I do expect him to take seriously the body of scholarship that I referred to in my post, for it is important material that refutes Alterman's assertions on a subject that he elected to write about.

Alterman's response, according to the post I have linked to, is not to mention that material or give to his readers any hint of its existence. As Jamie observes: "Alterman provides no links to these critiques that would otherwise help the reader understand this intellectual dispute." It is singular and in my judgement dishonest that, while affecting to counter my criticism of his article, Alterman neither quotes nor links to those criticisms. All he indicates of my argument is this:

"But since they [i.e. History News Network] are definitely a place I think people should be able to trust, have, and put the racism charge in the headline, now twice, I feel compelled to respond to the racism point, at least (as I simultaneously express my disappointment in HNN's judgment on this score). Regarding my alleged anti-Japanese racism, this Kamm fellow writes, "The most charitable explanation I can give is that Alterman is (unlike the late General [Paul] Tibbets) sufficiently ethnocentric not to take into account the deaths of Japanese civilians that would have resulted from a conventional invasion and blockade of the home islands..." "

By the words "at least", Alterman of course means "at most", for he makes no attempt to defend himself against the charge that he has misrepresented the state of historical scholarship. (Those ellipses in his quotation are judiciously placed, as they excise my observation in the same sentence that Alterman is "entirely unaware of research by American and Japanese historians published in the last 20 years concerning the conclusion of the Pacific War".) And of course I didn't say in the first place that Alterman was an anti-Japanese racist. I used the term "ethnocentric", whose meaning Alterman appears not to know.

Let me give an example from the same area of study. It is certain that all my readers know that Nazi Germany murdered around six million Jews. (I leave aside, for simplicity's sake, my reader David Irving, who is a faker.) It is not certain that all my readers know with the same precision the number of people killed by Imperial Japan, throughout its empire, in the same period. Indeed, unless you're a specialist in the Pacific War, it's unlikely that you'll know that figure, and if you venture an estimate from your general knowledge, you'll probably understate it. (It is in the region of 20 million. In the 14 years of war between Japan and China till 1945, that number was itself substantially exceeded by the number of Chinese noncombatant deaths alone.) This isn't because my readers are ill informed about world affairs, and it certainly isn't because they're racists. Nor is it because Imperial Japan was a less malevolent actor than Nazi Germany: I consider they were forces of a similar type. It's because educated people in the English-speaking world and in Europe generally regard the war in Europe as the dominant theatre in WWII. Many have family histories (as I do) that are touched by Nazi barbarism. The view from China would be different. The difference is an instance of inevitable ethnocentrism - not racism, but looking at the world from a particular standpoint.

In suggesting his own ethnocentrism, I am certainly more generous than Alterman is in his casual libel of American policymakers of the time. He protests:

"The focus was always exclusively on the likelihood of U.S. casualties in the case of an invasion. Any politician who expressed any sympathy for those poor Japanese civilians would have been run out of town on a proverbial rail. The point for virtually all Americans at the time of this debate was to "kill the bastards," and hence, there was little debate or discussion over the firebombing of Tokyo, also designed to obliterate civilian lives. Hence, this Mr. Kamm fellow is attacking my column for merely addressing the historical issue in question, which, hello, is what historians do."

There was a lot of popular racism against the Japanese, but neither Roosevelt nor Truman - to take two rather important examples of American politicians - held anything like the attitude to Japanese civilians that Alterman claims. Henry Wallace (FDR's Vice-President) wrote in his diary for 10 August 1945 (i.e. the day after the Nagasaki bombing): "Truman said he had given orders to stop atomic bombing. He said the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible. He didn't like the idea of killing, as he said, 'all those kids.'"

Alterman concludes not with an evidence-based proposition of the type that historians advance, but with a dogmatic reassertion of his initial fallacy: "I was merely calling attention to what struck me as the Times' myopia in reporting [the A-bomb issue], as well as its mistaken inference that the historical record supported Mr. Tibbets' contention, which is [sic] clearly does not."

I see little purpose in being diplomatic about this performance, if only because Alterman does explicitly present himself as an expert on US foreign relations and US history. From my observation, he's not up to it. If he wishes to persist in his statement of what the historical evidence "clearly" shows on the A-bomb decisions, then I invite him to demonstrate it, at long last. I shall be glad to debate that evidence publicly with him, online or in person, at any time.

More on irrationalism

Not long ago, a school board in Dover, Pennsylvania, resolved that the notion of "Intelligent Design" be taught in science classes. The school board was sued (Kitzmiller v. Dover) and the plaintiffs won the case. For reasons suggested in my post yesterday touching on this subject, that legal decision was clearly right. ID is not a scientific theory; the proper amount of time to accord to it in science classes is zero.

One of the expert witnesses for the defence in that legal case was a sociologist at Warwick University called Steve Fuller. Professor Fuller has since written a book expounding his ideas, called Science vs Religion?: Intelligent Design and the Problem of Evolution. I concede immediately that I haven't read the book; but I did enjoy this review of it by a Rutgers mathematician and redoubtable defender of science education, Norman Levitt. (My thanks to Nick Cohen for sending it to me.) Professor Levitt comments:

"The book under review is Fuller’s subsequent effort to justify philosophically the position that failed so miserably to sway the Kitzmiller ruling in ID’s favor. It is with frank satisfaction and not a little glee that I can report that it is a truly miserable piece of work, crammed with errors scientific, historical, and even theological, a book that will find approving readers only amongst hard-core ID enthusiasts hungry for agreement but indifferent to the quality of evidence offered in support of their position. Fuller really does make it up as he goes along, laying out arguments that hardly need serious thought to refute in that they are based on howlers and solecisms that collapse under the lightest scrutiny."

The glee is indeed not disguised, and is all the better for that. But there is one issue, to do with his political analysis, on which I take issue with Levitt. He notes "Fuller’s utter failure to come to terms with the political nature of the Intelligent Design movement", i.e. Fuller is a populist of the Left who overlooks the right-wing theocratic inspiration of Intelligent Design. Levitt doubts that "any large segment of the science-studies community, nor of the larger 'academic left' will join [Fuller] in the attempt to find comrades-in-arms in such venues as the Discovery Institute or the wider Intelligent Design movement".

I'm not convinced Fuller is as much of an outlier - in political debate, at least - as is here claimed. The notion that people's deeply held beliefs are entitled to respect is common, and it's not such a great step from that misconception to the principle that those beliefs are entitled to protection. It's unusual to find a professed left-winger (if that is indeed Professor Fuller's position) applying the principle to Protestant fundamentalism, but it's inherently no odder than (to take an entirely typical example) the insistence of my sometime debating opponent Jeremy Corbyn MP, at a rally against "Islamophobia", that: "We demand that people show respect for each other's community, each other's faith and each other's religion." For reasons I've argued here, that demand is both impossible and highly undesirable. It's impossible, because respect is not an entitlement: beliefs earn respect to the extent that they can withstand criticism in the public square. It's undesirable, because if public policy concerns itself with people's feelings then there is no limit to the intrusions of the state.

Levitt also has sport with what is definitely a theological misconception by Fuller - and not one that is incidental to his wider thesis - concerning the religious inspiration of Isaac Newton. Newton is thankfully revered for other work, but his passions included Biblical numerology and alchemy (there's an interesting account here by the polymath and sceptic Martin Gardner). Well might Levitt say that in Newton's case "we have evidence of the enormous waste of scientific talent and intellectual energy that can be caused by an obsessive concern with religion".

This is worth mentioning also because a few months ago there was a rash of commentary on one facet of Newton's wasted energy. Here, under the title "Bloomberg's bigotry", is James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal criticising the Mayor of New York for lamenting the prevalence of creationist beliefs: "This columnist is among the 26% of Americans who hold a strictly naturalistic view of life's origin. Yet even we find Bloomberg's remark appalling in its arrogance and ignorance."

Taranto explained his appalled state with reference to - yes - an exhibition of Newton's papers setting out the great man's detailed calculations concerning the date of the Apocalypse. "The AP [report] notes," says Taranto, "that the Newton papers, according to the exhibition's curator, 'complicate the idea that science is diametrically opposed to religion.' No kidding. When Bloomberg endorses that idea, is he really expressing a devotion to science, or just a fashionable urban prejudice against serious Christians?"

Mayor Bloomberg had of course been doing the first, and the fact that Taranto wasn't able to distinguish the beliefs of "serious Christians" from unadulterated crank numerology underlines the point. (It's a minor observation, but note that other reports of the curator's comments are slightly different and make more intuitive sense. The Scotsman, for example, gives this account of her comments: "Such is the extent of the prophecy and interest in mysticism inherent in the Newton papers, she added, that they further complicate the idea his science was diametrically opposed to religion." The possessive pronoun in that sentence is not a trivial qualifier compared with Taranto's account, especially when you consider the case that Taranto is advancing on its absence.) In his way, Taranto is advancing a similar principle to that of the ostensibly radical Corbyn. In either case, it's wrong and illiberal.

Democrats on Pakistan

The Washington Post reports a notably stupid and inflammatory remark:

[David] Axelrod, a senior Obama strategist, was more direct [than the candidate], linking the Pakistani crisis to the different positions that [Hillary] Clinton and Obama took on the Iraq war in 2002, when Clinton voted to authorize it in the U.S. Senate, and Obama, then an Illinois state senator, spoke out against it.

"Obama opposed the war in Iraq explicitly because he feared it would divert our attention from al-Qaeda, Pakistan, the whole region," Axelrod said. "It underscores the fact that you have to have a president who understands the world, who is going to analyze these events, and who will chart the right course, counter to the conventional thinking."

I strongly disgree with the proposition that the war in Iraq is or ever has been a distraction from the struggle against Islamist terrorism. But my more immediate concern is that Barack Obama patently doesn't understand the world, as was demonstrated by his eagerness to talk to the leaders of rogue states without any hint of pressing them for concessions in return. The remarks of his aide must surely imply that had Obama's views on Iraq been followed, then there would have been no incitement to the murder of Benazir Bhutto. The only other interpretation I can make of such remarks is that, in some unspecified way, the US might have been able to prevent Mrs Bhutto's murder had its forces not been engaged in opposing terrorism and autocracy in Iraq. So either Obama is committed to a view of the stimulus for Islamist terrorism (if that is indeed the force behind the assassination) that pays no attention to Islamist ideology, or he grossly overestimates the ability of the US to influence events in other (nominally friendly) countries.

In either case, I find Obama's incomprehension and inexperience alarming. As a European leftist who cares more than anything about the defence of liberal values against our totalitarian enemies, I have an intense interest in Hillary Clinton's winning the Democratic nomination.

Species of irrationalism

There are many reasons for regarding Republican presidential aspirant Ron Paul as bizarrely inappropriate for executive office. Far the most important is his belief in the oracular quality of Osama bin Laden's pronouncements as guides for setting US foreign policy. (You think I exaggerate? Paul said in a debate in May: "I’m suggesting we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it." The slipperiness of this formulation was properly noted by one conservative writer, Jonah Goldberg of National Review.) But Paul's remarks on evolution (which I noted from Stephen Pollard, and are captured in the clip above) are pitiful too: "It's a theory... and I don't accept it, you know, as a theory.... I just don't think we're at the point where anybody has absolute proof on either side."

The confusion by populist politicians (among others) over the word "theory" has been explained many, many times. Here's a succinct statement by the late Stephen Jay Gould:

Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered.

Moreover, "fact" does not mean "absolute certainty." The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

Evolutionists have been clear about this distinction between fact and theory from the very beginning, if only because we have always acknowledged how far we are from completely understanding the mechanisms (theory) by which evolution (fact) occurred. Darwin continually emphasized the difference between his two great and separate accomplishments: establishing the fact of evolution, and proposing a theory—natural selection—to explain the mechanism of evolution.

Anti-intellectual obscurantism is always with us, and is far from being only a right-wing phenomenon. The variant that Paul exemplifies is especially resilient among commentators in more conservative forums, however, and not always by Protestant evangelicals. Here is an example from The Daily Mail - I'm sorry to say by Melanie Phillips, remarking on "a school of scientists promoting the theory of Intelligent Design, which suggests that some force embodying purpose and foresight lay behind the origin of the universe". And here, on the website of the Social Affairs Unit, is the historian William D. Rubinstein maintaining with a drearily familiar expression of non-specialist incredulity: "There are so many deep implausibilities in the Theory of Evolution as it is commonly understood that it seems to me, as a non-scientist, that something must surely be radically wrong."

Intelligent Design is not a scientific proposition but a metaphysical one, as surely as is Biblical creationism of the more traditional kind. The irony of ironies is that Melanie also refutes herself when she maintains in the same article: "It was GK Chesterton who famously quipped that 'when people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing - they believe in anything.'"

Well, no. For a start, this famous Chesterton "quotation" is spurious, as you might reasonably infer from the fact that it never appears with a cited source. (I try to note these when I spot them, but I will compile a list of common bogus quotations sometime, in the hope that they may eventually be rooted out of journalistic practice.) More important, Melanie has herself lately turned to the irrationalism of conspiracy theory, in speculating that the weapons expert David Kelly was murdered. She says of the Liberal Democrat spokesman for Transport, Norman Baker, who has written a book advancing that notion: "Now Mr Baker cannot easily be dismissed as a crank." Just try and stop me, Melanie. Baker's theories don't stop at the "murder" of Dr Kelly. He also speculates that Robin Cook met the same fate. That proposition requires at the very least an assumption that Robin Cook's widow - who was with her husband when he suffered his fatal fall while hill-walking - must know something about the "murder" that she is not divulging. I find that a peculiarly disgusting insinuation to make without evidence.

Outside his field of economic history, Professor Rubinstein will swallow a great deal. In 2005, he co-authored a book resurrecting the hoary notion that the works of William Shakespeare were written by someone other than the Stratford actor of that name. The chosen candidate of Rubinstein and his co-author Brenda James was a minor courtier, Sir Henry Neville. There is a garish website promoting this notion, which is like all the others: a conspiracy theory that rests entirely on circumstantial evidence and snobbery. As the Shakespeare scholar Jonathan Bate aptly commented: "There’s not a shred of evidence in support of the argument; it’s full of errors. There’s no reason to doubt that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare."

Ten years ago, Rubinstein produced a book of comparable scholarship but on a subject of more immediate moral import. This was The Myth of Rescue: Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews from the Nazis - a commendably self-explanatory title for an argument of extenuation. I know of no historian who is a specialist in the Holocaust who took this volume seriously. Walter Laqueur, co-editor of The Holocaust Encyclopedia, 2001, reviewed Rubinstein's book for Commentary, October 1997 (link requires fee). He described the book as "plainly wrong" and "positively absurd", and as evincing "wilful ignorance" and "lack of judgment". Laqueur located the book in a "new trend [in Holocaust studies] of staking out unsustainable claims in a preposterous way", before concluding: "There appear, in fact, to be almost unlimited reasons why people get things wrong. But why the Holocaust in particular, a subject which should be approached in a spirit of utmost caution, should attract so much charlatanism, I cannot explain. It is a matter of great and growing concern."

In charlatanism's house are many mansions, but they have an underlying consistency and common attraction.

Labour from the Archives

I would expect some interesting material to be released, under the 30-year rule, from the National Archives concerning the Labour government of the 1970s. The BBC reports today that in 1977 Tony Benn was asked to resign from the Cabinet by the Prime Minister, James Callaghan, after signing a letter objecting to the pact Callaghan had negotiated with the Liberals. The Lib-Lab Pact was not a glorious episode but there were rational grounds for the minority Labour government to have sought it. There was good reason to believe the economy was improving, owing to North Sea oil and the necessary negotiation of an IMF loan. The Liberals were desperate to avoid a general election so soon after the Jeremy Thorpe scandal (in by-elections the party was regularly being beaten into fourth place by the National Front), and received scant benefit from the arrangement. (The only time I met the late John Smith, at a meeting of City Fabians, he cheerfully volunteered that "the Liberals got absolutely screwed" under the Pact; and so they had been.) But what's interesting about the Callaghan-Benn exchange is what didn't happen:

The newly-released note describes a telephone call made by Mr Callaghan to Mr Benn at 2000 on Thursday 24 March - a day after the pact was agreed. It says Mr Callaghan referred to a letter, "which already had 15 signatures", calling for a special Labour National Executive Committee meeting about the pact.

Mr Callaghan - who died in 2005 - told energy secretary Mr Benn he would not expect a Cabinet member to sign without telling him, the note adds.

"Mr Benn said, 'I have already signed it' and the prime minister replied, 'in that case, I must ask for your resignation'," the note continues.

According to the note, Mr Benn - who retired from Parliament in 2001 at the age of 76 - told Mr Callaghan he would "consider his resignation or see if he could withdraw his signature".

Tony Benn of course did not resign, because he was not the resigning type. What infuriated his parliamentary colleagues after Labour's defeat in 1979 was his denunciation of a government that had coped with the most trying of economic circumstances, for much of the time without a parliamentary majority, and that he had served in continuously. I don't consider that Benn is a pure opportunist, but neither is he a man of principle. He is a politician of little talent, few intellectual interests, minimal achievement and much destructiveness.

The same BBC report ventures, by the way, an ill informed and obtrusive piece of editorialising, when referring to the concerns of the Ford administration about the UK's defence commitments:

Also released by the National Archives on Friday is a letter from Donald Rumsfeld - during his first spell as US defence secretary between 1975 and 1977 - to UK defence secretary Roy Mason.

In it, Mr Rumsfeld, who served in the same post under President George W Bush from 2001 to 2006, expresses his dismay at planned UK defence cuts.

Referring to Nato's Cold War concerns about the power of the Soviet Union, Mr Rumsfeld stresses "how vital it is that all of us in the alliance avoid public actions and precedents which will create a discordance between the reality of the growing threat and any lack of resolve to meet it".

The letter, dated 19 July 1976, adds: "Any reductions that would weaken or appear to weaken your defences would impinge adversely and directly on the collective security of every ally."

Critics of the current government would argue that Mr Callaghan's Labour cabinet of the time was not as easily influenced by the US as its modern-day equivalent.

Missing from this report, and presumably unknown to its anonymous author, is the historical context. Shortly after Labour gained a bare majority in the October 1974 election, Harold Wilson - a vain man who was unreasonably convinced he was held in high regard in Washington - wrote to the US President Gerald Ford that Britain would cut defence spending regardless of the impact on Nato. Ford responded to Wilson with a measured statement of concern about the impact on US allies and expressing the hope that the US would not be the only power capable of international intervention. This was the context of Rumsfeld's later remarks. The exchanges had been precipitated by Wilson, who had failed to consult with our Nato allies.

I am no admirer of Ford (though he had one foreign policy success, the Helsinki Final Agreement, whose value was greatly underrated at the time). I do consider, however, that his administration showed loyalty to this country beyond the call of national interest. The US was perfectly entitled to express its concern about our contribution to Nato. The administration did so in terms that were moderate and factual. When James Callaghan (a far superior PM to Wilson) turned to the US for help in the sterling crisis of 1976, Ford responded generously: his only terms were that the UK should not impose import controls (as Tony Crosland and, with much less intellectual seriousness, Tony Benn were then arguing for in Cabinet). With the respite provided by the IMF loan, Labour went on to govern with some competence from 1976 to 1979, after the breathtaking irresponsibility of the Wilson government of 1974-6.

During Labour's period of maximum silliness, in opposition in the early 1980s, a mythology grew up that nonetheless had a grain of truth in it. Supporters of a reformed Tony Benn (now fiercely opposed to the record of the government he had served in, if not exactly served) would commonly and bitterly complain that Mrs Thatcher's economic programme had its origins in Denis Healey's stewardship as Chancellor. This was quite true, of course, and it remains a notable achievement on Labour's part that should be remembered and applauded.

After Bhutto

Of all the mistakes the Western democracies have made in countering Islamist terrorism, there is none more significant and potentially damaging than our indulgence of military rule in Pakistan under President Musharraf. (I've previously commented on Pakistan's dubious and untrustworthy role in this struggle here and here.) The last thing Western governments should do after the cruel murder of Benazir Bhutto is to compound that error by acquiescing in any assurances from Musharraf that a new state of emergency is required to defeat domestic terror. Joshua Kurlantzick of The New Republic succinctly sets out the temptation and the reasons for rejecting it:

The chaos around Bhutto's killing could provide Musharraf the opportunity to postpone the election and re-impose a state of emergency he recently lifted. (The New York Times, citing a Musharraf aide, reports that "no decision has been made on whether to delay the elections.") Musharraf could simultaneously assure the United States, his major patron, that he will use the emergency period to finally crack down on insurgents operating with near-total impunity along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Some in Washington would be pleased: The Bush administration has been pressuring Musharraf for years to lead such an operation.

Unfortunately, Musharraf has already proven incapable of this task: Reimposing a state of emergency would hardly restore Pakistan's stability. As The New York Times recently reported, the Bush administration now admits the Pakistani military has wasted and diverted massive amounts of the American aid designed to strengthen the battle against Al Qaeda and the Taliban--aid that has cost some $5 billion. Unsurprising, then, that the White House itself admitted in an intelligence assessment this summer that Musharraf's supposed battle against terrorists was failing miserably. Yet at the same time, Musharraf has neutered Pakistan's political culture, helping create a vacuum in which there are few other credible leaders besides Sharif and the slain Bhutto. With Bhutto gone, Musharraf may--surprise--again fill that vacuum. That could be the greatest tragedy of all.

It may also be the speediest route to a Talibanised nuclear-armed state.

Season's greetings

In deference to the sensibilities of the Anglican Archbishop of Wales, who plainly has a predilection for urban as much as scriptural legend, I wish my readers a happy Winterval.

The Archbishop will surely be indulgent. The significance of 25 December has deep roots in the Roman cult of Mithras (which, suspiciously enough, held a sacramental meal as part of its ceremonial) and the feast of Saturnalia. It would seem only right to celebrate our glorious diversity by wishing you a merry Christmas too. I shall be back at new year.

Pilger and his public

Marko Attila Hoare has written an interesting account of a recent exchange with John Pilger. Pilger was speaking at Kingston University (where Marko teaches in the history faculty) and was evidently unprepared for close questioning about his imaginative claims concerning the causes and consequences of Nato's intervention in Kosovo. Do read it; it accords with my impression of Pilger's insouciance regarding accurate reporting and his brusqueness when contradicted. (Marko also notes the singular fact that Pilger cites in his support "the Balkans writer Neil Clark". Case closed: Mr Clark is, as I have regretfully but necessarily demonstrated, an ignoramus and faker.)

Pilger's aversion to criticism was nicely captured a few years ago by David Aaronovitch in his then Independent column. "There is," said David, "a convention among newspapers, quaint but sweet, that columnists are not allowed to reply to letter-writers. No matter how traduced we may feel by the author of an angry epistle to the editor; the line is that we have had our say, and that's that." It's a useful convention. (It's also one I can reasonably claim to adhere to with some punctiliousness. The Guardian last year published not a letter but an op-ed insinuating without evidence that I favoured a nuclear first strike on Iran. Having already had my say - in a piece that wasn't about, and didn't mention, Iran - I didn't consider demanding a right of reply to so pitiful and deranged a falsehood.) That convention - and it is, of course, no more than that - was not observed by Pilger, who had lately written to The New Statesman to condemn the magazine's "mean, ignorant and lazy non-journalism" (by Johann Hari) about him. The NS is a magazine to which Pilger was, and remains, a contributor.

My only personal experience of an exchange with Pilger took a similar form. In its first years, The Independent ran a feature called "Heroes and Villains" in its Saturday magazine. A writer or public figure would write 1,000 words on a personality who fitted one of those categories. Pilger contributed a column in (I think) 1990 in which he expounded the merits of his personal hero Noam Chomsky. This saccharine piece dealt in a predictable way with the two principal episodes of controversy in Chomsky's political writings. These were Chomsky's defence of the political legitimacy (not merely the right of free speech) of the Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson, and his dismissal of the atrocity accounts of refugees fleeing Cambodia in the late 1970s. Pilger made no mention of these issues, so I wrote a letter to the magazine making good the omissions. Three weeks later the magazine published a response from Pilger in which, sure enough, he referred to my observations as "scurrilous", and declared theatrically that for exposing official deceit and telling truths "Chomsky must bear the burden of the Kamms". And I was just a letter-writer to The Independent.

Much more recently I wrote a short column summarising Pilger's life's work:

In asserting what the evidence will not support, Pilger displays little research and culpable incompetence. In a 1982 exposure of slavery in Thailand he “bought” a young girl, only to find he had been duped. A 1990 documentary alleging that SAS members had trained the Khmer Rouge resulted in a libel writ that Central Television settled at substantial cost. Pilger’s 1983 film The Truth Game, alleging systematic mendacity by Western governments over nuclear weapons, was revealed by two authorities to be stuffed with errors. Pilger’s plaintive response that lots of viewers had sent him supportive letters illustrated a stark incomprehension of how historical claims are properly evaluated.

Pilger’s 1994 film Death of a Nation condemned Western complicity in the oppression of East Timor by Indonesia. Yet Osama bin Laden declares the now independent Timor “part of the Islamic world” and rightly Indonesia’s. By his own perverse logic, Pilger — who indecently asserted that “the bombs of July 7 were Blair’s bombs”, on account of the Iraq war — ought to admit responsibility for provoking Islamist terror.

A reader of Harry's Place, which last week was discusing Pilger too, has pointed out that The Truth Game can be seen on the Web here. I watched it yesterday, having not seen it since its original broadcast. I fear I understated when I said it was stuffed with errors. The contemporary critics whom I referred to were Lawrence Freedman, then as now Professor of War Studies at King's College, London, and the journalist William Shawcross. Their evisceration of Pilger's film was published in New Society (long since merged with The New Statesman) for 24 March 1983, under the title "Games with the Truth". Pilger's errors and distortions were various and numerous; I cite from Freedman and Shawcross's critique only three.

1. Pilger stated: "On 7 August 1945, President Truman announced the atomic bombing of Hiroshima with these words. ' The experiment,' he said, 'has been an overwhelming success.'"

Freedman and Shawcross comment: "Truman's announcement of the destruction of Hiroshima was released on 6 August 1945. It does not contain the words Pilger cites."

2. Pilger stated: "In 1979 a secret committee of NATO decided to base 572 cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe.... The unofficial truth is that the cruise was designed for a nuclear war in Europe and will be controlled by the US."

Freedman and Shawcross comment: "The NATO commitee was not secret. The decision was taken by the NATO Council on 12 December 1979 in a blaze of publicity.... The very fact that cruise and Pershing are US weapons targeted against the Soviet Union means that if they were used they would ensure that nuclear war was not limited to Europe. One of us, Lawrence Freedman, stressed the role of European governments in encouraging the US to deploy the missiles for that purpose, when Pilger interviewed for The Truth Game (but this was not used in the film)."

3. Pilger said that a British Army manual for 1960, which discussed the use of nuclear weapons, showed that "the planning for a limited nuclear war in Europe began at least 22 years ago. But hadn't we been led to believe that nuclear war as a practical military option is only a recent development?"

Freedman and Shawcross comment: "No, we had not been led to believe that! This reinforces our point that the idea of 'limited nuclear war' is not new, as Pilger claims in The Truth Game. Tactical nuclear weapons have been around since the fifties."

Pilger replied in the magazine two weeks later. He began disastrously, by saying: "I would like to thank the many people who have written and phoned offering me studies and sources...." Freedman and Shawcross then went through Pilger's new series of errors. They concluded: "Our concern is not, as Pilger seems to think, to obscure his thesis by "smearing" it, but to point out that it has no factual basis. Perhaps we are being mundane, but we simply think that those engaging in the nuclear debate, on either side, should show respect for the evidence and for the audience. Pilger has not done so. We are pleased that his friends have sent him 'studies and sources'; we hope he now uses them."

Freedman and Shawcross made no exaggeration in their refutation of Pilger. So far as I can tell, Pilger's quotation - which are his opening words in the film - about "the experiment" of the Hiroshima bombing is not only absent from President Truman's announcement of 6 August 1945 but is a fabrication. It appears to be merely an adaptation of a notion widespread among Truman-bashers prone to conspiracy theory. For example, Kate Hudson, CND's chairman, has written in her book CND: Now More than Ever, 2005, p. 23: "Given that it was absolutely unnecessary to drop the [Hiroshima and Nagasaki] bombs to end the war, it seems likely that this macabre experiment was another factor in the US decision to bomb, and to bomb twice." The first two words of that sentence are characteristic of Ms Hudson's technique of advancing unsupported and ahistorical assumptions to reach a prefabricated conclusion. It is ironic, to put it no higher, that a film portentously called The Truth Game should operate still less scrupulously.

John Pilger recently declared: "That great whistleblower Tom Paine warned that if the majority of the people were denied the truth and the ideas of truth, it was time to storm what he called the Bastille of words. That time is now." And on that point, it would be churlish to disagree.