So I promised awhile back that I’d review James Bovard’s book Terrorism and Tyranny. By the time I got over my laziness, I discovered that Gene Healy had gotten to it first.

I have a few additions to make to Healy’s generally good summation. This book is most valuable as a reference work, a compendium of outrage; it gives you the tools to refute, point by point, the people who claim that Bush’s assault on civil liberties is no big deal. Here are plenty of tales of real, significant injustice, told with flair and passion. Here are talking points for your next debate with some Ashcroftian.

It works less well as a coherent thesis, though. Bovard’s book is long, and you can tell that (to paraphrase Mark Twain) he didn’t have time to write a shorter one. He rambles on, gets overheated at times, makes the occasional mountain out of a molehill. It would be a more enduring work if Bovard had made the connection between Clinton’s abuses and Bush’s; Clinton laid the foundation for the present horrors in so many ways. Since Bovard has written three books (all worthwhile) slamming Clinton, he’d be in an ideal position to make such a study, and I was disappointed to find that historical perspective lacking.

By contrast, Barbara Tuchman’s The March of Folly combines enduring power with critical contemporary relevance. Her studies of costly stupidity among the powerful are put together with Tuchman’s usual reflective care and gentle humor, and their message should strike home powerfully for any libertarian.

The last chapter of the book treats the folly of the Vietnam War. Two bits from that chapter are well worth quoting– their relevance to current events is left as an exercise for the reader:

[President Truman] called the situation a “clear and present danger” and raised the Munich argument that was to become a staple: if the free nations had acted together and in time to crush the aggression of the dictators, World War II might have been averted. The lesson may have been true, but it was misapplied. The aggression of the 1930s in Manchuria, North China, Ethiopia, the Rhineland, Spain and the Sudetenland was overt, with armed invasions, planes and bombs, and occupying forces; the envisaged aggression against Indochina of 1950 was a self-induced state of mind in the observers. In a revealing appraisal, the National Security Council (NSC) in February 1950 called the threat to Indochina only one phase of “anticipated” Communist plans to “seize all of Southeast Asia”. Yet a State Department team investigating Communist infiltration of Southeast Asia in 1948 had found no trace of the Kremlin in Indochina.

And:

Americans were always talking about freedom from Communism, whereas the freedom that the mass of Vietnamese wanted was freedom from their exploiters, both French and indigenous. The assumption that humanity at large shared the democratic Western idea of freedom was an American delusion. “The freedom we cherish and defend in Europe,” stated President Eisenhower on taking office, “is no different than the freedom that is imperiled in Asia.” He was mistaken. Humanity may have common ground, but needs and aspirations vary according to circumstances.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 3rd, 2003 at 9:11 pm by Mystery Man and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.