I Am a Revisionist Historian

[RedEarth]

One hundred years ago, three officers of the Western Federation of Miners were indicted for murder. President Theodore Roosevelt declared that they were “undesirable citizens.” Working people and radicals all over the country responded with insignia stating, “I am an undesirable citizen.”
According to popular legend, during World War II the Nazis occupied Denmark and ordered all Jews to wear the Star of David. King Christian thereupon appeared in public wearing the six-pointed symbol.

Something similar is now required of historians in the United States. In June 2003, President Bush told a group of business leaders that “This nation acted to a threat from the dictator of Iraq,” but “now there are some who would like to rewrite history—revisionist historians is what I like to call them.”1 Following Bush’s Veteran’s Day speech in November 2005, the BBC news featured a story, “Bush slams Iraq War revisionism.” Bush’s sanctimonious posturing compels the responsible historian to declare: I AM A REVISIONIST HISTORIAN.

The president’s critique of revisionism needs to be rejected both as a specific comment on the origins of the Iraq War, and as a general proposition.I In the Veterans Day speech, Bush declared that, “Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community’s judgments related to Iraq’s weapons programs.”2 The whitewash panel that Bush is likely referring to is the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. On the one hand, it noted that analysts working on the WMD issue did not experience pressure. On the other, the report noted, “It is hard to deny that the intelligence analysts worked in an environment that did not encourage skepticism about the conventional wisdom.”3 It is difficult to explain this discrepancy; perhaps the commission was, well, under pressure. Elsewhere, former Chief United Nations weapons inspector, Hans Blix, bemoaned that “the administration leaned on us.”4

Bush believes that “it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how war began.”5 Of course, it is the Bush administration that is trying to rewrite the history of how the war began. Responsible observers are now forced to revise Bush’s rewritten version so that it is closer to the facts. Four well-know examples should suffice to show that the Bush administration deceived the U.S. public, and that “Revisionists” are those who simply want to keep the record accurate for future historians of the Iraq War:

http://hnn.us/articles/22700.html