Robert A. Heinlein Talks about Iraq

Well, ok, indirectly. He's actually talking about the Spanish-American War. The "politically correct" complainers in the mid-1980's were getting to him, and he took them to task.

At this point I must drag out my soap box.

In the twentieth century Gregorian, in the United States of America, something called "revisionist history" became popular among "intellectuals." Revisionism appears to have been based on the notion that the living actors present on the spot never understood what they were doing or why, or how they were being manipulated, being mere puppets in the hands of unseen evil forces.

This may be true. I don't know.

But why are the people of the United States and their government always the villains in the eyes of the revisionists? Why can't our enemies--such as the king of Spain, and the kaiser, and Hitler, and Geronimo, and Villa, and Sandino, and Mao Tse-tung, and Jefferson Davis--why can't these each take a turn in the pillory? Why is it always our turn?

I am well aware that the revisionists maintain that William Randolph Hearst created the Spanish-American War to increase the circulation of his newspapers. I know, too, that various scholars and experts later asserted that the USS Maine, at dock in Havana harbor, was blown up (with loss of 225 American lives) by faceless villains whose purpose was to make Spain look bad and thereby to prepare the American people to accept a declaration of war against Spain.

Now look carefully at what I said. I said that I know that these things are asserted. I did not say that they are true.

It is unquestionably true that the United States, acting officially, was rude to the Spanish government concerning Spain's oppression of the Cuban people. It is also true that William Randolph Hearst used his newspapers to say any number of unpleasant things about the Spanish government. But Hearst was not the United States and he had no guns and no ships and no authority. What he did have was a loud voice and no respect for tyrants. Tyrants hate people like that.

Somehow those masochistic revisionists have turned the War of 1898 into a case of imperialistic aggression by the United States. How an imperialist war could result in the freeing of Cuba and of the Philippines is never made clear. But revisionism always starts with the assumption that the United States is the villain. Once the revisionist historian proves this assumption (usually by circular logic) he is granted his Ph.D. and is well on his way to a Nobel peace prize.

This little gem is from To Sail Beyond the Sunset, chapter 5, "Exit from Eden."

Posted on 07/22/2003 at 03:04:24 PM EDT.