Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group

Obama as Hitler: The Perils of Historical Analogies in American Politics

By David B. MacDonald

Sad but true: comparing US leaders to Adolph Hitler hardly started with Barack Obama, and will no doubt continue well after he completes his two terms in office. In Wired magazine, Mike Godwin introduced his famous “Law of Nazi Analogies.” “As a Usenet discussion grows longer,” he argued, “the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” Those using Nazism to analogize everything from abortion to the war in Iraq automatically lost the argument. This shopworn trump card signaled that one side had lost its imagination – its ability to come up with a convincing argument, or even a convincing accusation.

Such musings can be found well before Rush Limbaugh and company. One conservative commentator, when faced with the specter of a Clinton or Obama presidency last year, used fascism’s moral brush to taint the entire Democratic Party. Jonah Goldberg, in Liberal Fascism, published by Doubleday, claimed that fascism was always “a phenomenon of the left.” Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt were fundamentally inspired by it when promoting New Deal and other public policies. Kennedy’s contribution to fascist aesthetics was to represent “a national yearning for ‘renewal’ and ‘rebirth,’ appealing to American idealism and calling for common sacrifice.” Hilary Clinton, the “first lady of liberal fascism,” drew “her vision from the same eternal instinct to impose order on society, to create an all-encompassing community.” Bill epitomized the “fascistic” forging of a “paternal bond with his ‘children’” in the same way Hitler created a bond with the German Volk. Obama is just the latest victim of this type of thinking, but it could just have easily have been Hilary. In fact Hilary might have been an easier target.

However, we must also be clear that Bush and Cheney were also routinely compared to Hitler – hence Godwin’s Law. A thread runs through this type of discourse: fear of too much government power where it doesn’t seem to belong. We can divide those who make such comparisons into two broad groups – a group who uses the comparisons for shock value, and those who actually believe them. Right now it’s difficult to separate which is which. However, it’s clear that there has always been an undercurrent of conspiracy theorizing in American politics which lends itself to fantastical accusations. Sociologist Peter Knight has traced this to America’s strong myths of individualism. In a country where a big state is seen to deprive people of their autonomy, the modern military industrial state provokes “a kind of low-level everyday paranoia that sees a hidden hand and a hidden agenda everywhere” he writes in his 2002 book Conspiracy Nation. Timothy Melley’s earlier book Empire of Conspiracy details a widespread problem of “agency panic”, where people are afraid of losing their sense of self in the face of modernization, technology, and a changing economic and social environment. Certainly America is seeing some big changes right now which lends itself to the sort of panic and mad accusations that Knight and Melley examine. If we adopt political commentator Andrew Sullivan’s suggestion, we might issue an annual award for “dumb Nazi analogies”. Comparing Obama to Hitler would no doubt clinch the prize for Limbaugh and his followers. However, there will be many more prize winners to come before this style of discourse runs out of steam.

David B. MacDonald is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Guelph and is the author of Thinking History, Fighting Evil: Neoconservatives and the Perils of Analogy in American Politics.

Jennifer’s Body and the American Devil

By W. Scott Poole

There are plenty of horror fanboys, and a lot of fan girls, who’ve been anxiously waiting to take a peek at Jennifer’s Body. The film’s combination of Megan Fox’s sex appeal and Diablo Cody’s signature dialogue (made famous in Juno and the United States of Tara) offers a feast for two disparate and usually incompatible groups: adolescent boys and those who like to like to see the conventions of the horror subverted with a bit of clever irony.

Fox plays Jennifer Check, head of the cheerleading squad who is deeply and sincerely lusted after by every raging hormone in her high school. In a nod to the evangelical paranoia of the 1980s, a “satanic rock band” (who in this 21st century update is an emo band called “Low Shoulder”) attempts to use Jennifer as a virginal sacrifice to Satan. Bad things happen, we learn, when you try to sacrifice a non-virgin to the Devil. Jennifer becomes an avatar of the Evil One and begins killing, and eating, every boy she can seduce while playing out a drama of toxic friendship with her best female friend, aptly named “Needy.”

Horror films, even the schlocky ones, draw on a host of cultural and religious anxieties. Panic over both female and male teenage sexuality, and its alleged dangers is certainly not a new theme in American culture. In 1734, Puritan divine Jonathan Edwards complained, with a thinly veiled metaphor, that the teens of his parish spent too much time in “company keeping.”

But Cody taps into an even more powerful stream of American religion and popular culture that I explore in my new book Satan in America: The Devil We Know. Jennifer is not the first woman to find her body becoming an instrument of Satan in the popular imagination. One woman accused of witchcraft in Puritan New England appeared to her victim floating above his bed and wearing a red bodice. Late nineteenth century discourses about contraception and abortion regularly made a connection between female sexuality and demonic influence (an image in the book from the National Police Gazette shows a young woman with scaly demon emerging from her vagina with a caption that reads “The Female Abortionist”). In the early twentieth century, silent film gave us “vamps” like Adele Farrington who, in a pre-code romp called The Devil’s Bondwoman (1916), portrayed a woman whose sexual appetites were so insatiable that she attracted Satan himself. By the 1940s, a comic book entitled Madame Satan told adolescents a similar story of a seductive woman who, using Satan’s supernatural power, attempted to lead men to destruction.

Cody has tried to turn the horror convention of the female victim of male violence on its head. Unfortunately, she may have simply replicated another, darker convention of women as source of evil. At the end of the day, Jennifer’s Body may have evoked more demons than it exorcised.

W. Scott Poole is associate professor in history at the College of Charleston. He is the author of the forthcoming Satan in America: The Devil We Know.

The Pitfalls of Historical Amnesia in the Middle East

By Paul J. Rich

In 1914 the British, largely with Indian troops, landed at Basra at the head of the Persian Gulf and began a disastrous march to Baghdad. They were surrounded by the Turks at Kut and there suffered a defeat that was compared to that of Yorktown. The casualties were enormous.

It is amazing that so little attention has been paid to this invasion and to the subsequent unhappy British occupation of what then were the Turkish provinces of Mesopotamia. The region was of course to become Iraq and the British would struggle with trying to impose their agenda well into the 1930s.

So little is said about this that one would think it was a secret, but there is no lack of information on the subject. There are some classic volumes such A.J. Barker’s The Neglected War: Mesopotamia 1914-18, and Briton Cooper Busch’s Britain and the Persian Gulf and his Britain, India, and the Arabs. In fact, scholars have done such notable work on the period and region that it is frustrating to see how untutored American policy towards the peoples of Iraq has been.

Reading about the attempted consolidation of Middle Eastern straps along Western lines in the past might have prevented some of the mistakes that have been made by the United States in its recent interventions. And there remains a great wealth of original source material to explore should anyone be inclined. One valuable archive is the records of the Mesopotamian Commission after the war, a highly controversial fact-finding tribunal investigating the British blunders during the campaign. Charges that it whitewashed the conduct of high British officials have never been resolved.

In retrospect, the British decision to land at Basra and create Iraq had much to do with the desire of those in charge of the Empire to extend Imperial rule into the Middle East. The Gulf shaikhdoms were already part of that Empire and taking the head of the Gulf and then going on to Baghdad seemed a logical extension. Figures such as Sir Percy Cox and Sir Arnold Wilson were the Colin Powells and Donald Rumsfelds of the period.

Occam’s razor is well applied to the Middle East situation. It is not atomic science to ask that American foreign policy display more sophistication. One simply must know something bout the nuances, the cultures, the ancient animosities, before plunging willy-nilly into marching to Baghdad. We didn’t.

Paul J. Rich is president of the Policy Studies Organization in Washington, D.C., visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the editor of Iraq and Gertrude Bell's The Arab of Mesopotamia, Iraq and Rupert Hay's Two Years in Kurdistan, Iraq and Eleanor Egan's The War in the Cradle of the World, and the author of the forthcoming Creating the Arabian Gulf: The British Raj and the Invasions of the Gulf.

Swine Flu Media Pandemic Scare: A Lesson from History?

By Debra E. Blakely

In light of the recent Swine Flu pandemic scare, several important trends emerged that demonstrate we haven’t come as far as the technology used to report it. In other words, while instant news stories popped up on major news wire services, Internet sites and social media outlets around the world, the narrative discourse, arbiters and resulting public health policies resorted to old frames created during the deadly 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic. Even though the death rate for Swine Flu has been extremely low, and influenza is an expected annual pesky visitor, reportage reflected the same intense public anxiety as was reported when millions were actually dying during the 1918 pandemic.

Media coverage in the USA began around April 22, when Swine Flu was detected in several people in San Diego County, California. Public health officials speculated that since this was a strain that had not been seen recently, and that a vaccine was not available, health officials should be on their guard. A couple of days later, a link was made to a recent Swine Flu epidemic in Mexico, where 60 deaths had occurred, from this report news and Internet stories went viral, with thousands of stories being published, tweeted and blogged around the world. In fact, the media coverage spread faster than the actual flu!

However, Swine Flu reportage was preceded with several reasonably calm stories as early as March 28, 2009. The United News of India reported that a Swine Influenza outbreak in Mexico and the USA had been identified and declared a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization. Given a gap of nearly a month between a real alarm and the media frenzy, one must ask, “How could this happen?” A logical exploration might turn out further investigation by asking: Was it the rampant use of technology that helped to fuel the explosion of Swine Flu reportage? Simply put, the answer would be yes and no. Yes, technology has definitely made it much easier for information, be it rumor or fact, to spread at rapid-viral speeds, (hence the phrase, going viral). However, it wasn’t technology, per se, that fueled the media coverage, but in fact it was the media coverage itself.

With initial media stories focusing their narratives on death rates and a virus with no vaccine, the next wave of influenza stories picked up on the analogy to the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918 and the 20 to 50 million deaths it caused worldwide. Stories speculated on infection rates and containment issues, and public health authorities obliged by putting into place quarantine orders and travel advisories. As infections popped up and were reported around the world, schools closed and public health officials scrambled for a vaccine. When Mexico decided to close down to contain their epidemic, the media coverage soared and business continuity plans with essential worker policies began to emerge as a new topic of conversation.

Perhaps, if reporters had made the analogical jump to the two subsequent pandemics, (the Asian Flu Pandemic of 1957 and the Hong Kong Flu Pandemic of 1968), they would have drawn more appropriate analogies, such as when deaths rates are low, and a vaccine is not available, one should focus on practical concerns, such as individual health practices and the natural course of nature. In time, and as time has shown, the virus will run its course.

While influenza remains an annual public health threat, and there is a chance that a deadly virus could possibly wreck havoc and destruction, the World Health Organization declared May 8th, that the world was better prepared to deal with an influenza pandemic. Are we, really?

Debra E. Blakely is assistant professor of communication at the University of Houston–Clear Lake and the author of Mass Mediated Disease: A Case Study Analysis of Three Flu Pandemics and Public Health Policy.

The Marshall Plan at Age 61: American Influence is Still Working

By Gerald M. Pops

Last week was the 61st anniversary of President Truman’s signing of the Economic Cooperation Act, which brought into being the European Recovery Program, popularly known (at President Truman’s insistence) as the Marshall Plan. Perhaps no piece of legislation aimed at promoting America’s international influence has been more successful or so widely admired. The Marshall Plan has come to signify America’s generous spirit, its efforts at nation-building, and its former successes in building regional models of cooperation. It also helped to lay a permanent foundation for the cross-Atlantic alliance and for internal European cooperation, most notably the Common Market and the European Union.

Unfortunately, the reputation has not remained completely untarnished. From time to time, political leaders have attempted to wrap their own initiatives and ideas in Marshall Plan rhetoric to give them greater currency, and thus in part distort the Marshall Plan image. For example, the phrase “Marshall Plan” was repeatedly used by the recent Bush administration to sell what turned out to be a mostly failed attempt to reconstruct Iraq’s economy in the wake of military conquest.

Assisting middle east countries within the true spirit of the Marshall Plan would require quite a different approach than the one undertaken by the Bush administration. The latter featured large, technical projects defined as necessary and organized by large American corporations, marginally involving Iraqis in the planning or implementation of projects, and undertaken in the absence of a sound security environment. By contrast, the Marshall Plan succeeded because it encouraged and relied upon the recipient countries themselves to organize themselves into an effective regional organization, in a climate of security guaranteed by international arrangements, and to determine for themselves what was needed and how the work should be done. And so there was both a collective, regional response and teams of technical experts (mostly U.S.) working within the recipient countries to bring about nation-specific responses according to what type of assistance was available and rapidly applied with maximum effect. A true Marshall Plan for the Middle East would thus require quite a different approach.

From the American side, the Marshall Plan was organized to enhance accountability in the use of resources and to measure progress of the effects of assistance. The Economic Cooperation Administration, the independent agency created by Congress as part of the Economic Cooperation Act and led by Paul Hoffman, and the U.S. State Department, through its country-specific missions under the general supervision of W. Averell Harriman, gave the multiple programs of European creation unquestioned legitimacy and an effectiveness that bypassed political controls to directly improve the lot of both recipient-nation industries and populations.

General George C. Marshall played a crucial role in conceiving the European Recovery Program (causing Truman to stamp his name on it), and getting it through the Congress and its implementation begun. His role in this enterprise, as generous and effective as it was, complemented Marshall’s crucial role in leading the allied forces in World War II, as well as his lesser-known achievements with the Civilian Conservation Corps, revolutionizing the training of the army’s officer corps, working at post-war accommodation in China, and his brilliant tactical contributions in World War I.

Gerald M. Pops is professor of public administration at West Virginia University and the author of Ethical Leadership in Turbulent Times: Modeling the Public Career of George C. Marshall.

Obama and Neoconservative Soft Power

By David B. MacDonald

The United States enjoys a decisive advantage in “hard power” capabilities. The American taxpayer spends just under half of the world’s defense budget, contributing greatly to America’s ability to wield military force in the international arena. And yet, the failure of the Bush administration to turn skeptics into allies demonstrates that Presidents seeking to get their way need more subtle tools as well. Joseph Nye some time ago referred to this as “soft power” – the ability to convince others of the rightness of your actions using America as a model and carrot rather than as an enemy and stick. For Nye, power is a magnet. On one side, if used wrongly it can repel. Flipped over, as Nye suggests, it has the ability to attract.

Nye and other soft power theorists, however, have largely ignored the fact that neoconservatives did believe in soft power. It was just a different kind of soft power. Their soft power consisted in the reiteration of American goodness and the “framing and shaming” of opponents. Since there was no question that the United States was a force for good in the world, there was no question that its actions would be seen as benignly intentioned and beneficial for all concerned. The soft power in which neoconservatives believed was almost unconsciously expressed – America was always a moral actor. How was this claim advanced? Largely, neoconservative arguments were based on “lessons of history” from World War II. For many neoconservatives this “good war” saw an unambiguously good America fighting against evil. Americans liberated Europe, freed Jews and other victims from the death camps, provided a haven for survivors, and pledged to defend Israel as a “lifeboat” for Jews worldwide threatened by lingering anti-Semitism. So goes the dominant narrative of America’s role in World War II which casts America as the antithesis of everything Nazi Germany represents. The Good War has become what nationalism theorists call a “usable past,” a readily identifiable stock of myths, symbols, images, rhetoric, and values on which policy-makers draw when confronting a crisis.

Steven Lukes’ classic reflection on power is useful in understanding what neoconseratives were trying to do in America and around the world. At its simplest level, power is of course the ability to make someone do something they don’t want to do, or to prevent them from doing what they want to do. This is hard power. Yet at its most complex level, power can be unconscious and internalized. Power exists where dominant actors are able to frame our understandings of the past and present to the extent that we operate within these frames without even knowing it. Power exists when moral barriers are erected about what should be discussed or not, and what actions should be performed or circumscribed.

An important part of neoconservative soft power was the ability to make opponents and skeptics of the U.S. feel guilt or shame. Reflecting a narrow understanding of World War II, Europeans were classified as “appeasers” or “collaborators” who sat back as the Holocaust unfolded. They either sat on their hands and did nothing, or helped round up Jews and other victims to be killed. This has at various times been known as the “myth of abandonment”, the “Auschwitz analogy”, or the “contract of mutual indifference”. The key was to see world history as a drama, which pitted America as a liberator trying to save victims, in the face of various aggressors and bystanders. American power was based on its identity as a liberator – on its consistent willingness to stand up to “evil” in world politics: Hitler, Stalin, Milosevic, bin Laden, and Saddam.

In such a view of history, Europeans were either perpetrators or bystanders, and were enjoined to feel shame for their bystanding, or guilt for their atrocities. Americans however could feel pride from their liberation efforts. After 9/11, these “role identities” as I call them became salient once more. The War on Terror, seen by Eliot Cohen, Norman Podhoretz and others as “World War IV” necessitated the same understanding of world politics. Americans were liberating Afghans and Iraqis, fighting totalitarian leaders like Saddam and bin Laden, while the Europeans either collaborated or appeased evil. This was the moral argument advanced by influential neoconservatives before and during the Iraq war.

Anti-Americanism was also instrumentalized to promote neoconservative soft power. In some neoconservative definitions, the term was likened to racism, anti-Semitism, and sexism. Since no good moral person would want to self-identity as a racist, anti-Semite, or sexist, accusations of anti-Americanism were designed to promote self-policing. If it was politically incorrect to see some groups of people as inferior, or dangerous, so too was it un-PC to denounce American actions in Iraq or elsewhere. Could one attack U.S. policies and George W. Bush without being an anti-American? Russell Berman for example, was clear that anti-Americanism was first and foremost a lens. Anti-Americans were against the war in Iraq because they viewed U.S. actions through anti-American glasses, not because there was anything objectively wrong with the mission per se. Andrei Markovits even proposed that anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism could be seen as “twin brothers”, since they seemed to be very alike and often accompanied each other. As such critics of the U.S. were denounced, using imagery borrowed from the civil rights era.

Neither of these views helped to encourage European or Canadian support. No one likes to be called a collaborator or appeaser, or have one's critique of American foreign policy likened to racism, sexism, or anti-Semitism. This style of moral soft power, the power to “frame and shame” did little to boost external support for the Iraq war. Rather, it was the reverse – shaming often encourages resistance, not compliance. Many Europeans used the same role identities, but chose to see the Iraqi people as the victims, victims first of sanctions, then of the U.S. invasion. The indiscriminate looting following the invasion, mixed with the bungling of the Bremer administration in Iraq, mixed with the “opening” of Iraq for foreign investment, did little to show American morality at its finest. For opponents of the war, those who sided with the U.S. aggressor: Spain, Italy, and Britain, were themselves the appeasers. The liberators in Europe seemed to be those who argued against the war, who feared the excesses of America’s unilateral power. Neoconservatives, in offering such a moral absolute framework for understanding world politics, buttressed their own sense of self-righteousness, but failed to draw too many outsiders into their world of moral absolutes.

The question for President Obama is: how can the U.S. regain its lost moral authority? How can it be once more be seen as a liberator and not an aggressor? This is not an easy question to answer for the new administration. What is particularly fascinating is the way both Barack Obama and John McCain promoted themselves as messianic redeemer candidates. Both promoted a theme of hope in the midst of adversity. Obama’s story and his message seemed clear: vote for me and show the world that America has transcended history – that it is a unified society not divided by race, or class, or ideology. McCain’s message was somewhat different. He too promised to redeem America, but largely through the story of his sacrifice at the hands of the Vietcong. McCain presented a pieta of the suffering Christ, willing to die for his country. McCain sacrificed so that Vietnam and indeed all U.S. conflicts, including Iraq could be vindicated by history. U.S. wars are not about national security, or oil, or terrorism, but about the suffering of soldiers, and their power to redeem America through their sacrifices, freely given, for the nation.

Ultimately the Obama message of hope seemed more forward looking, his knowledge of economic affairs stronger, his vision for Iraq more palatable. As Joe Nye said recently, Obama is soft power, in that he is widely popular around the world. A recent poll this year confirms that Obama is roundly popular. Of 18 countries, and over 17,000 people surveyed by GlobeScan and the Program on International Policy Attitudes, 67% said they had faith that Obama would help rebuild America’s image abroad. The most optimistic region was Europe, where 80% of Italians and Germans surveyed felt relations would improve under Obama. This is crucial since some 60% of Americans surveyed feel improving relations should be the administration’s top priority.

Unlike the neoconservative view of soft power, which relied on shaming allies, and promoting American goodness, Obama is more circumspect. He still retains great faith in America, but his soft power is more accommodating, less focused on absolutes. He has shown himself more willing to listen and less willing to dictate. He can no longer assume that U.S. soft power is a magnet that attracts, or that the American model is one the rest of the world wants to emulate. As Bush argued after winning his second term, “I earned capital in the campaign and now I intend to spend it.” Obama seems to understand better than his predecessor that spending without regard for the consequences (both figuratively and literally) can be a recipe for disaster.

David B. MacDonald is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Guelph and is the author of Thinking History, Fighting Evil: Neoconservatives and the Perils of Analogy in American Politics.

Marching on In Amelia Earhart’s Shoes: an Update on Research

By Tom King

Back on October 5, 2007, I reported here briefly on the 2007 expedition to Nikumaroro Island, continuing the research reported in the Altamira Press book Amelia Earhart’s Shoes. I’d like to update that report a little.

Readers will recall that our research is aimed at determining what happened to aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, when they disappeared over the Pacific in July of 1937. In a nutshell, we think they wound up on Nikumaroro, an uninhabited island in the Phoenix group of islands, part of today’s Republic of Kiribati but In those days part of the Crown Colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. Our work is sponsored by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), whose website, is the place to go for up-to-the-minute news and a wealth of background material. The 2007 expedition was our seventh to the island, and its primary focus was on the “Seven Site.” This is a location near the southeast end of the island, where colonial documents indicate a partial human skeleton was found in 1940, together with a sextant box with numbers on it, a woman’s shoe, and a few other artifacts, as well as evidence of a fire in which birds and turtles had been cooked. In 2001 we carried out fieldwork at the site, finding the remains of fires with bird, fish, and turtle bones, and a number of artifacts indicating that someone had been camping there in the late 1930s or early 1940s.

In 2007 we cleared the dense brush off a large area of the Seven Site, and found the remains of more fires. We scanned the area closely for human bones and teeth, and found none, but we did find a number of other suggestive artifacts. At the time of my October 5, 2007 report, analysis of what we brought back was just beginning. It’s been a slow process, since we’re entirely supported by volunteer work and contributed funding, but we’re at the point where I can report the following results.

1. A shard of beveled glass found on the site turned out to match another shard found in 2001, and together they very closely match the size, thickness and shape of a mirror from a 1930s woman’s compact.
2. Three small tabular lumps of red material found in two separate fire features have been subjected to chemical analysis; their chemistry is consistent with that of early twentieth century cosmetic rouge. The three lumps fit easily into the outline of the rouge compartment in a 1930s compact.
3. A piece of a pocket knife – one end of the knife and one of the thin metal strips that forms one side of one of the blade compartments – has been identified as coming from a bone handled jackknife produced by the Imperial Cutlery Company of Providence, Rhode Island sometime between 1930 and 1945. A similar knife is in the inventory of material recorded as being on Earhart’s plane prior to her world flight, but this type of knife was extremely common during World War II. Interestingly, the piece shows evidence of having been used as an informal prying tool, after the knife itself came apart.
4. Analysis of fishbone from the two fire features indicate exploitation of a broad range of easily available reef and lagoon species, with no indication of a focus on species usually favored by Pacific island populations. Moreover, whoever ate the fish did not consume the heads, which are usually regarded by Pacific Island people as delicacies. The faunal assemblage also includes a number of baby sea turtle bones, and the remains of one or more brown boobies; birdbone analysis is still underway, however.
5. One of the fire features contained the fragmented remains of two partly melted bottles, both of which had apparently been standing upright in the fire. One was an amber returnable beer bottle of probable pre-World War II origin; the other was a green bottle of a size and shape consistent with medicinal or cosmetic use, with an embossed patent number dating the bottle to sometime after 1933. We think the bottles may represent an attempt to purify water by boiling.
6. Both fire features contained many fragments of badly rusted ferrous metal, which appear to represent metal containers and/or cooking equipment.
7. Part of a zipper – the “pull” found on the surface of the site turns out to have been manufactured by Talon, an American company, in the 1930s. It was apparently not military in origin.
8. Perhaps most intriguingly, and the major focus of current research, is a fragmented lump of brown material sifted out of the excavation at one of the fire features. This turned out – to our considerable surprise – to be fecal material, and to contain human DNA. Analysis is continuing, by Molecular World, Inc. of Thunder Bay, Ontario.

Meanwhile, we’ve done further study of the numbers on the sextant box described in 1940 as having been found with the human bones, probably at the Seven Site. The box itself was lost in Fiji sometime after 1941. Comparative analysis provides strong indications that it held an early 20th century nautical sextant made by the Brandis Instrument Company and acquired by the U.S. Navy toward the end of World War I. Many such sextants were adapted by the Navy for aviation use, and were probably sold as surplus in the 1920s.

Incidentally, Google Earth now has excellent, fairly up-to-date imagery of Nikumaroro, though under its old colonial name of “Gardner Island.” You can view the Seven Site by navigating to 4o41’08.30”S, 174o29’48.34”W.

Details on the ongoing analysis will appear from time to time in TIGHAR’s newsletter, TIGHAR Tracks, and on its website. A full archaeological report and summary journal article are in preparation, pending the completion of analyses in progress. No further expeditions are planned at the moment, due to scarce finances, though there is certainly more fieldwork that could usefully be done. Nikumaroro, incidentally, is part of the Phoenix Islands Protected Area, featured last year in National Geographic. Its ecosystem is delicate, as are its archaeological sites, and it must be visited with care. Since it is very expensive to get there (by chartered ship), it has thus far not suffered too much from human use.

Tom King is the author of the Altamira Press textbooks Cultural Resource Laws and Practice, Federal Planning and Historic Places, Thinking About Cultural Resource Management, and Places That Count; he is also the co-author of Amelia Earhart’s Shoes. His latest book, elaborating on the points in this discussion, is Our Unprotected Heritage, published by Left Coast Press.

Building, Not Bombing

By Mary Susannah Robbins

In 1966, I was visiting Vietnam with the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and witnessed the bombing of Hanoi. I barely escaped with my life. The people there asked me to go back and tell the people of the United States about what I had seen in Vietnam and to ask them to stop bombing their country.

Forty-two years later, the United States is bombing Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in more unwinnable wars, destroying the countries this country wants to conquer.

The Obama team has its work cut out for itself.

Obama must withdraw American troops from Iraq, troops not even armed for the job they set out to do. There are fewer deaths in the Army than there have been in the past and more injuries: brain damage, spinal injuries, loss of limbs, as well as post-traumatic stress syndrome; the Veterans Administration cannot deal with the number of returned soldiers needing care.

The U.S. government is spending billions of dollars on military ventures oversees while the United States itself and therefore most of the world is experiencing an economic depression on a scale never known before.

Global warming and the environment must be brought under control, and this is the second task Obama’s presidency must undertake. There is no time to lose. Obama is committed to putting people to work repairing the infrastructure of this country with bridges, roads, schools, and committed to putting the country to work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to solve these problems, along with the increasing unemployment in America.


He should also create an agency that will do these things abroad in countries like Iraq, where the U.S. has destroyed the infrastructure.

All these projects will be essential if the planet is to survive; time is of the essence. If we can stop destroying the planet by war and waste and start rebuilding our country, our economies, our educational systems, and the lives of the people—instead of putting all our country’s money into trying to win unwinnable military battles—we may win the ultimate for peace and prosperity.

The alternative is unthinkable.

Mary Susannah Robbins is the author of Against the Vietnam War: Writings By Activists, Peace Not Terror: Leaders of the Antiwar Movement Speak Out Against U.S. Foreign Policy Post 9/11, and Earth, Air, Fire, and Water: A Memoir of the Sixties and Beyond.

Bill Ayers: An Unrepentant Terrorist

By Paul Hollander

As some political commentators attack Barack Obama for his ties to radical Bill Ayers (a cofounder of the 1960s Weather Underground, which bombed public buildings), many academics have rushed to Ayers’s defense. These professors share Ayers's political beliefs and seek to dissociate these beliefs from his past actions; the latter are outright denied, ignored, or obfuscated. Some have even gone so far as to sign an online petition demanding protection for Ayers's right to free speech, as though that were the issue in question.

I wrote about Ayers in my book The End of Commitment: Intellectuals, Revolutionaries and Political Morality (2006), which included a chapter about intellectuals who refused to reconsider their radical leftist beliefs. Ayers preeminently belongs to this group. I came to this conclusion after reading his memoirs and other writings. What is most unusual about him is that, unlike so many other sixties radicals, he has refused to express any regret for his past record of political violence, most notoriously in a New York Times interview. In that interview he said, “I don’t regret setting bombs.... I feel we did not do enough.” As reported elsewhere, he summed up his radical-activist career as “guilty as hell, free as a bird—America is a great country.” In his memoirs he redefines the political violence he and his comrades engaged in as “armed propaganda.” He escaped prosecution on serious federal charges due to a technicality.

Ayers was and probably remains an idealist, but his idealism is the kind—all too common among supporters of extremist movements—that allows the idealist to resort to sordid means in pursuit of the glorious ends. In the Inside Higher Ed piece, Ayers is euphemistically and misleadingly described as “a passionate participant” in the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s. Passionate he was, as well as intolerant, authoritarian, fanatical, and enamored with the grandiose and unrealistic political fantasies embraced by the most radical and most embittered groups (such as the Weathermen) of the period. In his defense we are informed that he is “a personable professor known to invite his classes over for dinner at his home” and that he “cooked pasta” for his students. Surely these moving gestures wipe the slate clean—a man of such warmth could not have planted bombs, could he? Many disreputable political figures have shown themselves to be capable of warmth on selected occasions, but this has little to do with their political beliefs and actions. Concentration camp commanders played (or listened to) classical music and took very good care of their pet animals, many mafiosi were good family men, and serial killers have often been described by their neighbors as nice, considerate people. I am not suggesting that Ayers belongs to these categories, only that acting kindly on nonpolitical occasions is compatible with displaying violent hatred in the political arena.

Ayers’s memoirs suggest that not only did he find it easy to justify his own and his friends’ political violence by the lofty goals pursued but that he was positively intoxicated by it; he expressed great pride in having been a good street fighter, in “fighting like madmen” the police and in the “warrior rising up inside me.” It cannot be ruled out that Ayers changed his mind about his past, modified his utopian longings and became more tolerant of those who don’t share his views of the world; it is even possible that he no longer believes that American society is the most detestable that ever existed. I have yet to see any statement of his that would indicate that such a transformation of his political persona has taken place.

Paul Hollander is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and author or editor of numerous books, including most recently The Only Superpower: Reflections on Strength, Weakness, and Anti-Americanism (Lexington Books, November 2008).

Liberation in the World’s Most Repressive Country

by Mike Kim

This week marks the forty-eighth anniversary of the start of the Korean War, as well as the publication of my first book, which traces my experiences helping North Koreans escape their repressive country. On June 25, 1950, North Korean troops invaded South Korea in hopes of absorbing the southern half of the peninsula into their Communist system. With the release date for my book quickly approaching, I wanted to take some time to reflect upon what happened in Korea fifty-eight years ago. Naturally, like everyone else, I immediately think of the two-and-a-half million people who died. But two additional thoughts also come to mind:

First, I think of my great uncle.
During the war, North Korean soldiers invaded Seoul and kidnapped eight engineers from a large electrical company. My great uncle was one of them. The soldiers took the engineers to a university auditorium. In front of a South Korean audience, they executed each of them one by one, until only my great uncle was left. The soldiers took him back to North Korea to help develop the country’s electrical system. We have not heard from my great uncle since. When I recently asked my grandmother to tell me more about her younger brother, she gave me a brief one-minute synopsis, then sighed deeply and said, “I really don’t want to think about it any more. I don’t like to talk about it, and on top of that I don’t really know that much. I don’t know what happened to him after he was kidnapped…. I don’t even have a picture of him.” For many years, I’ve hoped for the reunification of the two Koreas so that my great uncle could be freed and my grandmother could see her younger brother again.

Second, I think of how fortunate and blessed I am.
Recently, I was sitting in a Georgetown University classroom listening to an elderly North Korean defector give a talk. As a North Korean soldier who fought in the Korean War, he profusely apologized to the audience saying, “I would like to ask your forgiveness for having killed American soldiers.” Then he added, “From the onset of the war, it was clear that South Korean soldiers were like kindergarteners and North Korean soldiers were like college students. ... If there were to be a second Korean War, South Korea would lose. The day that U.S. troops withdraw from South Korea is the day that North Korea invades South Korea.”

At that moment, I was deeply moved as I thought to myself, “If the United States had not come to South Korea’s aid, I would currently be a North Korean communist.” I would have grown up in one of the worst famines in modern history. Even worse, I would have grown up under North Korean ideology and oppression. It is because of the U.S. involvement in the war that I have my freedom today.

A Free North Korea
The United States came to South Korea’s aid and helped the southern half retain its freedom. Yet, the north still lives completely enslaved. About six years ago, I decided I had to do my small part to change that. So, with a one-way ticket and two duffel bags, I set out for the China–North Korean border to do whatever I could to help North Korean refugees find freedom. Throughout my four years there, I met and interviewed hundreds of North Koreans. In Escaping North Korea, I tell their individual stories of victories in the midst of oppression, persecution, human trafficking, imprisonment, and torture. It’s my hope that this book will play a role in raising awareness about the world’s most repressive country and building hope that we will one day see a free North Korea.

Mike Kim is the author of Escaping North Korea: Defiance and Hope in the World's Most Repressive Country (Rowman & Littlefield).