American political science has not produced very many great ideas, and what ideas it has produced have not been very consequential. In part this is because most American political scientists have very much adhered to the liberal or progressive tradition in American politics (one of the principal founders of the American Political Science Association was Woodrow Wilson), and they have tended to merely reflect that tradition rather than to reflect upon it, and thus to reiterate it rather than to reinvent it. The only real discipline in this peculiar academic discipline has been the discipline imposed by a pervasive progressive ideology.

However, there has been one American political scientist who did produce great ideas, and even a succession of them. He was also very conscious that ideas have consequences, and some of his own ideas had consequences that are still reverberating around the world today. That political scientist was Samuel P. Huntington, whose exemplary scholarly life came to an end this past Christmas Eve. One of the reasons that his ideas are both great and consequential is that he did not adhere to the conventional liberal and progressive ones. Rather, Huntington sought to create a distinctive kind of American conservatism, one that would recognize the energy and even the value of traditional American liberalism and self-advancement, but would guide that energy into paths of realism and self-restraint. In this way, American conservatism could enable American liberalism to conserve itself. Most consequentially, given the great international challenges the United States has faced in the past century, it could help America to conserve itself in a world filled with non-liberal and even anti-liberal ideas and powers.

Samuel Huntington spent most of his life and did most of his work in places where conservatives are rarely found and where conservatives rarely look. Indeed, those places—New England, Harvard University, the American Political Science Association (APSA), and the Democratic Party—have been centers of liberalism and progressivism for most of the past century. Yet it was by being in this liberal world, while not really being of it, that Huntington developed a kind of American conservatism that was particularly tempered and resilient, strong and solid, and consistent and enduring. Throughout his scholarly life, he was an inspiring model of intellectual courage.

Huntington’s career began in the early 1950s with a number of innovative and definitive articles on American politics, including a seminal piece on American conservatism. Then, for half a century from the publication of The Soldier and the State (Harvard University Press, 1956) to the publication of Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity (Simon and Schuster, 2004), he produced a series of great books (in this essay, we will discuss six), roughly one in every decade. Each developed a distinctive conservative position on an important political challenge and policy issue of its time, but also of today. Each was met with a chorus of liberal criticism, but each became the center of the intellectual debate on its topic, a lion in the path that every other serious scholar had to confront. Huntington’s professional colleagues in APSA continuously criticized his arguments, but they nevertheless recognized his greatness, not only by selecting him to be the Association’s president but also by repeatedly identifying him in their polls as the most distinguished member of their profession.

Huntington’s intellectual perspective was shaped very much by the political conflicts that issued from the legacies of the New Deal and the Second World War and by the challenges of the Cold War. On the one side, there was the liberalism of the Democratic Party, which had been exemplified by the internationalism of Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and which was still prominent within the party in the 1950s. On the other side, there was the putative conservatism of the Republican Party (which European conservatives saw as just another kind of liberalism), one version being the defensive isolationism of Senator Robert Taft and the other being the assertive nationalism of General Douglas MacArthur. Each of these Democratic and Republican approaches had led to some kind of American debacle in the course of the previous two decades.

These policies were criticized by a new kind of American conservative, exemplified by George Kennan and Reinhold Niebuhr. Such thinking was also enriched by the contributions of European immigrants to America, such as Hans Morgenthau and FPRI’s founder, Robert Strausz-Hupé. These conservatives sought to construct more solid and successful American policies upon a basis of central and enduring American national interests, with these interests in turn representing central and enduring American national traditions which went back to the balanced and realistic conceptions of the founding generation of America statesmen, for example, Washington, Madison, and Hamilton. The result was a distinctive kind of American conservatism dedicated to conserving fundamental American interests and traditions in a world of hostile powers and ideologies such as the Soviet Union and communism, and in an America which all too often had lurched from one unrealistic ideology and reckless policy—indeed adolescent and self-indulgent mentality—to another. Huntington came of intellectual age in this milieu.

The Soldier and the State

In his first book, The Soldier and the State, Huntington developed just such a balanced, realistic, and conservative conception with respect to the challenging issue of civil-military relations, i.e., the proper relationship between elected political leaders and professional military officers, particularly that within a liberal democracy and constitutional order. Prominent in the 1950s (President Truman’s firing of General MacArthur during the Korean War had occurred only recently), this issue has reappeared in every decade since, right down to the Iraq War. We can be sure that it will reappear again in the wars that the United States undertakes in the future.

Huntington argued that elected officials of course had to be the ones who set the nation’s policies, but that these officials also had to recognize and respect the distinctive perspective and knowledge of the military profession in setting realistic limitations as to how these policies could be implemented. Huntington’s position was thus very much like that of Carl von Clausewitz, but with the right civil-military balance being even more difficult—but just as necessary—to achieve in democratic America than it had been in monarchical Prussia. The Huntington conception is conservative in its recognition that the best political order is a proportioned balance—i.e., a mixed regime or constitutional order—composed of separate institutions with distinctive perspectives, but coming together around shared values and a common objective. This kind of conservatism was represented by Aristotle in classical political philosophy, by Burke in British political thought, and by Madison in American constitutional theory, and it has an enduring validity. There has always been a need for such a political order and particularly for civil-military relations, and there always will be. This was true in the 1950s, it was true in the 2000s during the Bush administration, and it will be true in the 2010s during the Obama administration. Huntington’s The Soldier and the State therefore remains an excellent guide for steering us through the civil-military challenges of today and in the future.

The Common Defense

It soon became evident to Huntington that the U.S. military was characterized by a certain kind of proportioned balance within itself, one that was also composed of separate institutions with distinctive perspectives, in this case the separate military services. This condition resulted in the purported problem of inter-service rivalry, something that often perplexed and troubled American civilians. They had expected a unified American military, especially after the supposed unification of the services within a single Department of Defense in 1947.

Huntington examined this inter-service rivalry in The Common Defense: Strategic Programs in American Politics (Columbia University Press, 1961). He demonstrated that the most important U.S. strategic programs were the product not of some rational deduction from a central strategic concept, but instead were the product of political negotiations between the different military services. Within the executive branch of the U.S. government, there was really a log-rolling process similar to that which had always occurred within the Congressional branch; Huntington called this process “executive legislation.” In his extensive analysis of the U.S. defense policies of the 1950s, he showed that executive legislation—this proportioned balance between the military services—had actually produced strategic programs which were better overall for U.S. national security than simple executive direction would have done. He concluded that inter-service rivalry was not so much a problem for America as it was a solution, a solution very much in keeping with the traditional and successful ways in which Americans had normally addressed challenges. Here, too, Huntington’s work has enduring value. The existence of separate U.S. military services with different perspectives—and the problems or solutions which are the result—are realities that have shaped U.S. defense policies ever since Huntington wrote about them, and they will continue to do so as long as the United States has any defense policy at all.

Political Order in Changing Societies

By the mid-1960s, the United States was confronting the challenges posed by the collapse of the European empires, the onset of political anarchy, and the threat of communist revolutions in the new Third World. Huntington directly addressed these challenges in his Political Order and Changing Societies (Yale University Press, 1968), which instantly became the major work in the field of political development. He acknowledged that liberal democracy was certainly a desirable political system, but he argued that our American version was the product of a distinctive American history and British legacy, going back to Tudor times. It was unlikely to be successfully exported to other countries with other traditions. Rather, the best political system for any country would have to be the product of its own particular history and legacy, with these being embodied in strong and stable political institutions. Only these could bring about the political order which was the necessary condition for any civilized society.

As Huntington saw it, the problem in many countries was that the new political mobilization of the population was outpacing and overwhelming their existing political structures. What was needed was new (or renewed), strong, and stable political institutions. The United States’ role in political development should be to assist countries in establishing such institutions. Huntington thus followed Hobbes in his emphasis on political order, but he also followed Burke in his emphasis on cultural conditions, and, again, his work has an enduring validity. Huntington’s Political Order in Changing Societies therefore remains an excellent guide for Americans in addressing the challenges of “failed states” and “nation-building,” today and in the future.

American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony

At the very moment that Huntington published his analysis of political mobilization and the need for political institutions abroad, however, political mobilization was overwhelming political institutions within the United States itself. By the late 1960s, newly-mobilized movements—such as civil rights and student protests—were surging into American politics, while long-established institutions such as the Democratic Party, the federal government, and the military services were losing their political legitimacy. This destabilizing conjunction of ideological demands and institutional illegitimacy continued throughout the 1970s.

It was in these circumstances that Huntington wrote American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony (Harvard University Press, 1981). He showed that there had been earlier periods in American history that were similar to the 1960s-1970s. At the core of the American national identity was the American Creed, a deeply rooted and well-articulated set of distinctively American ideas and ideals. These ideals were so abstract and exalted that they often bore little relationship to reality. Conversely, at the foundation of the American political order was a set of distinctive American political interests and institutions. These institutions often maintained and preserved reality, even if that reality seemed to be unjust. This permanent gap between ideals and institutions (which Huntington called the IvI gap) gave rise to a permanent tension in American politics, and at times this tension was transformed into a full-blown ideological passion for radical change, by which the ideals would supplant the institutions and bring about a whole new political world. These radical hopes were, of course, always disappointed, and so American politics would then return to some version of the old equilibrium between ideals and institutions, at least until the next era of ideological passion arrived.

Of course, Huntington’s analysis of these successive phases of American politics turned out to be exactly correct. The ideological and radical passions of the 1960s-1970s were followed by the institutional and conservative stability of the 1980s-1990s. And now, as America passes from the sour political frustrations associated with the Bush administration to the exalted political hopes attached to the Obama administration, we may be entering once again into a new era of passionate ideas and ideals.

The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

By the 1990s, the United States had been dramatically successful in overcoming the challenges posed by communist revolutions and even by the Soviet Union itself. But in their place there were now new problems posed by rising powers, such as China, and by reviving religions, such as Islam. Huntington directly addressed these new issues in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Simon and Schuster, 1996). This quickly became his most famous book, one translated into numerous languages. Indeed, his thesis became so well known, and in such high places, that his critics often said that his ideas about clashes between civilizations had actually had the consequences of aggravating those clashes, that his argument had become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Huntington proposed that the conflicts of the new era would emanate not from national states or political ideologies, as they had for much of the twentieth century and in the two world wars and the Cold War, but from distinct civilizations that were grounded in distinct religious traditions. He deeply believed in the traditions and values of our own Western civilization and of its leading state, the United States, and he sought the best way to preserve it in a world that was experiencing intensifying clashes deriving from religion and culture. Analogous to his approach in his previous works, he argued that Western civilization was the product of a distinctive Western history and Christian legacy and that its traditions and values were unlikely to be successfully exported to others with their own distinctive traditions.

Huntington was concerned that, in the aftermath of the victory of the United States and the West in the Cold War, Americans were prone to think that their particular ideas and ideals of liberal democracy, free markets, open societies, and individual human rights had such universal validity and popularity that they could and should be widely promoted and even imposed abroad. Globalization, in particular, was an ideology that stressed the inevitability of these American ideas being adopted around the globe, whatever had been the different traditions and ideas inherited from other, and now presumably past, civilizations.

Huntington thought that this belief in the universalism and globalization of particular American ideas would greatly aggravate clashes between the West and others. He saw some degree of conflict as being inevitable, but he argued that the clashes between the West and the rest could be kept manageable and limited, so long as the United States and the West recognized the distinctive nature and the limited applicability of their traditions and ideas. Western civilization should focus upon strengthening its own traditions and identity, while expecting that other civilizations would do much the same. The U.S. role within the West should be to encourage this strengthening, and within the world to facilitate mutual recognition and accommodation between the different civilizations. Huntington thus sought to conserve Western traditions and values which reach back more than two millennia, within the closest approximation to a world order as we are likely to get in the contemporary era.

Today, more than a dozen years after Huntington advanced his famous and controversial thesis, it is useful to see how it fits some of the current realities about different civilizations. On the one hand, the proponents of the universalism and globalization thesis can point to the greatly increased integration of China, and of Sinic and Confucian civilization more generally, into the global economy, along with growing business and professional classes which are adopting some version of Western ideas (albeit with Chinese characteristics). Similar developments are going on in India or the Hindu civilization. On the other hand, proponents of the clash-of-civilizations thesis can point to the greatly increased conflict between America, and the West more generally, and the Islamic civilization, with the United States engaged in wars against Islamist insurgents in both Iraq and Afghanistan and against Islamist terrorist networks around the world, and with new wars against other Islamists doubtless still to come. Given the continuing dismal and destructive conflicts between the West and the Islamic world, Huntington’s work once again has an enduring validity, and The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order remains an excellent guide for steering us through such conflicts today and in the future.

Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity

By the 2000s, however, it was evident that Western civilization and even the United States were seriously divided within themselves about what their identity should be. Very few people in the West identified any longer with Western civilization, and many Americans, particularly among cultural and business elites, no longer identified with American traditions. Huntington directly addressed this phenomenon in Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity (Simon and Schuster, 2004). He argued that at the core of American identity was a distinctive culture, which was the product of British traditions and the Protestant religion and which he termed Anglo-Protestant culture. Huntington made clear that this Anglo-Protestant culture and American identity was defined by traditions, values, and ideas and decidedly not by any particular ethnic origin. Generations of Americans from virtually all ethnic backgrounds had willingly adopted this culture and identity, and this had led to their own success and to the success of America as a whole.

In recent decades, however, this distinctive and successful American identity has been threatened by some elites who have developed ideologies of multiculturalism and globalization and who have effected a multicultural or global identity, rather than an American one. The American identity has also been threatened by new immigration patterns in which the rate of arrival of people from different cultures has exceeded the rate of assimilation into the traditional American culture. Huntington urged all Americans to recognize the reality and worth of their own traditions and identity, i.e., to conserve America and therefore conserve themselves. There can hardly be a more authentic kind of American conservatism than this.

It is historically fitting that Samuel Huntington called upon Americans to conserve America. In the seventeenth century, the first Huntingtons arrived in America, as Puritans and as founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In the eighteenth century, Samuel Huntington of Connecticut was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. In the nineteenth century, Collis P. Huntington was a builder of the transcontinental railroad. In the twentieth century, Samuel P. Huntington was for half a century the most consistently brilliant and creative political scientist in the United States. Huntingtons had been present at the creation for most of the great events of American history, and Samuel Huntington knew intimately and believed intensely in what America was all about. His ideas about America and its role in the world were simultaneously original, conservative, and consequential. He was a splendid exemplar of American creative intelligence and intellectual courage.

Washington’s bold and secret 1781 march from Dobbs Ferry, NY, to victory at the Battle of Yorktown in Virginia, began on Sunday morning, August 19, 1781, when the American army broke its 6 week summer encampment in lower Westchester and was paraded for the march in Dobbs Ferry.  The allied French army, under the command of General Rochambeau, broke camp and departed for Virginia on the same day, about 3 miles to the east of Dobbs Ferry. Washington, the supreme commander of the allied armies, had made the decision five days earlier, on Aug. 14, 1781, to change strategy and risk a march of more than 400 miles from New York to Virginia, where he hoped to surprise and trap General Cornwallis’s 7,500 British and Hessian troops.

Washington’s new strategy would win the war. Yet this outcome was completely unforeseen by most observers in the summer of 1781. For Washington’s new strategy was adopted at a time of dismal military prospects, and few anticipated that 1781 could be the year of a dramatic American victory. Congress and the states, discouraged by the long and seemingly inconclusive war, were providing Washington with minimal material support. His army lacked basic supplies, and French officers wrote of their amazement on witnessing the state of destitution of the American army. American forces would not have been able to march to Virginia at all had not Rochambeau generously provided them with desperately needed funds, 20,000 gold dollars in all, which amounted to half of his own war chest.

Washington’s march to Virginia was arguably the most decisive military movement of the Revolutionary War. On October 19, 1781, two months to the day following the departure of the American army from Dobbs Ferry, Cornwallis surrendered his entire army to the allied American and French forces. The victory at Yorktown broke a long-standing military stalemate and led to the end of the Revolutionary War and to remarkably favorable peace terms for the young republic.

Because Washington’s march was so consequential to the fate of our nation, Congress, in 2000, asked the National Park Service to survey the Washington-Rochambeau route and to identify the full range of historic themes associated with the route (Public Law 106-473). Congress is now considering legislation to commemorate the march of the allied armies to Virginia by establishing the Washington-Rochambeau National Historic Trail, which, if it becomes a reality, would run through nine of the original thirteen states.

In response to the 2000 request of Congress, the NPS surveyed the W-R route and published the results of the survey in the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route Resource Study & Environmental Assessment (October, 2006). I was one of the trustees of the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society who read the historical narrative in the W-R Resource Study soon after its publication: we were disappointed to see that the actual historical significance of Dobbs Ferry was not recognized, even though Dobbs Ferry was the starting point of Washington’s march to Yorktown.

Determined to correct this error, the society sent a 14 page document, with a wealth of historical evidence, most of it primary source, to the NPS on December 2, 2006, during the ‘public comment’ period. Nine months later, the NPS responded to our document in a perfunctory way, cavalierly disregarding the evidence and the principal historical points.

When we state that Dobbs Ferry was the starting point of Washington’s 1781 march, we are not making a new historical claim.  Dobbs Ferry has long been recognized by historians as the starting point of Washington’s march. A map prepared in 2001 for a different NPS project (called The American Revolution at a Glance), prominently shows Dobbs Ferry as the starting point of Washington’s 1781 march to Virginia. And a map of Washington’s march to Yorktown, prepared by historians at the United States Military Academy at West Point, unambiguously identifies Dobbs Ferry as the point of origin and shows that 2,000 American troops marched from Dobbs Ferry to the Battle of Yorktown.

So Dobbs Ferry is not making a new claim; rather, we are attempting to prevent erasure, in NPS historical narratives, of Dobbs Ferry’s very well-substantiated history. We have endeavored to engage the NPS through various means, including the public comment period and U.S. Senate testimony on April 26, 2007,, in order to ask this basic question: Apart from Yorktown itself, what locality along the line of Washington’s march to Virginia is more significant than its starting point?  The question deserves an answer, and we are still waiting for the NPS to respond.

In January and November, 2008, Dobbs Ferry’s appeal was given strong support by Thomas Fleming, President of the Society of American Historians and by David Hackett Fischer, Pulitzer Prize recipient and University Professor and Earl Warren Professor of History at Brandeis University. Each historian independently reviewed the historical material, and each independently concluded that Dobbs Ferry’s historical contentions are correct.

On January 6, 2008, Thomas Fleming sent a strong letter of support on behalf of Dobbs Ferry’s appeal for historical accuracy to many senators and representatives, which stated that: “… the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society submitted a 14 page comment to the NPS on December 2, 2006, with ample evidence that the town was the actual starting point for the march.  My investigation confirms the validity of their maps and citations…”

In November, 2008, David Hackett Fischer sent me the following statement: My reading of the primary evidence is much the same as yours.  The account of Dr. Thacher, the maps of French officers, and the correspondence of George Washington all clearly indicate that French and American troops camped in Dobbs Ferry and other towns nearby.  Dobbs Ferry itself was the scene of one of the most dramatic events of the march.  American troops paraded there and started the long march to Virginia, making feints in other directions as they passed New York.  Dobbs Ferry deserves to be remembered as one of the crossroads of the American Revolution.  In the Dobbs Ferry area, George Washington made one of the decisive choices of the Revolution, when he turned hisarmy toward Virginia and victory in the American War of Independence. 
One would think that an historical opinion offered by these eminent historians would be of some interest to the NPS. But no: the agency has simply ignored their opinion.

We are beginning to understand why. In August, 2008, an article about Dobbs Ferry’s appeal in the Scarsdale Inquirer acted as a spotlight, and we now have a glimpse of the political influences which have been brought to bear on the NPS decision-making process. In the article the main lobbying group for the Washington-Rochambeau Trail legislation, known as W3R (the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route Association), went on the attack, and attempted to discount Dobbs Ferry’s historical significance on the Washington-Rochambeau Historic Trail with assertions that flatly contradict the historical evidence and are extremely easy to refute. I was astonished that W3R representatives were willing to have such nonsensical claims appear in print. Nevertheless, the Scarsdale Inquirer article is revealing, as it shows the firm intent of W3R-New York to block Dobbs Ferry’s recognition. A detailed refutation of the W3R assertions are posted on www.VillageHistorian.org . I will be glad to send the article itself, in pdf format, to anyone who requests it.

The Washington-Rochambeau route, which passes through nine states, is about to become a national historic trail, but never mind the historical facts! Instead, consider this: when the Washington-Rochambeau Trail legislation is enacted by Congress, the NPS will make decisions on the placement of valuable assets of historical tourism, including visitors’ centers and museums. The localities that are selected can expect a significant boost to their economies. In each of the nine states, however, only a few localities can be selected, and the leaders of W3R-New York appear to have their own preferred sites in mind. Clearly, Dobbs Ferry is not one of them.

Some have suggested that since the stakes are so high, the attack by W3R-NewYork on Dobbs Ferry is simply an effort to rub out a rival and exclude it from the competition for those valuable assets before the competition even starts. Whatever their intent, however, a village which is deserving of NPS support, and the public, which is entitled to accurate historical information, are both being given short shrift.

"Thousands of tribesmen on Saturday attended the funeral prayers of the victims of Friday’s drone attacks in the North and South Waziristan Agencies. They condemned the killings and asked US President Barack Obama to spend the money on the welfare of the tribal people instead of killing them with sophisticated weapons. . . They claimed that all those killed in the attack were innocent and local villagers, who had nothing to do with militancy or Taliban."

So how is discussing this air strike and the reaction it evoked in the Pakistani public in any way like Woodward gossiping about Caroline Kennedy?

If it is being alleged that my column contained unsubstantiated speculation, then the details of that speculation should have been pointed to, and alternative information calling it into question should have been presented. Simply likening an analysis to gossip is insufficient to discredit it unless actual proof of false or shaky assertions is offered.

Among the few points at which Ms. Marsh engages with the substance of my argument is her comment,"Whether President Obama approved continuing these strikes or not, he did, the fundamentalists in Pakistan will continue their work to make an Islamic state independent of what the new American President does or does not do."

There are several things wrong with this assertion. It assumes that the"fundamentalists" in Pakistan are unchanging in their essence and that they are unpersuadable and cannot be reasoned with or negotiated with. But this is how the Jamaat-i Islami responded to Obama's inauguration speech:

"Jamaat-e-Islami welcomed a pledge from US President Barack Obama to seek a"new way forward" with the Muslim world after eight turbulent years at the White House."We welcome it very much," said Khurshid Ahmed, a senior leader in the Jamaat-i-Islami -- the main religious political party in Pakistan and an organiser of angry demonstrations against the US and Israel. Ahmed slammed outgoing US president George W. Bush, accusing him of"alienating the US and Americans from the Muslim world.""Obama has to face the real issues, go into the causes and work seriously for the abdication of Bush's policies," Ahmed told AFP."Unless he does that, mere words will not be sufficient."

The JI leader Qazi Husain Ahmad is old enough to remember admiring the United States back in the 1950s and 1960s for the stance it often took in favor of decolonization in the Third World. (The US typically only opposed decolonization if the liberation movement had been taken over by Communists). At least according to leaders such as Qazi Husain, he Jamaat-i Islami is not intrinsically anti-American, though some tensions between it and US policy do arise.

My point, moreover, was not about whether JI cadres will remain committed to their Islamization project. It was about the attitude to the JI of the Pakistani electorate over time. The Jamaat-i Islami has only occasionally performed well in Pakistani elections. Its high points were 1970, when it and two clerical parties collectively won 14% of seats in parliament; and 2002, when the Islamic Action Council of which it formed part won 17% at the federal level and actually took over the North-West Frontier Province and (in coalition) Baluchistan, the two provinces most crucial to Afghanistan security. This 2002 good showing by the fundamentalists was certainly a result of Pakistanis casting a protest vote against the US bombing and invasion of neighboring Afghanistan.

The Jamaat declined to participate in the Februay 2008 polls on the grounds that they were held under a corrupted judiciary, since Gen. Musharraf had dismissed the Supreme Court and replaced it with more pliable justices. (By the way, for the JI to defend the secular supreme court suggests that its political project is broader than just establishing an Islamic state).

The current political eclipse of the Jamaat is not written in stone. The Pakistani public does not usually vote fundamentalist, but some proportion of the electorate sometimes does, and anti-imperalism and Muslim nationalism are impetuses for it. Continued America airstrikes on Pakistani territory, which are extremely unpopular with the Pakistani public, could shift the electorate to the religious right over time. It happened in 2002, and could happen again. The airstrikes make the Pakistan Peoples Party government, secular and left of center, look wimpy and even like collaborators in the country's humiliation.

I lived in Pakistan off and on for a couple of years and know Hindi-Urdu and have followed Pakistani politics since 1981. I have authored academically on South Asian Islam. These things do not mean I am right, only that my views on what could happen are not uninformed and not based on mere armchair speculation.

Marsh writes,"In other words, unlike Bush, who made everything about Anything But What Clinton Did, Obama will approve airstrikes if they are warranted in Pakistan (or elsewhere), not stop them just because it was Bush policy."

What I was saying is that Obama cannot possibly have known, 4 days into his presidency, whether airstrikes on Pakistan are"warranted." I was saying that he should have called a time-out and heard Holbrooke's report first. He should have had formal face-to-face consultations with President Asaf Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, and perhaps with the opposition, such as former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, as well.

Bombing Pakistan unilaterally is illegal in international law where Pakistan has not attacked the United States or where there is no United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing such an attack. Please see the Charter of the United Nations, to which the US is a signatory. If the US had a formal treaty with Pakistan, signed off by the legislatures of the two countries, that permitted hot pursuit of militants from Afghan territory, that would bestow a basic legality on it. But the only warrant for the US to shoot Hellfire missiles into Pakistan and kill Pakistani women and children along with militants, is the Bush Doctrine, which I want to be abolished and which I had understood Obama and his team to object to, as well. Contravening US treaty obligations and international law is a war crime.

Toward the end of the essay it is suggested that my column could be lumped in with the blogging of pacifists who oppose all military action. I supported the 2001-2002 US war in Afghanistan and am not a pacifist. I do, however, advocate an option for peace, which is that I believe peaceful means of addressing conflict should trump violent ones until it becomes clear that they simply are not working and that violence is necessary for self-protection.

The danger of Obama becoming mired down in Afghanistan and Pakistan is very real, and is obvious to anyone who knows the history of imperial interventions in the former. Warning Obama that he started out on a bad foot in Pakistan and suggesting that he take some time to consider charting his own, original course, is not injurious to Obama. Blind support for whatever he does is what would harm him.

I have been thrown out of organizations and even a whole country for refusing to toe a party line. Baathist Syria censored my news articles when I was working for a newspaper in Beirut. Theocratic Iran, where you have to follow the khatt-i Imami, the line of the Supreme Leader, once had me blackballed from an academic conference they helped fund. I object to party lines. I am not interested in being a court poet who spouts panegyrics. I am interested in being the academic equivalent of Hunter S. Thompson.

History on Trial

By Deborah E. Lipstadt

Ecco, 2005

"History on Trial" is Deborah E. Lipstadt's compelling first-person account of her experience as the defendant in a libel suit brought in 1996 by British author David Irving, who was unhappy that she had described him in print as a Holocaust denier. As I wrote in an afterword for the book, the trial was a rare instance in which"truth, justice and freedom of speech [were] all simultaneously served." What was at stake in the case transcended Lipstadt's reputation and fortune. Her antagonist sought to put the Holocaust itself on trial. This worried survivors, concerned that their history was being subjected to a judicial test, with standards of evidence and proof that did not always produce truth. Moreover, under British law, truth was not necessarily a defense to defamation. Through the determination of Lipstadt and the brilliant legal work of her lawyer, Anthony Julius, especially his devastating cross-examination of Irving, the court ruled that she had written the truth -- Irving is indeed a Holocaust denier -- and that he had not been defamed. The verdict also helped to expand the right of truthful free speech in Britain.