Historians Will Judge

I heard it again this morning on NPR - the phrase I despise the most - "History Will Judge." The story was focused on Donald Rumsfeld's last day in office and the commentator argued that despite the fact that Rumsfeld is the second longest serving Secretary of Defense in history, how history will judge him depends a lot on the outcome of the war in Iraq.

As I've mentioned before HISTORY DOES NOT JUDGE - HISTORIANS DO!

I understand why many people (including some historians) find comfort in the phrase "History will judge", because it suggests that there is no interpretation involved, that the facts will just reveal the truth to future generations. It suggests that you can't argue with or appeal the judgement of history. History is Omnipotent.

However, we all know better. Historians will decide how to portray Rumsfeld in the future. And most likely the portrayal of him will change over time. There won't be ONE historical judgement but many.

Moreover, even the facts will change, or at least the facts that historians have access to will change. Government documents will become available, Rumsfeld's and Bush's papers will be opened, records in Iraq will be searchable and all these things will change how historians will judge the soon-to-be former Secretary of Defense.

Historians shouldn't be embarrassed by this, we shouldn't be scared of letting people know this, we should embrace it and shout it from the rooftops. History does not judge - Historians do!

I am thinking about walking around with this bag at the AHA just to get my point across.

Pinochet - The Human Rights Debate

In 1975, Richard Bloomfield, an analyst for the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs suggested that if the United States stood up for Human Rights in Chile it would not be acting out of the "emotionalism of a bleeding heart", but rather out of hard-headed realism.

Bloomfield argued that instead of worrying about whether Chile "the dagger-pointed-at-the-heart-of-Antarctica" had a government hostile to "the globe's greatest superpower", the Ford Administration should worry primarily about gaining the support of Congress, which was needed "for other aspects of our Latin American policy (e.g. Panama) and, indeed, for our foreign policy in general." Bloomfield also speculated that U.S. support for Human Rights might prevent further alienation of American young people with their government.

Despite Bloomfield's attempt to turn traditional Cold War understandings of what was in the best interest of the U.S. on its head, Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford continued to support the Pinochet regime. The Secretary of State even assured Chile's leader that when the administration did speak out about "human rights in general terms, and human rights in a world context" that "[t]he speech is not aimed a Chile." And while U.S. Intelligence Agencies estimated that over 1,600 civilians had been killed and 13,500 had been imprisoned during the coup that brought Pinochet to power, Kissinger believed that in the minds of Pinochet's American critics his "greatest sin was that" he "overthrew a government which was going Communist."

I think Bloomfield's main point is a good one to remember. The U.S. needs to constantly reevaluate its priorities and its understanding of what is in the country's best interest, even if that means thinking out-of-the-box when it comes to issues of national security, democracy, and stability. In the light of the Baker report and the resignation of Rumsfeld, I hope that even basic political assumptions are now being questioned.

(For more information on the relationship between the State Department and Pinochet's government, go to The National Security Archive.)