January 2011

“The Longest War” was unusual, informative, and beautifully illustrated, and it avoided the overused clichés of our time. Victor Davis Hanson deserves great praise.

In his February/March article “The Longest War,” Victor Davis Hanson proposes that “if we read it properly,” history proves that Osama bin Laden is inherently evil and there is no basis for the Islamic extremists’ view that America’s economic, political, or military policies have justified terrorist aggression. All the author’s arguments in support of that view are unassailable; indeed the article ably proves that our government has shown, and continues to show, appropriate self-restraint in the Islamic world. However, in his historical assessment of why bin Laden was able to attract so many followers, Hanson has avoided discussion of a very important modern element of the East-West conflict: cultural imperialism.

In the February/March article about terror on film ("History Now"), Allen Barra states that most films featuring terrorists are “irresponsible action movies.” Filmmakers, he writes, have needed “a new source of villainy ever since the Nazis got old and the Communists stepped down,” implying that terrorists are not really villainous but simply the victims of the filmmakers’ need to have bad guy characters.

Thank you for the article “Seasons of the Flag” (February/March). As one who was embarrassed and hurt by the nonsense espoused by so many in the sixties, I am heartened that the media, at least some of the media, would say what you said in the article. I am not a “love it or leave it” person, but I have lived abroad in a repressive society, I served in our military, and I raised a family in this country. We recognize the value of what we created, and it does not hurt one bit to show it. Your article was refreshing.

I enjoyed the article in the September 2001 issue about the Liberator, by Stephen E. Ambrose. Of particular interest to me is the photograph on page 41. It shows the pilot and several crew members of Exterminator , a B-24 D of the 8th Air Force, 2d Air Division, 93d Bomb Group, 330th Squadron. The man in the center of the picture pulling on his boot was Exterminator ’s pilot, Capt. Hugh R. Roper, of Oak City, Utah. He and the men in this photograph were lost while returning from their twenty-fifth mission, the famous low-level bombing raid on Ploesti, Romania, on August 1, 1943. During the return trip this aircraft and one flown by a new pilot collided in clouds over Yugoslavia, in a situation exactly like that described by Mr. Ambrose in the article.

It’s always good to read a realistic account such as this of the work, dedication, and sacrifice of the airmen of World War II.

I am only seventeen, but when I sat down and read Ed Basquill’s account of the 100 bags of mail he received while serving in the Gulf War ("My Brush With History,” November/December), I was instantly transported back to my first-grade classroom. Each student in our class sent out a generic letter to an unknown soldier involved in the conflict, wishing him luck and telling him that our prayers were with him.

I was lucky enough to hear back from a Marine. His name was Fred. Over the span of several months we exchanged multiple letters, plus a gift box of cookies and other miscellaneous mementos I thought he would enjoy for Christmas. When he was finished with his tour, he returned to his wife and family in Virginia.

Then, a month or so later, there came a knock at the door of our house in Michigan. It was Fred; he had relatives in western Michigan and had stopped by to say hello in person to his “little buddy.” It is a memory that I will never lose.

Ellen Feldman’s otherwise comprehensive article on Halloween (October 2001) failed to mention that this Americanized version of a European holiday has come full circle. For the last several years, Halloween has been celebrated, with all its trappings, in France. It is somewhat startling to see Parisian shops adorned with and selling pumpkins, witches’ costumes, spiders and their webs, Halloween candies, et cetera. Apparently there is no religious connotation, merely an effort to promote still another holiday with which to stimulate sales. What can we anticipate will be their next appropriation? Thanksgiving Day? American Independence Day?

Nowhere have I encountered in recent national media recognition that September 11, 1814, saw the defeat of British land and naval forces in the bloody Battle of Plattsburgh Bay, one of the turning points of the War of 1812, a battle that preserved our nation from foreign attack and turned the tide of a war that confirmed our Revolution, establishing the United States of America as a viable country. That September 11 was heroic too, and it deserves recollection as we contemplate September 11, 2001.

May I congratulate you on an excellent issue. Among the articles I particularly enjoyed were Frederick E. Allen’s “The New Warfare and Old Truths” and Fredric Smoler’s “Fighting the Last War—and the Next.” Allen’s prose and his thesis were extraordinarily uplifting: “Swords were put aside, and our plowshares were turned against us.”

Some of the other prognosticators were almost laughably off the mark. But that only serves to make Smoler’s article all the more remarkable for its scintillating analysis.

I thoroughly enjoyed your special section on the lessons of September 11 in the November/December issue. It was inspiring and thought-provoking. I do, however, want to take issue with John Lukacs’s contribution to the essays in “Can History Help?” Mr. Lukacs believes that “this is not ‘war.'” But whether or not we realize it, whether or not we want to be, we are most certainly at war. Even our adversaries admit as much. It is, as President Bush has said repeatedly, “a different kind of war.” It is not limited to simply “an armed struggle between states or nations or tribes.” It is a struggle on several fronts, military, political, economic, and even intellectual.

I also believe Mr. Lukacs is in error in his view that the perpetrators of September 11 are not cowards. Willingness to die for a cause does not exonerate someone from charges of cowardice; it is the means that one uses in his or her willingness to die that determines whether or not that person is a coward.