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Eminentoes

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Unfortunately, America listened to the Dean Jetts of the day back then. One of the most prominent was North Dakota's Republican Progressive Senator Gerald P. Nye. As Dean Jett sees no serious threat from Islamic fascists, Nye and many others saw no threat from Hitler and his followers. Indeed, Jett echoes Nye's charges against the president of Nye's day -- Franklin D. Roosevelt. As Jett accuses the Bush administration of using terrorism simply to get political support of "51 percent of the people," Nye flatly accused President Franklin Roosevelt of using fear to whip Americans into a frenzy of "emotion and hysteria, without a real basis of either fact or realistic appreciation of world affairs."

While Senator Nye and so many of his like-minded fellow Americans were busy carrying the day, there was no body count of sixty million. To the contrary. As historian Lucy Dawidowicz (and many others) detail, the road to sixty million began in the tens and the hundreds and the low thousands. Orders were issued from the once "fanatical band" that now had gotten control of an entire government to round up "at least two hundred" Jews. Later that would become 1,300. Then ten or more concentration camps were set up inside Germany, expanded to hold not a couple hundred or 1,300 but 25,000. And on it went, slowly but steadily rising to become a horrific six million.

One is particularly taken by the Dean's reading of the administration's efforts to collect intelligence, its insistence that the war be fought as a war and not as a loose collection of criminal offenses. That is certainly a legitimate difference of opinion -- but it is a difference. George W. Bush is not the only American who believes, to cite one aspect of this argument, that it is insanity to show classified information to terrorists under the guise of a "fair trial." It is particularly disingenuous for a scholar to puff up the so-called horrors of the Bush approach to terror while presumably believing Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt are two of the greatest American presidents in history. The first famously suspended habeas corpus, the second imprisoned Americans of Japanese descent for no other reason than that they were of Japanese heritage. The last I looked there are no concentration camps in, say, the heavily Arab-American precincts of Dearborn, Michigan.

BUT THERE IS SOMETHING ELSE of significance in Dennis Jett's article, and in his response to James Taranto. It is not his reference to his experience with terrorism in Peru, where the Tupac Amaru rebels, terrorists indeed, were decidedly not Islamic fascists with global ambitions. The difference between the two groups is stark, and surely Jett understands this.

No, the significance here is Dennis Jett's age. It is precisely that significance that says the good Dean cares not a whit for history. Dennis Jett is, like myself, a baby-boomer. One does not even have to Google the Dean as he requested in his reply to Taranto to realize this instantly, although I certainly did so. As with all those in a particular generational cohort, baby boomers can tell their own. After all, we were raised with the same cultural and moral assumptions, anchored by some approximation of the same intellectual moorings that come with a liberal arts education from the 1960s and early 1970s (Jett's came via the University of New Mexico). A fairly cohesive if massive unit, particularly if we went through the higher education system, the unspoken assumption among baby boomers was that our political beliefs -- liberal beliefs -- would remain the same as well.

For those of us who did not "keep the faith" -- think George W. Bush -- no amount of scorn will do. Even if good old Dennis, class of '68, were not making regular appearances on the Bush-hating "Smirking Chimp" website venting his fury, a fellow baby boomer could see him coming a mile away. Take his closer in his op-ed: America under Bush has become: "A nation of sheep led by liars, fools and cowards." A bit of an eye-opener as to the attitude of some career Foreign Service officers towards those elected by their fellow citizens, no?

Well, no.

Perhaps only a baby boomer would recognize this kind of venom as the standard fare of anti-war zealots that was hurled with regularity back there in our own generational Jurassic Park against the likes of the hated LBJ, the hapless Hubert Humphrey and the despised Nixon. What really infuriates the Jetts of the world is that so many of us who marched in anti-Vietnam War demonstrations at 18, 19, or 20 have -- ahhhh -- lived a life since then and, well, evolved. (Like Dennis Jett I too headed for government service, working on both Capitol Hill and in the White House.) We realized, fortunately not too late, that it was time to grow up -- and that maybe, just maybe, all the misty, water colored memories of the way we were should remind us we were -- gasp!!! -- wrong!

Quoting Colin Powell is not good enough to carry the day for the old liberal baby boomer belief that "the rest of the world" somehow has some special key to wisdom of the ages. There are plenty of baby boomers with government service like Dennis Jett who understand full well that "the rest of the world" includes entire nations and significant chunks of generations who supported everyone from Hitler to Stalin to Mao, Ho Chi Minh and the antics of Danny the Red. Perhaps most importantly, even the guy who fixed the family Chevy gets this.

So Dean Dennis Jett, again I will say that I respect your service to our country. You are most assuredly entitled to your views and the freedom to express them. You are certainly taken seriously. But don't for a second think that those of us who have perused your writings believe you spent your life living and working around the world.

We're on to you, man.

You live in 1968. And you are still working there.

topics:
Education, Islam, Law, Military, Israel, NATO, Communism