On Reading Simon Schama

When I was in graduate school several years back the most impressive historiographical works we were expected to read wad Orientalism by Edwars Said and of course, Metahistory by Hayden White. Those were diffent days. History was still regarded as a way of apprehending the real world in all its complexity. Narrative was only a menomic tool to ensure that the chronological ordering of events is in the framework of what was called causation. Intellectual history meant situating ideas in their historical contexts an understanding that is today regarded as passe. These are post modernist time and the simple language of historians trying to understand the real world has been replaced by a hugely comple and bewildering range of jargon terms which do not make any sense: they foreground instead of gioving importance, they privlege instead of telling a straight story.

Therefore it was simply wonderful to read Simon Schama who has writtten Landscape and Memory. This book is written so well that I was able to read it from cover to cover in one weekend. Schama speaks of the varied ways in which humans have coded their landscape both in paintinngs and literature. The fact is that our relationship with our landscape is being constasntly redefined and in that process we become more aware of the strong ties that bind us to our land.

America at the Crossroads: Fukuyama again

A powerful neoconservative voice has risen against the prophet of neoconservatism--George Bush. Francis Fukuyama, known all over the world for his provocative and yes, celebratory thesis about the end of history, has written a withering attack on Bush and the betrayal of the neoconservative agenda. The carapace of ideas such as preventive war,benevolent hegemony, war against terror are analysed and critiqued in great detail in thois booik. When the Iraq Qar was attacked on humanitarian and strategic grounds the neoconmen retaliated with sarcasm and felt that humilisating the messenger was enough to discredit the powerful arguments against the direction USA was tsaking as a consequence of neocon ideas of unilateralism and shock and awe.We may recall that Francis Fukuyama was an ardent supporter of the Iraq war and when he starts lamenting the horrendous cost of the wat even neocons must take note.

Traditionally conservatives trace their intellectual legacy to Edmund Burke and have always opposed overseas expansion and entangling commitments, a phrase we even find in the speech of George Washinton. Preemtive war and war to build democracy argues Francis Fukuyama render American foreign policy hostage to extra political interests. History cannot be accelerated through American agency, he writes. Like the Communists of old, the neoconmen too believed that they were on the right side of history and the chosen instruments of American destiny in the poist USSR world.

The major contribution of Francis Fukuyama lies in his treatment of the decision to wage war in Iraq without the approval of the UN. The main justification for the war the weapons of mass destruction allegedly possessed by Saddam has turned out to be a mere will-o-the whisp. Indeed the standing o9f the only superpower has taken a huge blow due to the false case made out by the neoconmen to justify the war. The foreign policy establisment seems to have been side lined and neocon thik tanks and ideologues like Paul Wolfowitz created the blue print for the war without a broadbased national debate over crucial issues. As Fukuyama maintains the US armay was woefully ill prepared for the war and did not expect the resistance. Those of us who have been following the war from a different perspective knew that the real challenge lay after the fall of Bagdad,

This book must be read by everone interested in Iraq.