Victor Davis Hanson writes today that, yes, 2000 soldiers have died in Iraq, but A) that’s really not that many; B) Americans only care about that number because we’re soft and; C) it’s all the media’s fault.

I admire some of Hanson’s earlier books. I read The Soul of Battle in a class once and thought his description and defense of Sherman was brilliant. In the past few years, though, I have watched him sliding into blather; he has become a self-contradicting waterboy for a crowd of hawks who, well, might not have fucked up so much if they’d actually read some of his earlier works. (Or Barbara Tuchman’s. Or Liddell Hart’s. Unfortunately, the only strategy that concerns them is political. Thucydides may be a stranger to them, but Machiavelli they turn to as to an old friend.)

What was brilliant about Hanson’s writing was that he showed readers how the so-called “butterfly effect” worked historically. An acquaintance of mine—who, like Hanson, has spent some time teaching in a military academy’s history department—lamented V.D.H.’s lost focus to me in a recent e-mail, writing that “what is sad these days is how much (Hanson) has lost one of his early insights, namely, that he unintended and unexpected consequences often have greater historical impact over the longer run.” This is being generous, actually. I think what is sad is that Hanson has decided to continue to serve as the Bushies’ academic Aquarius at the expense of any semblance of intellectual integrity. I hope that, whatever he has gained from his foray into Republican advocacy, it was worth the cost of his credibility and scholarly reputation.

(Much more after the flip)

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