I've always thought Hanson was pretty good but I've relied more on his reputation than actually reading a lot of his stuff. Upon reading some of the critique on the first link I had to blink a couple of times. He thought Adrianople was far from home? Didn't he even look at a map? The link pointed out so many other inconsistencies that if it had been a target on the rifle range I'm not sure you could cover his group with a poncho.
Semper Fi from a damned old corporal of Marines who DOES read his history.

While I agree with Bateman that a free and FAIR press is a huge boon to our country, my impression of the journalistic establishment is that for much of our history, it tended to be pretty polemical. Journalistic standards have developed in the past century, but as the rise of Fox News shows, we may not be able to count on them always being with us. In short, for most of our history the media was not "the foundation of our security", can we afford to consider it as such in the future?

Exactly. It shouldn't be a shocker that Hanson has a point of view, even in his best historical writing. All historians do. It is even possible to be both an excellent historian and write with a blatant ideological perspective -- EJ Hobsbawm may be the ultimate recent example. All sorts of credible historians are writing tendentious and often craptastic op-eds on current politics.

The bottom line is...you disagree with his POV. What's the big deal?

it is not about a "point of view" rather it is about getting facts correct. You can draw conclusions and a point of view from facts, but when you get the facts wrong then don't even bother.

SOLDIERSDIARY, I am probably not telling you anything you don’t know already but getting the ‘facts’ right is not so simple. In quantum mechanics there is a principle put forward by the famous physicist Werner Heisenberg that the human act of observing small particles actually interfers with them. Due to this human participation, their complete or ‘objective’ definition is not possible.

That rather esoteric theory of physics is also replicated in a way in the human observation of the ‘facts’ of history. Firstly, the ‘facts’ may not be facts, or they may be incomplete, or the observer may view them subjectively different from another observer. Essentially, the very act of human interpretation (observation) interferes with their objective understanding.

The superb intellectual and historian John Lukacs gives an illustration. “To attempt to be ‘objective’ about Hitler or Stalin is one thing; to attempt to understand them is another; and the second is not inferior to the first. Can we expect a victim to be ‘objective’ about some one who did him harm? Can we expect a Jewish man to be ‘objective’ about Hitler? Perhaps not. Yet we may expect him, or indeed anyone, to attempt to understand. But that attempt must depend on the ‘how’, on the very quality of his participation, on the approach of his own mind, including at least a modicum of understanding his own self.

I agree that you can draw your own conclusions, but still they have to be based on a set of facts.
Using the facilitator of this site, he came to his conclusions that the Iraqi War, the leadup and invasion was a "Fiasco." but he based that on facts that he detailed in his book. Had he made that conclusion and stated things like Baghdad was only 50 miles from New York, or that we invaded with only 10k Soldiers, and that led to the Fiasco, well then we would have issues OR if I were to claim that the invasion has been nothing but a success, and only cited specific tactical engagements to support my view leaving the rest of the war out, well then you would properly say I was dorked up in my analysis. This is what Bateman does well.

Hanson is neither objective or true in his current day analysis. Please see this beauty from 2004: http://old.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200408130813.asp. If a "historian" can publish such vindictiveness, how can he be taken seriously in factual analysis of ancient history?

Yes, I have a different POV than Hanson, but this 2004 rant is mega-hyped BS designed to totally discredit those who disagreed with Bush and Iraq yt broad brush labeling the sinners with paragraph after paragraph of wild accusations. No wonder why VDH was "Cheney's favorite dinner guest".

GSF, I think it is pretty evident that both Bush and Cheney were small minds. Bush was incurious and blissfully satisfied with his ignorance. Cheney was the clever schemer but intellectually stillborn and like most corporate executives required sycophancy and adulation by those that surrounded him.

I do not feel sorry for their mental deficiencies as they outwardly showed them. They were master criminal schemers, guided by Rove and enabled by a cast of dozens. I realize fully that in a court of law they would be surrounded by a herd of sympothetic attorneys who too, drank the kool-aid. Maybe they could escape all charges that could be levied against them, I suspect that they would, but the crimes of their administration will never be erased.

Always good to know a bit about the author. In Keegan's case, his positions are understandable to a certain point, considering his fundamental background is based on a classical education, and dominance (but never cruelty) could only come from a civilized society such as the Greeks (and Romans).

Everyone has a POV, Ricks has a POV and I am sure he will say that he was not always right in his conclusions looking back as I am sure many other writers do. It does matter if you are a historian and you are just so far out there that your books beocme a bit of a punch line, Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" comes to mind as an example. I do not think Hanson is in that category of "way out there" historians. Hanson may not be always spot on and I am sure that he, like many historians, has a POV that he cannot help but let come through in his work, but it is kind of silly to act as though one critic shoots Hansons' credibility to swiss cheese with what is obviously a poitical jab written by Bateman.

No one should lose sight that producing the original work is the hardest task when compared to the critique which is always the easier of the two. Almost all historians are challenged on their conclusions at some timeline. . . .some much later than others.

Even Gaius Julius Caesar in writing his Commentaries may have taken some lattitude in describing his adversaries as more civilized to give the impression they were on par with his own legions, thereby showing he faced greater odds than reality might have (might have I say) suggest?

Batemen does raise a red flag on the pitfall of individual interpretations as one begins to broaden out, though he himself was somewhat petty and anecdotal in his particular interpretation of Hansen’s conclusions.

Caesar’s ‘Commentaries’ were not written by him in pen and ink but rather dictated to a half dozen scribes while travelling from place to place or from memory during his winter sojourns in Transalpine Gaul. Their primary purpose was one of self- adulation and propaganda but conformed to the requirement of informing the Senate of his activities. Other counsels did the same in their own theaters but Caesars were exceptional in their wonderful prose and in the fact of his extraordinary generalship and exploits. An extraordinary study of this is the new ‘Caesar’ by John Goldsworthy.

Schwerpunkt: my intentional focal point exactly. . . .understanding what one is reading and why or how conclusions and opinions were drawn, which I purposely intended not to offer to back my inflammatory (in some circles) statement up!

Thank you for bringing to light, what I hoped someone would find exception with (what Hansen could have done a better job of) in my general comment, and extrapolating as you did in such a fine and concise manner.