Detailed information on sources in a work of history are important. Sources have biases and agendas and blind spots that may be revealed if we know who they are. Victor David Hanson, who has become less and less reasonable in his defenses of the conduct of the Iraq War, nonetheless raises this important point in discussing the pseudo-historical Iraq War books–Fiasco and Cobra II. Both rely far too extensively on interviews with unnamed sources. The use of unnamed sources is a holdover from the less scholarly conventions of journalism. The books may contain a fair account of the Iraq War and related decision-making, but the differences in rigor between the journalistic and historical craft are manifest in these two books’ footnotes, which lack names, dates, specificity, or even page numbers. Future histories, based on bona fide and verifiable sources, remain to be written and likely cannot be written until relevant archives are opened. These works are incomplete, provisional, and will someday be displaced. They are useful, and both make apparent efforts to be fair, but the exact nature of the biases and distortions transmitted to the authors cannot be evaluated based on the way they are written.
That said, evaluating sources fairly and critically is distinct from dismissing someone because of who he is, rather than what he says. Information on the source is the start of the evaluation process, not the end of it. Daniel Larison notes the disturbingly ideological habit of dismissing entire categories of critics among those who support the administration’s interventionist foreign policies:
This is a standard refrain from interventionists and their friends: ignore so-and-soââ¬â¢s extensive expertise and knowledge on Middle Eastern subject X, because he is an Arabist (so what if heââ¬â¢s studied the region all his lifeââ¬âmaybe heââ¬â¢s studied it a little too long, know what I mean?); dismiss the criticism from that foreign policy scholar, because he is a ââ¬Årealistââ¬Â (oh, hated realists!) who allegedly thinks ââ¬Åstabilityââ¬Â is the answer (as George Will noted acidly a couple months back, the ââ¬Åproblem of stabilityââ¬Â in the Middle East has been solved); belittle the warnings of this well-informed commentator, because he also happens to be critical of Israel, which somehow makes him unfit to breathe, much less speak on policy questions, etc. But then watch them fly into a fury when you suggest that their guys have ulterior motives or are motivated by something other than the high and noble desire to protect this country!
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