This morning, a very nice and well-meaning friend e-mailed me a dreadful “article” masquerading as history, and I couldn’t resist ripping it to shreds. I guess I’ve just gotten tired of everyone in Indiana assuming I’m a conservative Republican and forwarding me this kind of stuff. I hope I didn’t make my friend mad - I really like him- but it is just such drivel, I couldn’t handle it. If you feel the need to see it first-hand, here’s a link:

http://righttruth.typepad.com/right_truth/2006/03/historical_revi.html

It is an essay that tries to justify the war in Iraq by comparing it to World War II with Saddam Hussein playing the part of Hitler and various other groups (”militant Muslims,” “Jihadists,” al-Qaeda” - the author doesn’t seem quite sure and uses these terms interchangeably) playing the part of the Nazis. Like most pieces of far-right propaganda, it has many serious problems. As a professional writer and a composition teacher who teaches a class focusing on research, purpose, and audience, I feel qualified to explain some of these.

First, we have problems with research; the article is full of big leaps in logic, many of which build on one another with no research to support any of them. For example, “Had Hitler… invaded England in 1940 or 1941, there would have been no England for the US and the Brits to use as a staging ground to prepare an assault on Nazi Europe. England would not have been able to run its North African campaign to help take a little pressure off Russia while America geared up for battle, and today Europe would very probably be run by the Nazis, the Third Reich, and, isolated and without any allies (not even the Brits), the US would very probably have had to cede Asia to the Japanese, who were basically Nazis by another name then, and the world we live in today would be very different and much worse.” That’s quite a lot to assume in just two sentences! Especially with no support from a credible source. I suppose all these conjectures might have turned out to be true, but they are just as likely not to have.

Then there are problems with purpose. The author seems to be trying to justify the war in Iraq; however, he keeps undermining his own argument by quoting staggering statistics and frightening figures: “The US has taken more than 2,000 KIA in Iraq in 3 years. The US took more than 4,000 Killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944, the first day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism.” So we’re supposed to feel better about the thousands of young Americans killed in Iraq because it’s less than the 4,000 we lost in 1944? At some point, the numbers get so high as to be meaningless to most readers. The casualties all terrifying.

He also seems to be trying to convince his audience that they are foolish not to support the war in Iraq. Well, as a professional writer, I can tell you that most audiences are not really keen on being told repeatedly that they have “short attention spans.” Readers have a tendency not to listen to authors who insult them.

Then there are problems with audience. I cannot really decide who this author wants to reach. If he’s trying to convince liberals, he probably shouldn’t call them names. As a matter of fact, if he wants to reach any Americans, who he says watch too much TV and have such “short attention spans,” he should probably make his essay quite a bit shorter. He says our students need to be better educated in history so their perspective will be “clear,” but then he bandies about terms such as “Inquisition” and “Reformation” without explaining their origins or ramifications. If his intended audience is poorly educated young people, he should do them the service of explaining these terms. To label the two current sides with this kind of shorthand smacks of stereotypical propaganda, which uses vague references to famous events or figures in history to rationalize a point to an audience that has insufficient background to debate the point on an informed basis. The entire thing relies on its audience’s complicity and/or ignorance to prove its point.

Finally, since I teach a course on analyzing your sources for authenticity, authority and currency, I checked this “article” out. There’s nothing on this guy Raymond S. Kraft except an entry in the California Bar Association’s site saying that his license is inactive. I checked the Yahoo Yellow Pages for Loomis, California, and he doesn’t appear to be a practicing attorney there. And as far as I can tell, this was never actually published anywhere significant. *Sigh* Why are people so willing to believe everything they see in print? And for God’s sake, why do they turn it into a viral e-mail?!