See George read

George W. Bush has read a book. Actually, he claims to be a pretty voracious reader, but now he's telling all his friends to read his latest discovery: The History of the English-speaking Peoples since 1900, by the British historian Andrew Roberts. Roberts's contention is that the English-speaking countries (well, some of them, and you can probably guess which) are responsible for most of what is good in the world. When the burdens of global hegemony finally became too much for them, the British naturally passed them on, in the manner of a relay baton, to the Americans. It's no surprise that this sort of world view might appeal to someone like Bush, with his quasi-messianic self image.

One of the friends to whom Dubya recommended Roberts's book was Mark Steyn. Steyn seems quite content with his role as the boy standing on the burning deck of the USS Bush, and gave the book a positive review. However, another copy (actually, two) fell into the hands of Jacob Weisberg of Slate, who was rather less impressed. He accused Roberts of being "as sloppy as he is snobbish", suggesting that a careful reading would find a factual error on just about every page.

Anyway, as the new intellectual hero of the right, Roberts pitched up in this week's Sunday Times with a blast at the conduct of the UK servicemen held in Iran: "Military dignity meets the Diana effect". Roberts opines that the Royal Navy has let down itself, the country and the captives themselves. He argues that the captives should have offered no more than "name, rank and serial number" to the Iranians. However, according to most of the commentary I have seen from actual military men in recent days, this convention only applies if you are captured by the enemy in wartime. Since we are not (yet) at war with Iran, it isn't relevant to this case.

Roberts's article gives the appearance of being hastily-written, with plenty of bad syntax and clumsy phrasing. But the sentence that caught my eye was this one: "To state anything more than name, rank and serial number is all that a captured serviceman should ever do". Read it again: it actually says the exact opposite of what Roberts intends it to. Very impressive. This guy is to history what Dan Brown is to literature -- no wonder Bush likes him.