Fun with History I posted about this over at The Hellenophile, but it's appropriate here too.
A book review in The New Yorker takes some whacks at classical scholars Donald Kagan and Victor Davis Hanson for letting their hawkish philosophies lead them to some strange conclusions about their sources. (It was Brad DeLong that pointed out this article)
The desire to rehabilitate Cleon inevitably results in a corresponding denigration of the peace party (with its [base "]apparently limitless forbearance[per thou]) and of the cautious policies recommended first by Pericles and then by Nicias, a figure for whom Kagan has particular disdain. Here Kagan[base ']s revisionism borders on being misleading. Nicias had tried to bluff the Athenian Assembly into abandoning the invasion of Sicily, declaring that it would require far greater expense than people realized; but they simply approved the additional ships and troops. This leads Kagan, bizarrely, to characterize the Sicilian Expedition as [base "]the failed stratagem of Nicias.[per thou] As for the Athenians[base '] massacre of the Melians, Kagan dismisses it as [base "]the outlet they needed for their energy and frustration.[per thou]
Kagan[base ']s perspective on events and personalities at first suggests an admirable desire to see the war with fresh and unsentimental eyes. But after a while it becomes hard not to ascribe his revisionism to plain hawkishness, a distaste for compromise and negotiation when armed conflict is possible. His book represents the Ollie North take on the Peloponnesian War: [base "]If we[base ']d only gone in there with more triremes,[per thou] he seems to be saying, [base "]we would have won that sucker.[per thou]
Hanson, to make sources from the 5th Century BC support his 21st century warmongering, resorts to outright deception:
When Hanson writes about ancient infantry battles, he is absorbing and informative. Lately, he[base ']s been writing about more recent wars. In November, 2001, during the war in Afghanistan, he wrote an article for the National Review Online entitled [base "]A Voice from the Past: General Thucydides Speaks About the War,[per thou] in which he poses questions about the situation and has Thucydides [base "]answer[per thou] them, by means of citations from the History. To the question, for instance, of why Osama bin Laden and his terrorists [base "]believed they could repeatedly get away with killing Americans, win prestige, and gain concessions[~]without eventually incurring the destructive wrath of the United States,[per thou] he has Thucydides give the following [base "]answer,[per thou] from Book III:
Their own prosperity could not dissuade them from affronting danger; but blindly confident in the future, and full of hopes beyond their power though not beyond their ambition, they declared war and made their decision to prefer might to right. Their attacks were determined not by provocation but by the moment which seemed propitious.
Hanson neglects to mention that this implicit endorsement of [base "]destructive wrath[per thou] comes not from Thucydides but from Cleon. This speech is, in fact, the one in which the demagogue so admired by Kagan urged his fellow-Athenians to slaughter all the adult males and enslave the women and children of Mytilene, a punishment from which the Athenians themselves shrank. Cleon[base ']s apparent horror at the notion that might makes right is, in any case, a disingenuous piece of rhetoric; he was its most outspoken advocate.
Hanson, who has addressed the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and is a favorite of the Vice-President, has apparently from Bush and Cheney the benefits of just making shit up.
9:51:42 PM 
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