Fleming argues that the view of middle eastern history as a clash between Christianity and Islam is a simplistic view of things, and takes a few jabs at the Huntingtonist model of international relations. Instead of a clash of civilizations, he argues, relations between the west and Islam are a story of western aggression, domination and colonialism. And the people of the west mis-understand this.

If only that were the case. Unfortunately, Fleming’s column is rife with historical inaccuracies and misinterpretations.

He gives a history of colonial Iraq, which as he points out was created in 1920 as a British protectorate, with a constitutional monarchy. “Is this perhaps”, Fleming asks, “why the Kurds suffer so?”

In fact, the Kurds are currently suffering less than any other people group in Iraq. Their region is peaceful and has regional autonomy. The Kurds did suffer greatly under the regime of Saddam Hussein, but this was because Saddam was a paranoid madman with genocidal proclivities towards most of Iraq’s ethnic minorities.

What is strange is that Fleming explicitly rejected Huntingtonism in the beginning of his article, but later on he seems to imply that Kurds and Arabs can’t live together in the same country. Which is it? Are different cultures doomed to conflict due to competing interests and values (Huntington’s view), or are they not?

Fleming then questions Iraq’s independence in 1930, because “every time a coup took place in Iraq and the Iraqis showed some form of self-determination, the British would quickly put down the rebellion.”

I presume he is referring to Rashid Ali’s coup in April 1941. The coup was not “Iraqi self-determination”, it was a putsch by a small group of Army officers and a former Prime Minister. Rashid Ali then declared Iraq to be an ally of Hitler and invited German troops into the country.

Iraqi forces aided by German aircraft attacked British bases inside the country. In response, the British sent reinforcements, defeated the Iraqis and removed Rashid Ali from power. In the height of World War 2, Iraq was not territory that the British could afford to lose to Nazi Germany.

Eventually, the Iraqi monarchy was deposed by the Baathists, who began decades of terror which far surpassed anything done by the British.

It may be that some Iraqis see their history as that of being dominated by western powers. However, Iraqis who went to school before 2003 were indoctrinated by a violently anti-America, anti-Israeli and anti-Western dictatorship. This brainwashing takes a while to de-program.

But just know that reality is more complicated than Fleming’s slanted anti-Western history of Iraq.

But let’s look at what Buchanan actually has to say. His column is a shorter version of some of the arguments he makes in his recent book Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War, in which he critically examines British policy towards Germany in the late 1930s, and ends up assigning much of the blame for the outbreak of World War II on Winston Churchill.

According to Buchanan, the German invasion of Poland was triggered by a dispute over Danzig, a city with a large German majority on the Polish-German border.

What Buchanan fails to mention is that Danzig was an independent state in 1939, not a part of Poland. Although Danzig wanted to re-unite with Germany, the Germans also demanded that Poland give up a corridor of territory between Germany and Danzig, cutting Poland off from access to the sea. The Poles clearly found this unacceptable in light of what had happened to Czechoslovakia that spring after the Czechs acceded to Hitlers’ territorial claims.

But Buchanan argues that the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia was not a bad thing. Rather, he says, it made everyone happier. Germany annexed the Sudeten region which had a German majority. Poland annexed Teschen, which was majority Polish. Hungary annexed (in fact, invaded, occupied and extinguished the independence of the short-lived state of Carpatho-Ukraine, but don’t bother Buchanan with those facts) its “ancestral lands” in the south of Slovakia. Slovakia was now an independent nation. And the Czechs? As Buchanan puts it “they came to Berlin for the same deal as the Slovaks, but Hitler insisted they accept a protectorate.”

In fact, Hitler insisted that they accept German “protection” or be invaded. The “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia” was placed under the direct administration of Konstantin von Neurath, who instituted strict controls on personal liberties within the Protectorate. When the Czechs protested, 1200 protesting students were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. Despite this, Hitler felt that von Neurath was not killing enough people, so he replaced him with Reinhard Heydrich in 1941.

Heydrich was a die-hard Nazi ideologue whose ultimate goal was to eliminate the Czech people and replace them with Germans. For this, he was targeted for assassination by the British secret services and the Czech resistance. In May 1942, he was killed in Prague when a grenade was thrown into his car.

The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was not a positive outcome for the Czechs, in any way. The Poles feared the same fate if they let Hitler get a foot in the door by taking some of their territory.

And yet, Buchanan argues, Hitler was not out to conquer the world:

But if Hitler was out to conquer the world — Britain, Africa, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, South America, India, Asia, Australia — why did he spend three years building that hugely expensive Siegfried Line to protect Germany from France? Why did he start the war with no surface fleet, no troop transports and only 29 oceangoing submarines? How do you conquer the world with a navy that can’t get out of the Baltic Sea?

If Hitler wanted the world, why did he not build strategic bombers, instead of two-engine Dorniers and Heinkels that could not even reach Britain from Germany?

Why did he let the British army go at Dunkirk?

Why did he offer the British peace, twice, after Poland fell, and again after France fell?

Why, when Paris fell, did Hitler not demand the French fleet, as the Allies demanded and got the Kaiser’s fleet? Why did he not demand bases in French-controlled Syria to attack Suez? Why did he beg Benito Mussolini not to attack Greece?

Buchanan’s poor grasp of German strategy comes out full force.

Hitler’s Siegfried Line was built to defend against any French attack into Germany before Germany was ready to invade France. It worked. In September 1939, the French did not even try to attack the Siegfried Line even though there were only a handful of German divisions on the French border.

Buchanan is right that Germany’s goal was invading Russia. But before this could occur, Germany had to remove Poland from the equation, secure its southern flank in the Balkans, secure its rear in France to prevent another World War 1 two-front war, conquer or at least contain Britain and secure resources in Scandinavia. Only then could Germany turn its attention to invading the Soviet Union.

Germany’s fleet was in the middle of a massive expansion in 1939. New ships were under construction that came into service over the next few years.

German two-engined bombers were built in large numbers to support German blitzkreig campaigns, not massive wars of attrition where long-range bombers would be used.

Germany offered the British peace several times because Hitler wanted to contain Britain if he could not conquer them.

Germany let a rump French state keep their colonies because Vichy France was virtually an Axis partner. Having the French administer these colonies kept the Germans from having to devote manpower and resources to the task. In addition, it divided the French and British against each other in a fratricidal war, which was a major propaganda coup for the Germans.

Hitler begged Benito Mussolini to not do a lot of things,  because Mussolini tended to get himself into tight jams that Hitler had to devote resources to bailing him out of (such as the failed Italian invasions of Greece and Egypt).

All of these questions have been answered time and time again by historians and are understandable in the context of the broad strategic picture of the Second World War.

Going back to the German demands for the Danzig corridor, Buchanan never explains why these demands necessitated the invasion of Poland and division of the entire country between Hitler and Stalin.

And therein lies the problem. Buchanan sees Hitler as acting from impossibly good motives. Motives that are not supported by Germany’s actions, Hitler’s stated views or any historical evidence. And this puts Buchanan moving in the direction of other pseudohistorians such as David Irving or Ernst Nolte, in the bin of discredited admirers of the Third Reich.

Since it was chartered in 1663, the state has been known as “Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.” In 1636, Roger Williams was banished from Massachusetts and founded a settlement which he named Providence Plantations. In 1637, Anne Hutchinson was banished from Massachusetts as well and led a group of colonists to settle at the large island in the mouth of Narragansett Bay called Rhode Island. When the settlements were joined into a single colony in 1644, the names were combined into “The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations”, and since independence “The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.”

Now, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations state representative Joseph Almeida has introduced a bill to hold a referendum to remove “and Providence Plantations” from the name. Says Almeida, “It’s high time for us to recognize that slavery happened on plantations in Rhode Island and decide that we don’t want that chapter of our history to be a proud part of our name.”

Now, it is true that slavery happened in Rhode Island. In fact, it is a little-known historical fact that slavery existed in all northern colonies. In fact, slaves made up a higher proportion of the population of Rhode Island than any other New England state. There is a fascinating history of slavery in New England which is largely unknown to most people.

Roger Williams, founder of Providence Plantations

However, the name “Providence Plantations” has nothing to do with slavery. As has already been mentioned, the colony of Providence Plantations was founded by Roger Williams,  a pastor whose theological and political views (he was an Anabaptist, opposed the Church of England and criticized the way Native Americans were treated by the colonists) ran afoul of the Puritan authorities of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and was sent into exile. He founded Providence Plantations as a community where freedom of religion and the separation of church and state would be respected. He chose the name in thanks to God for his providence in providing for the colonists. The name had nothing to do with slaves, for Williams was an ardent and outspoken abolitionist. In 1652, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations became the first colony to formally outlaw slavery.

Enforcement of this law waned by the end of the 17th century, but slavery was again abolished in 1784, this time for good.  It was one of the first states to do so.

Rep. Almeida is showing an ignorance of the history of his state. Rather than being a reflection of one of the worst episodes of state history, the name actually reflects the history of the state as a beacon of freedom in the colonies, a bastion of ideals that would later be expressed in the Bill of Rights. Unfortunately, it appears that 69 other state representatives share his ignorance.

And that is the real tragedy of this. Reading about this inspired me to look into Rhode Island’s unusual name, and I learned a lot about the state’s unique history. I’m sure that many others over the years have done the same. The unique name of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations is a window into learning the history of the state, and should be preserved as such.