I saw a Yale professor change his mind recently. It was over on a milblog called Chapomatic, which I'm finding quite enjoyable. It brings back memories of my navy brat days, but it's not all military. There are pictures of cute little mammals here. Some interesting links to water purification, etc. are here. But the best so far is the text of a speech at Middlebury College by John Lewis Gaddis of Yale.

Allow me to present some free samples.

The story begins with the publication of my book, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience, which appeared a year ago last March.

Late in June, I had a cryptic e-mail from a former student, now working in the White House speech-writing shop: “the boss has read your book, and has told all of us to read it.”

I wasn’t quite sure which boss he meant, but soon there was a call from Condi Rice which cleared things up: “The President has read your book, and has told all of us to read it. Could you come down and brief the National Security Council staff?”

I of course said yes, but then started quickly flipping through the book to review what I’d actually said about the President and his policies. Here are some sample quotes:

I said that he had “failed miserably” in getting United Nations support for the invasion of Iraq.

I said that his solutions to complex problems tended to be “breathtakingly simple.”

I said that the phrase “axis of evil” originated “in overzealous speechwriting rather than careful thought.”

I said that the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had “diminished, in advance, the credibility of whatever future intelligence claims Bush and Blair might make.”

I said that the so-called “coalition of the willing” there had been “more of a joke than a reality.”

I said that, “within a little more than a year and a half, the United States had exchanged its long-established reputation as the principal stabilizer of the international system for one as its chief destabilizer.”

And I said that although great grand strategists know the uses of “shock and awe,” they also know when to stop. Here I cited the example of Otto von Bismarck, who had shattered the post-1815 European state system in order to make possible the unification of Germany in 1871, but then had “replaced his destabilizing strategy with a new one aimed at consolidation and reassurance – at persuading his defeated enemies as well as nervous allies and alarmed bystanders that they would be better off living within the new system he had imposed on them than by continuing to fight or fear it.”

So I was not too sure how all of this was going to go over at the White House.

I did indeed meet with Condi and the NSC staff in mid-July for a lively discussion of points made in the book and possible future directions for the administration’s grand strategy.

At the end of it, she casually asked: “Could you spare a few minutes for the President?”

I allowed as how maybe I could, and so she took me into the Oval Office where the President and the Vice President were waiting.

I expected, at best, a handshake and photo op.

But the President said: “Sit down. Loved your book. Tell me more about Bismarck.”

I interpret the above as an establishment of his academic bona fides. A brief introductory ritual to lend his later remarks credibility.

There followed a twenty minute conversation with Bush asking all the questions. After which we found, cooling their heels outside, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Under-Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Myers. “This is Professor Gaddis,” the President said, waving the book at them. “I want you all to read his book.”

Well, I don’t know how you would have responded in such a situation, but I was somewhat surprised.

I’d been told, first of all, that the President never read anything beyond his daily press and intelligence digests. So it was certainly a surprise to find that he had read my book, and that he had done so ahead of his own staff. We’ve since learned, of course, that the President has a pretty eclectic reading list, ranging from Nathan Sharansky and Ron Chernow to Tom Wolfe.

I’d been told, second, that this was an administration that could not take criticism – that it listened only to people who agreed with it. But the criticisms I’d made didn’t seem to bother anyone.

And I’d been told that this was an administration that was incapable of changing direction, of learning from mistakes, of assessing its own performance. But the whole tone of the discussions was one of acknowledging that, while the overall direction of policy was right, much had gone wrong along the way, and that in the second term – if the voters were to grant one – there would have to be certain changes.

It's not so much what Dr. Gaddis is saying that I find startling, but the fact that he is saying it at all. I admire his courage. It can't be easy to be where he is and say what he says. Moving right along...

The key to understanding the administration’s position now, I think, is this: that while everyone in the world may not know what democracy is, everyone certainly does know what tyranny entails.

The validity of that assumption became a lot clearer on January 30th, when even in the face of persistent insecurity, literally at the risk of their lives, Iraqis who’d not had the opportunity to vote in a free election for decades turned out to do so in percentages that compare favorably with the number of Americans who turned out to vote in their own far safer presidential election last November.

So while there may still be all kinds of disagreement about what kind of government will be best for Iraq, there is apparently agreement about one thing: tyranny is not that form of government.

That much the Bush administration has accomplished, and let us be clear about how that happened: without the invasion of Iraq – and without the sacrifices of a lot of Iraqi and American and British lives – it would never have happened. As even The New York Times, at last, has got around to admitting.

Finely spoken. And how has the wonderful world of academe received such statements?

I’ve learned to be careful about this ever since, a couple of years ago, I gave a talk at Harvard and a very distinguished professor whose name most of us know announced, quite majestically, after I’d finished: “I’ve been at this university for 47 years, and I have never heard a presentation with which I disagreed more.”

So please be advised of the following: “This lecture will contain material that some may consider to be complimentary toward the Bush administration. It may, therefore, strike some listeners as unsettling, naïve, partisan, propagandistic, chauvinistic, muddle-headed, or paid for by Karl Rove.”

Changing the world, one professor at a time. Best of luck to him. Meanwhile, get thee hence and read the whole thing.