My deconstruction is based on the second piece from ‘History Handle with Care’ by Margaret McMillan. This article was published in Oxford Today Vol 22. Oxford today is a magazine developed for many of the previous students from Oxford. It was published on September 3rd 2010, 9 years since the attack on the World Trade Centre. Which may be why she focus’ the opening section of the article on the events surrounding that day. Margaret McMillan is a professor of international history at the University of Oxford she has written many books on the Great War and the struggles of what these wars do to peace throughout the world.
From what I can gather, the main argument being portrayed here is that of how these days history is too quickly made. What I mean by this is that we too quickly accept what is told to us as definitive history, be that by people of power or leaders of nations. It says that we should take what is told to us with a pinch of salt as even historians can read incorrectly what is being said through time. She also makes the point that we put too much confidence into what we are told by our leaders and simply go with it almost blindly without any disregard to if it is true or not.
She opens up her case by discussing what another author overheard in a bar on the evening of September 11th 2001, that a pair of men was comparing the World Trade Centre attacks to that of Pearl Harbour in 1941. One of the men said to the other that it was the Vietnamese who bombed Pearl Harbour and that is what led to the Vietnam War; this was taken without hesitation by his friend as complete fact. From here she goes on to talk about president bush and what influenced his decisions to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, comparing him to the two men in that bar and how they had been given incorrect information, so too had president bush when he told the nation why they were going to