News Abroad

“What Did You Do in the War, Daddy-O?” An Appreciation of John Sack’s M, Forty Years On

by Kirk Bane

Published in 1967, John Sack’s M, the unforgettable account of a U.S. Army company during the war in Southeast Asia, stands as a major literary achievement.  In The Gang That Wouldn’t Write Straight, author Marc Weingarten asserts that M “was the first great Vietnam book, and it’s unquestionably the first great New Journalism war book.”Even before the publication of M, John Sack had an impressive resume.  Educa

Why Iranians Are Still Railing Against Britain--And Why that Matters

by Christopher N. B. Ross

What with all the commemorations of 9/11 last week, other anniversaries might easily be overlooked, but even now the implications of a century old diplomatic entente between Britain and Russia remain highly relevant. One hundred years ago, on 16 September 1907, Iran was officially informed of the Anglo-Russian Convention. Signed without the knowledge, let alone the approval, of the Persian government of the day, the announcement of the treaty was greeted with profound resentment in the streets

It Is the Partition of Iraq that Would Be Truly "Artificial"

by Reidar Visser

A steady stream of US commentators keep expressing support for the idea of some kind of ethnic partition, be it “soft” or “hard,” of Iraq. Despite the repeated warnings against division by military advisors and experts in humanitarian aid, th

Islamic Unity: Bin Ladin’s Version v. Khameini’s

by Timothy R. Furnish

Usamah bin Ladin’s September 2007 video address has been analyzed five ways from Friday: as an anti-capitalist screed; yet another indictment of Bush administration Middle East policy; a coded go-ahead for another attack on the U

Is Fear Going to Work for Bush Again?

by Ira Chernus

“Republicans care more about catching Democrats than catching terrorists," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. "They have spent years taking Roosevelt's notion that we have nothing to fear but fear itself and given us nothing but fear." Republicans manipulate us with fear. Democrats free us from fear, following in the footsteps of the iconic liberal, FDR. Really? Let’s check a few facts.

Iraqi Insurgents, ‘Werewolves’ and the Uses of History

by Perry Biddiscombe

Nearly a decade ago, I published two books, Werwolf! and The Last Nazis, both of which have since been cited by right-wing pundits and opinion-makers in order to establish a point of comparison for the current war in Iraq.  Both volumes were focused on the Nazi effort – codenamed"Werwolf" – to raise guerrillas against the Allied invaders and occupiers descending upon Germany in 1944/45, and a subsidiary part of this story involves the way in which small frag

Why Bush Never Should Have Been Considered Wilson's Successor

by Erez Manela

Ninety years ago this summer the first American troops under General John J. “Blackjack” Pershing landed on European shores. The United States had been at war with Germany since April. The war, President Woodrow Wilson famously said, was being fought to “make the world safe for democracy.” On the Fourth of July that year, street posters declared, “For Freedom Then, For Freedom Now!”  

Getting Out of Iraq: The Return of Tricky Dick?

by William Marina

Today, Henry Kissinger must be smiling! In a lead article in The Sunday New York Times (Aug. 12, ’07) assessing the positions of the Democratic candidates for president, the newspaper suggested that all of the various Democrats’ plans for leaving Iraq “may take years.”This is “withdrawal?” It appears to be “déjà vu, all over again,” to quo

Did We Miss the Lesson of Nagasaki?

by William D. Hartung

It has been 62 years since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the moral and strategic lessons of those devastating acts have still not been fully learned. Despite the efforts of scientists like Leo Szilard and diplomats like John McCloy to promote alternative means for ending the war, the bombings went forward. There are still debates among historians and the public at large about the primary rationale for the use of the weapons. Some interpretations accept the offi

Why You Should Watch "No End in Sight" (And What You Don't Learn from It)

by Rick Shenkman

The producers of No End in Sight, which opens this month in movie houses across the country, believe it will be the Inconvenient Truth of the Iraq War. I very much doubt it. It's like a good Frontline documentary (without, unfortunately, Frontline's sonorous narrator), but lacks the usual elements needed to draw millions of movie goers. There's no celebrity host comparable to Michael Moore or Al Gor

Why We Should Expect Insurgents to Use Petraeus's September Report to Launch a 'Tet Offensive'

by D. M. Giangreco

Five times within the last 100 years, the US Armed Forces have had direct --- and painful --- experience with enemies who have tried to turn around a deteriorating situation by lashing back in one last, massive assault. The list of presidents and their military commanders who have faced these crises reads like a who’s who of recent American history: Woodow Wilson and General John "Blackjack" Pershing; Franklin Delano Roosevelt and General Dwight D. Eisenhower; Harry

What's Fair and Not Fair in the Middle East Debates?

by David Slavin

The posting on HNN April 25, 2007 with the title"Norman Finkelstein: Controversy featured at frontpagemag.com" is actually an attack essay by Steven Plaut. Go to Plaut's blog and the following appears: At the new address of this blog (

What Academic Values Does the British Boycott Protect?

by Richard L. Cravatts

In what has nearly become a perverse, recurring rite of spring, and yet more evidence that universities have become, as Abigail Thernstrom has described them, “islands of repression in a sea of freedom,” Britain’s University and College Union, which represents some 120,000 members, voted in May to call for a boycott against Israeli academics. Why Israeli academic institutions? Because, the boycotters say, “Israel’s 40-year occupation has seriously damaged the fa

Why We Need a Cool Assessment of Terrorism

by Gérard Chaliand

The State Department recently released a report on World Terrorism for 2006. More then 14,600 attacks have been recorded, an increase of more than 6% on the previous year: That gives the frightening figure of 40 attacks a day! The public in the West, and particularly in the US, cannot be but impressed by such figures. Shou

Henry Kissinger’s Lessons for George W. Bush

by Jeremi Suri

During the middle of July 1971 Henry Kissinger, acting as President Richard Nixon’s special representative, secretly traveled to Beijing. Kissinger’s voyage provided the basis for a dramatic opening in relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China – two nations estranged from one another, and often on the brink of full-scale war, for more than twenty years. Convulsed by internal upheavals and surrounded by regional threats, Chinese leaders vie

Remember the Agricultural Exchanges Between the US and USSR? What We Can Learn from Them Today

by Lee Winningham

Despite the parade of books and papers during the years following the Cold War, historians continue to overlook a series of events that could add immensely to our understanding of the conflict. In the mid-1950’s, ordinary American farmers and Soviet officials, out of a desire to share agricultural knowledge, attempted to break through the ideological barriers that separated them by participating in an agricultural exchange program. These forgotten events and how people from both count

Dark Ages Redux?

by Judith Apter Klinghoffer

It would be, oh, so comforting to assume that civilization is destined to march on regardless of the best efforts of its opponents. I watch Islamist anti-democratic, anti-freedom forces threaten novelists like Salman Rushdie, Danish Cartoonists and even the Pope. I recognize the strategic manner in which Muslim states help intimidate “infidels” and their governments. I am alarmed by the appeasement-dominated responses of the intellectual elites, the free media, democratic governments

An Interview with Carolyn Eisenberg About the War, Activism, and Teaching

by John Elrick

Carolyn Eisenberg, a professor of history at Hofstra University, is the author of Drawing the Line: The American Decision to Divide Germany, 1944-1949. She is on the Steering Committee of Historians Against the War (HAW). This interview was conducted by email.How did Historians Against the War come about? Historians Against the War (HAW) was for

About Those Predictions If We Leave

by James Livingston

Chaos. Civil War. Regional strife or Iranian hegemony in the Middle East. American credibility impaired in the eyes of the world. Terrorists emboldened enough to strike “the homeland.”These are the supposed consequences of a phased withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. Let us take a page from John Murtha’s book and ask why we should believe these dire predictions offered by Bush, Cheney, Gingrich, Perle, Frum, Kristol, & Co. Have these people been right about anything s

The Book that Should Be on President Bush's Reading List

by Timothy Stewart-Winter

"If we lose Iraq, we lose the Middle East." These words, which could have been spoken by a Republican member of Congress today, are in fact spoken by a character in Sam Greenlee's 1976 mass-market paperback novel Baghdad Blues.