News Abroad

Must We Put Up with Munich Analogies Yet Again?

by Ron Briley

Supporters of the war in Iraq condemn what they perceive as false analogies between Iraq and the Vietnam War.  Yet, the historical parallels which the President and his Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld draw between Iraq and the international situation in the late 1930s are quite similar to the faulty reasoning of the Eisenhower administration in regard to Indochina in the 1950s.             As we observe the fifth anniver

To Extremists, Books Are Trojan Horses

by Rebecca Knuth

Book and library destruction is a sordid, ironic fact of modern life that appears frequently in accounts of war and social violence. Andrei Codrescu’s The Hole in the Flag: A Romanian Exile’s Story of Return and Revolution includes a poignant account of the devastation of Bucharest’s beautiful nineteenth-century university library, lost during the insurrection that brought down Ceausescu in 1989. In Kashmir: Wail of a Valley, professor Mohan Lai Kaul describes

What Would the Founders Do About Terrorism?

by Richard Brookhiser

Eighteenth century warfare was supposed to be a civilized affair, with elaborate rules for how prisoners should be treated, exchanged or paroled. When the British lost the battle of Saratoga in 1778, the American commander, Gen. Horatio Gates, signed a convention allowing Gen. John Burgoyne and his men to go home, so long as they promised not to return to fight again in America. The terms caused some grumbling, since -- the homecoming enemy would free up other troops to replace them. But

Thoughts on the Impossibility of Being both Deeply Religious and Cosmopolitan

by Margaret C. Jacob

We have leaders on the national stage who think they can respect, even encourage, fundamentalism, and still build a peaceful world where creeds and colors act hospitably toward one another. They have got it badly wrong. Fundamentalism breeds resentment or disdain for other religions or simply different ways of being in the world. Think about Christian fundamentalists in this country or recall the Pope's recent visit to Spain to condemn the new freedoms given to gays there. Both f

Richard Brookhiser: What Would the Founders Do About Terrorism? Godfrey Hodgson: We'd Be Better Off If Our Foreign Policy Was Less Woodrow Wilson and More Colonel House Ruth Rosen: Oliver Stone, 9/11, and the Big Lie Margaret C. Jacob: Thoughts on the Impossibility of Being both Deeply Rel

We'd Be Better Off If Our Foreign Policy Was Less Woodrow Wilson and More Colonel House

by Godfrey Hodgson

At a time when leaders in both major parties claim their foreign policy is Wilsonian, it is opportune to look closely at the tensions between Woodrow Wilson, with his yearning to convert the world to American ideals, and the more pragmatic approach of his close friend and collaborator, Colonel House. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union there has been a revival in the United States of the strategy known as “Wilsonian” — the idea, that is, that it is the

Another September 11th: Stimson, the Bomb, Bush and Iran

by William Marina

The 5th anniversary of September 11, 2001, will certainly produce an outpouring of politically motivated media presentations ranging from conspiracy theories to justifications for pursuing the "War on Terror."I would like to use the occasion, however, to give renewed attention to the significance of a previous September 11th sixty-one years ago, when retiring Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson sent a top-secret, eight-page, Memorandum to President Harry S. Truman, exploring

Israel's Air War in Lebanon and the German Press

by Dagmar Barnouw

When Israel’s Prime Minister was asked in a recent interview with Sueddeutsche Zeitung why he had involved his people in a bloody war when he had just promised them peace and prosperity, he said Hezbollah “forced a war on

Calling Al-Qaeda Fascist Doesn't Make It So

by Jeff Mankoff

Following the recent arrest of al-Qaeda-linked conspirators planning to bomb aircraft over the Atlantic, President Bush reminded Americans that they continue to face a fanatical, determined foe. Speaking in Wisconsin just hours after the plotters' arrest, Bush declared that the West is "at war with Islamic fascists." In case anyone missed the point, a few days later Bush described Islamic radicalism as a "totalitarian ideology" menacing people everywhere.This compar

"Islamic Fascism": Well, It’s Half Right

by Timothy R. Furnish

Since the 9/11 attacks President Bush has walked a politically correct tight-rope in referring to the enemies of this country operating from an Islamic geographical and ideological context. The President, and his administration, have always been careful to describe the struggle, from our end, as a war “on terror.” (In fact, the official rubric was, and remains, the “Global War on Terror,” or GWOT.) Perhaps burned by his one rhetorical sin—declaring a “crus

Why We Shouldn't Be Shocked--Shocked!--by the Iraq War Scandals

by Nicholas B. Dirks

The invasion and occupation of Iraq began with the scandalous fabrication in some circles of claims about the dangers of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. But scandal did not stop there; it is a theme that has stretched from the emergence of photographic evidence of torture at US-run military prisons to continuous revelations about over-billing by companies with deeply embedded relationships at the highest levels of the US government. Most recently there have b

The World's Longest War

by David Carlin

Everybody recognizes by now that the Arab-Israeli conflict is a singularly intractable one. The current struggle between Israel and Hezbollah is the sixth major episode in a 58-year-long war between Israel and its Arab neighbors that commenced in 1948 when the state of Israel was proclaimed. Fighting was renewed in 1956 over Suez, in 1967 in the Six-Day War, in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and in 1982 with the invasion of Lebanon. Only an incurable optimist will imagine that whatever "peace&

Our Roman Predicament

by Harold James

In 1776, the year of the American Declaration of Independence, Adam Smith and Edward Gibbon published the first volumes of two works that used history to illuminate Britain’s imperial dilemma in the face of the American Revolution: The Wealth of Nations and The Dec

Radical Anti-Semitism: Phase 2

by Jeffrey Herf

After recycling ancient anti-Semitic tales about the death of Jesus in The Passion of Christ, a drunken Mel Gibson informed the local police and then the national media that yes indeed, the Jews are also the cause of modern wars. The implosion of the career of this undistinguished, if commercially successful Hollywood celebrity, would be a welcome aspect of the re-emergence of anti-Semitism he has helped to foster. Since the 1950s, the lines between hatred of Jews as Jews, and hatred of I

Castro May Be Dying, Castroism Isn't

by Alan McPherson

Wild speculation has followed Cuba’s announcement last Monday that Fidel Castro was temporarily transferring power to his brother Raúl to recover from surgery. Some anti-Castro exiles in Miami immediately concluded that Fidel had died, that he has cancer, or that Raúl is not really in charge. Others, more realistic, presumed the elder brother would not return to power, and others still that Raúl’s ascent will usher in significant reforms.

Interview with Marjorie Murphy: War News Radio

by Nathan Calverley

Since March 2005, students at Swarthmore College have been on the air broadcasting stories about the war in Iraq. The program has been steadily gaining in popularity since its first broadcast over a year ago. Listeners tune in from as far away as Italy and Australia. The station broadcasts over the radio and online. Swarthmore Professor of History Marjorie Murphy oversees the program.HNN asked Professor Murphy, who teaches social

Lebanon: How We Got Here

by Yoav Gelber

The beginning of Israel’s involvement in Lebanon dates back to the 1930s, before Jewish statehood. The Arab rebels in Palestine looked for guidance to their leader, the Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin al-Hussayni, who found refuge in a Lebanese village and from this secure shelter directed the rebellion in Palestine and provided the Palestinian gangs with munitions, provisions and funds while the French authorities in Beirut turned a

Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism: The Link

by Diana Muir

This week, the Spanish Foreign Minister felt compelled to defend Prime Minister Zapatero from charges of anti-Semitism. Zapatero had donned the black-checked keffiyeh that is the symbol of Palestinian determination to destroy the Jewish State and criticized Israel for using “abusive force that does not protect innocent human beings.”1 It was all too familiar. On any given day one can find some eminent European – a

So Hezbollah Can't Be Crushed?

by Diana Muir

Last Tuesday morning a “senior (Israeli) military source” said that Israel seeks "to significantly weaken Hezbollah but not crush it, since it is impossible to crush a popular, religious movement." Conventional wisdom is with the senior Israeli officer, but in fact popular, religious movements have been crushed by military force many times, and in all parts of the world. The Zanj movement formed in 868 CE in the vast delta where the Tigris meets

Why Israel's Campaign Will Likely Fail

by Michael Creswell

Many Americans see Israel's response to the capture of three of its soldiers as entirely justified. Why not, they ask, punish those who hold these men? Surely no other country would act differently in similar circumstances. The Bush administration agrees. It strongly supports Israeli military action in Lebanon against Hezbollah.   Yet Israel's military campaign is unlikely to succeed. In fact, it will probably backfire. Once before, Israel -- under the pretext of a justifiable