Roundup: Historians' Take

Gabrielle M. Spiegel: History and the Torture Memos

"Getting medieval," as those who saw the movie will remember, is the phrase employed by Ving Rhames in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction as he was preparing to torture with the aid of a pair of pliers and a blowtorch the hapless man writhing before him on the floor (the actual spoken words were: "I'm gonna get medieval on your …"). According to Carolyn Dinshaw, the phrase became so popular that in the spring of 1997 the mint company, Altoids, launched an advertising campaign t

Frederick Kagan, Kimberly Kagan, Jack Keane: The Endgame in Iraq

On September 16, General Raymond Odierno will succeed General David Petraeus as commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. The surge strategy Petraeus and Odierno developed and executed in 2007 achieved its objectives: reducing violence in Iraq enough to allow political processes to restart, economic development to move forward, and reconciliation to begin. Violence has remained at historic lows even after the withdrawal of all surge forces and the handover of many areas to Iraqi control. A

David Greenberg: How neocons made liberals wary of idealism

n early November 1956, Soviet tanks swarmed into Hungary to crush an insurgency that had just thrown off Moscow's yoke. In the United States, where the presidential election was days away, the Democratic nominee was the professorial and sometimes equivocal Adlai Stevenson--the epitome of the peace-loving, arms control-pushing, diplomacy-advocating liberalism that Republicans loved to tar as squishy-soft. In Hungary's case, however, Stevenson didn't flinch. At a Cleveland campaign st

Mark Naison: The McCain Palin Ticket Appeals to a Powerful Strain of Anti-Intellectualism in American Society

The McCain Palin ticket, if elected, would be a disaster for the country. Their propensity to invoke God's will as a justification for government policies, their contempt for science and intellect, their extraordinary lack of knowledge about the culture and history of the major nations of the world,, and their shameless defense of an oil centered energy policy that has produced economic and ecological disaster for the nation, poorly prepares them to lead a nation whose reputation has been dama

Juan Cole: Palin on World Affairs ... Just not Ready for Prime Time

Sarah Palin revealed herself in the Charlie Gibson interview on ABC to be nervous,uninformed, green and generally not ready for prime time. The interview was full of stock phrases she was made to memorize, and which she repeated over and over again when stumped. She knows nothing about how Iran is run, or about Pakistan, or about al-Qaeda, and even is ignorant of the Bush doctrine of preemptive warfare. It was a shockingly bad performance.She had the hubris to suggest that he

Kathleen M. Dalton: A 'bully' Roosevelt fought for the little man

[Kathleen M. Dalton is the author of "Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life" (Alfred A. Knopf, 2002).] Election years remind us that Americans vote for a president not knowing for sure what kind of person they are hiring to run the country. Even the vetting of long campaign seasons with their grueling questioning and debates about issues leaves us with questions unanswered. In the courtship phase, voters hear presidential hopefuls profess lofty goals, and we ofte

Jon Wiener: Sarah Palin and the Jews

[Mr. Wiener, a historian, is a contributing editor to the Nation.] Sarah Palin took the biblical Queen Esther as her role model when she became governor, according to her former pastor--a report that suggests her ties to Jewish history are stronger than you might have expected. When Palin took office as governor in 2006, according to the Ne

Andrew J. Bacevich: 9/11 Plus Seven

[Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His bestselling new book is The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. You can read excerpts from it by clicking here, a

Benny Morris: Cutting Through The Propaganda About The History Of Muslim Anti-Semitism

Scholars in the West have begun to devote time and space to anti-Western jihadism and Muslim anti-Semitism--and a good thing, too, as these are very much on the contemporary international and Middle Eastern political and military agendas and, I fear, will grow in significance during the coming decades, as the Huntingtonian "clash of civilizations" widens. That such a "clash" is going on is all too apparent, from the riots in Nigerian streets, where hundreds died following the

Victor Davis Hanson: What Was Feminism?

[Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.] ... Women [who wanted liberation in the 1960s] in the workplace did not look for special favors. And they surely did not wish to deny innately feminine differen

A.N. Wilson: How Britain has given in to the religious fanatics intent on destroying our way of life

[In his major new book, the historian A N Wilson examines how Britain has changed almost beyond recognition during the reign of the present Queen. Mass immigration and political correctness have turned Britain into a haven for Islamic fanatics. In this fourth extract, he says society is paying a terrible price for tolerating such extremists.] The growth of Islamism was first noted by the West with a mixture of indifference and incredulity. Had not the Islamic world always thrown up

Andrew Bacevich: The failure of Bush policy post-9/11

[Andrew Bacevich, professor of history and international relations at Boston University, retired from the U.S. Army with the rank of colonel.] The events of the past seven years have yielded a definitive judgment on the strategy that the Bush administration conceived in the wake of 9/11 to wage its so-called global war on terror. That strategy has failed, massively and irrevocably. To acknowledge that failure is to confront an urgent national priority: to scrap the Bush approach in

Juan Cole: Time to Declare the original al-Qaeda Defeated

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.] The original al-Qaeda is defeated.It is a dangerous thing for an analyst to say, because obviously radical Muslim extremists may at some point set off some more bombs and then everyone will point fingers and say how wrong I was.So let me be very clear that I do not mean that radical Muslim extremism has ceased to exist or

Joseph Lane: McCain’s Closing of the “Enthusiasm Gap” (Thanks to Palin)

[Joseph Lane is the Hawthorne Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Emory & Henry.] “The Enthusiasm Gap” has become a pundit’s watchword in this campaign as two highly motivated camps of Democrats, each thrilled with their standard-bearer, each pouring out to the polls in unexpected numbers expanded the Democrats’ edge in voter identification to 10 points, the highest it has been since Watergate. On the other hand, John McCain struggled to galva

Juan Cole: What's the difference between Palin and Muslim fundamentalists? Lipstick

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.] John McCain announced that he was running for president to confront the "transcendent challenge" of the 21st century, "radical Islamic extremism," contrasting it with "stability, tolerance and democracy." But the values of his handpicked running mate, Sarah Palin, more resemble those

Jonathan Zimmerman: A focus on diversity is keeping us apart

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University and lives in Narberth. He is the author of "Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century" (Harvard University Press). E-mail him at jlzimm@aol.com.] Several years ago, during a class on the history of race in America, I asked a group of students whether white parents should be encouraged to adopt African American children. Most of the students were wh

Leonard Steinhorn: Pre-Palin, a VP pick judged on looks

An indignant Republican vice presidential candidate, troubled that the media focused a disproportionate amount of attention on her looks, pleaded with reporters to start covering the important news: “I’d rather talk about what I stand for than what I look like.” But even then, The Associated Press story reporting her plea prefaced the quote by saying that she “brushed her sandy blond hair with an impatient sweep of her hand.” Sexism in the media? Very possibly, yet it wasn’t a fema

Timothy Stewart-Winter: Gay Marriage and the Black Vote

[Mr. Stewart-Winter is a Ph.D. Candidate in American history. He is currently writing his dissertation,"Raids, Rights, and Rainbow Coalitions: Gay and Lesbian Citizenship and the Remaking of Chicago Politics, 1950-2000."] At a Democratic presidential forum on gay issues last year, the Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart prefaced a question to Sen. Barack Obama this way: "Now, you and I both know that there's a homophobia problem in the black community." Capehart seemed to

Jeff Pasley: “Bragging War Heroes” Then and Now

Today there was an incendiary post by M.J. Rosenberg at TPM Cafe called “Bragging War Heroes.” The post got quite tough with the McCain campaign’s heavy reliance on their candidate’s POW experience, in the acceptance speech and before. Rosenberg made some claims about past war heroes and their comparatively modest political use of their military backgrounds that are devastating, if true (to paraphrase my old graduate adviser). I would be interested to know what other historians think:"Y

Victor Davis Hanson: Want Real Change? Quit Nominating Lawyers

[Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.] The 2008 presidential campaign is supposed to be a referendum on "change" -- who brings it and who doesn't. Real change, however, hasn't y