Roundup: Historians' Take

Source: Jerusalem Post
October 11, 2007

Daniel Pipes: Zionism's Bleak Present

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his blog.] "We are all Keynsians now," Richard Nixon famously asserted just as the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes fell into disrepute. Likewise, one could have said with similar confidence in 1989, as Isra

Source: NYT Magazine
September 23, 2007

Jeffrey Rosen: Justice John Paul Stevens, profiled in the NYT Magazine

[Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at George Washington University, is a frequent contributor to the magazine. He is the author most recently of ''The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries That Defined America.''] The last Supreme Court term, which ended in June, was the stormiest in recent memory, with more 5-to-4 decisions split along ideological lines than at any time in the court's history. In a series of controversial cases about abortion, racial integration in schools, f

Source: Britannica Blog
October 10, 2007

Stephen Kinzer: “Blowback” and Responsibility: What the US Owes Iran

[Mr. Kinzer, a reporter for the NYT, is the author of All the Shah's Men.] More than half a century has passed since the United States deposed the only democratic government Iran ever had. As militants in Washington urge a second American attack on Iran, the story of the first one becomes more urgently relevant than ever. It shows the folly of using violence to try to reshape Iran. If the United States had not sent agents to depose Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh (

Source: Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center
October 9, 2007

Barry Rubin: Why Real Democracies Succeed

[Barry Rubin is Director of the Global Research in International Affairs(GLORIA) Center, Interdisciplinary Center university. His latest book, The Truth about Syria was published by Palgrave-Macmillan in May 2007. Prof. Rubin's columns can be read online at: http://gloria.idc.ac.il/articles/index.html.] Working on new material for the seventh edition of the Israel-Arab Reader, a documentary work that I edit along with Walter

Source: http://www.delawareonline.com
October 7, 2007

Reider Visser: The US Senate Votes to Partition Iraq. Softly.

[Mr. Visser, D. Phil., is a research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and editor of the Iraq website www.historiae.org. His latest books are Basra, the Failed Gulf State: Separatism and Nationalism in Southern Iraq (2005), and, edited with Gareth Stansfield,

Source: FrontpageMag.com
October 10, 2007

Henry Mark Holzer: Clarence Thomas ... An American Hero

[Henry Mark Holzer, Professor Emeritus at Brooklyn Law School, is an appellate lawyer who specializes in constitutional law. You can contact him via his website: www.henrymarkholzer.com.] Upon entering the august chamber of the Supreme Court of the United States during oral argument, one immediately sees the nine justices, almost regal in their black robes in front of a huge velvet curtain. Among his colleagues—Chief J

Source: WaPo
October 7, 2007

Geoffrey Wheatcroft: Who Made Hillary Queen?

[Geoffrey Wheatcroft's books include "The Controversy of Zion," "The Strange Death of Tory England" and, most recently, "Yo, Blair!"] Among so much about American politics that can impress or depress a friendly transatlantic observer, there's nothing more astonishing than this: Why on Earth should Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton be the front-runner for the presidency? She has now pulled well ahead of Sen. Barack Obama, both in polls and

Source: Altercation (Blog)
October 9, 2007

Eric Alterman: Why Bush vetoed the bill helping children get health care

I can't keep spending my time swatting at gnats like Brendan Nyhan, who apparently unironically carries an endorsement from Wonkette atop his blog as if he's proud of it, but I am happy to explicate further on my statement that George W. Bush vetoed the SCHIP extension because of his "preference" that poor children get sick and die, as opposed to encouraging what he calls "socialized medicine," as Instapundit, Andrew Sullivan have seized on it and I imagine others of ill will

Source: Letter to the editor of the NYT
October 9, 2007

Joyce Appleby: David Brooks is wrong about the origins of conservativism

[The writer is professor emerita of history at U.C.L.A.] David Brooks has gracefully summarized the Burkean conservative temperament, but his analysis is flawed. There is absolutely no connection between Edmund Burke, who wrote at the end of the 18th century, and contemporary American conservatives. Their historic roots go back to the beginning of the 20th century and the passage of legislation protecting children, women, workers and consumers from the dangerous excesses in business

Source: Lipstadt Blog
October 6, 2007

Deborah Lipstadt: On using [and preferably not] the term "Jappy"

Over this weekend I was taken aback when a smart, sharp, funny, sassy [in the best sense of the word] Jewish woman used the term Jappy. My friend Miriam was commenting on a TV character and dismissed her as "Jappy, Jappy, Jappy." [She also tends to be emphatic, a characteristic with which I admit to being somewhat familiar.] Miriam is someone whose Jewish identity is integral to who she is. It's not something she takes on and off at will. More importantly, she delights in

Source: Inside Higher Ed
October 8, 2007

Hugo Schwyzer: The Educrats’ Attack on Teaching

[Hugo Schwyzer teaches history and gender studies at Pasadena City College. He teaches and blogs about such issues as the interplay of faith and sexuality, American history, and masculinity.] ...Accountability is the buzzword of the decade; the taxpayers (and their duly elected representatives) want to know that they’re getting something in return for their billions. That’s not unreasonable. But as anyone who has taught the humanities with passion for any length of time will attest,

Source: History Unfolding (Blog)
October 7, 2007

David Kaiser: William Kristol on Iraq, 2003-7

[Mr. Kaiser is the Stanley Kaplan Professor of History and Leadership Studies at Williams College, and the author of American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War (2000).] ... We liberal Democrats have been kidding ourselves for seven years if we really think we have anything to do with the debate over our foreign policy. We are nothing but whipping boys and girls, trotted out as defeatists eager to stab our troops in the back to rally the public behind a po

Source: NYT
October 7, 2007

Tony Judt: Liberal Hawks should get off their high horse

[Tony Judt is director of the Remarque Institute at New York University and the author of “Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945.”] THE “liberal hawks” are back. These, of course, are the politicians and pundits who threw in their lot with George W. Bush in 2003: voting and writing for a “preventive war” — a war of choice that would avenge 9/11, clean up Iraq, stifle Islamic terrorism, spread shock, awe and democracy across the Middle East and re-affirm the credentials of a benevo

Source: NYT
October 7, 2007

Jon Meacham: A Nation of Christians Is Not a Christian Nation

[Jon Meacham, the editor of Newsweek, is the author of “American Gospel” and “Franklin and Winston.”] JOHN McCAIN was not on the campus of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University last year for very long — the senator, who once referred to Mr. Falwell and Pat Robertson as “agents of intolerance,” was there to receive an honorary degree — but he seems to have picked up some theology along with his academic hood. In an interview with Beliefnet.com last weekend, Mr. McCain repeated what is a

Source: Nation
October 15, 2007

Eric Alterman: The Coming 'Stab in the Back' Campaign

Having exposed their country to the ignominy of certain defeat in Iraq, the Bush Administration and its neoconservative allies are seeking to salvage their crumbling reputations by blaming their critics for the catastrophe their policies have wrought. We are witnessing the foundation for a post-Iraq "stab in the back" campaign. The tactic--Dolchstoßlegende, which means, literally, "dagger stab legend"--is associated with attacks by German anti-Semite

Source: Newsweek
October 8, 2007

Rick Atkinson: The campaign to free Italy foreshadowed battles to come, from Berlin to Fallujah

[Atkinson is the author of "The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944," published this month by Henry Holt & Co.] Few successful wars of liberation have been more roundly condemned or more quickly forgotten than the American-led campaign to free Italy, which began 64 years ago last month. GREAT STUPIDITY? a magazine headline asked at the time. The scholar David M. Kennedy later noted the 312,000 Allied casualties suffered in two years of slogging up the

Source: Atlantic Monthly
November 1, 2007

John Hope Franklin: The American Idea

[John Hope Franklin, the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History at Duke University, is a past president of the American Historical Association and the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. His book From Slavery to Freedom has sold more than 4 million copies since its publication, in 1947.] If the American idea was to subdue Native Americans and place them at the disposal of European settlers, to import several million Africans to t

Source: Introduction to an article at the website of Japan Focus, "Families of Eight Wrongfully Executed South Korean Political Prisoners Awarded Record Compensation. The People's Revolutionary Party 8"
October 1, 2007

Bruce Cumings: South Korea comes to terms with history

[Bruce Cumings teaches in the History Department and the Committee on International Relations at the University of Chicago and is the author of the two volume work The Origins of the Korean War and North Korea: Another Country.] NEWS HEADLINE: Court ruling grants 63.7 billion won to families, the largest amount ever paid in a case involving political dissidents *** The large monetary awards to the family members of eight men executed in 1974 as members of t

Source: Britannica Blog
October 5, 2007

Allan Lichtman: The 13 Keys to the White House ... Why the Democrats will take back the White House

[Mr. Lichtman is a professor of history at American University and the author of The Keys to the White House (1996).] The election for president is more than a year away. Neither major party has as yet chosen a nominee. Yet the results of the 2008 election are already in: the Democrats will recapture the White House next fall, whether they nominate Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama, John Edwards, or Bill Richardson. Only an unprecedented cataclysmic change in American politics during

Source: TomDispatch.com
October 4, 2007

William J. Astore: Why Medals and Metrics Mislead ... Saving the Military from Itself

[William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), earned a doctorate in modern history from the University of Oxford in 1996. He has taught military cadets at the Air Force Academy, officers at the Naval Postgraduate School, and now teaches at the Pennsylvania College of Technology. His books and articles, focusing primarily on military history, include Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism (Potomac Press, 2005). He can be reached at wastore@pct.edu.]