Roundup: Historians' Take

Niall Ferguson: Worry about bread, not oil

[Niall Ferguson is Laurence A Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University www.niallferguson.org © ] The great demographer and economist Thomas Malthus was 23-years-old the last time a British summer was this rain-soaked, which was back in 1789. The consequences of excessive rainfall in the late 18th century were predictable. Crops would fail, the harvest would be dismal, food prices would rise and some people would starve.

Kevin Boyle: 40 Years Later, the Urban Crisis Still Smolders

[Kevin Boyle teaches American history at Ohio State University and is the author of "Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age."] On a sultry Sunday 40 years ago this week, the Detroit police raided an after-hours bar at the corner of 12th and Clairmount streets, in a poor black section of the city's west side. A crowd gathered to watch, the way it always does when it's too hot to be indoors and there's nothing else to do. In their rush to fin

Harvey J Kaye: Should the French Stop Thinking?

[Harvey Kaye is professor of social change and development at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay and the author of Thomas Paine and the Promise of America.] "France is a country that thinks," Christine Lagarde, the nation's finance minister, observed recently. But Lagarde did not speak boastfully. She was not praising France's intellectual prowess or proclaiming its literary hegemony, but calling her fellow citoyens to the economic barricades. "There

Geoffrey Wheatcroft: Cycling: Another Tour, another scandal to become part of shameful history

[Geoffrey Wheatcroft's book 'Le Tour: A History of the Tour de France' has just been published in a revised edition (Pocket Books £8.99)] If the death of Diana or 9/11 were truly shocking, because so utterly unexpected, no one can honestly say that "Tour de France rider fails dope test" is an astounding story. If anything, there is a dull inevitability about the news that Alexander Vinokourov has failed a test for blood doping on Saturday. Each year, as we piously pray tha

Eric Alterman: Of Filibusters and “Stunts,” Then and Now

[Eric Alterman is a Senior Fellow of the Center for American Progress and a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College, CUNY. His weblog, “Altercation,” appears at www.mediamatters.org/altercation, His seventh book, Why We’re Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America, will appear early next year.] Remember the Gang of 14? The “obstructionist” Senate leader Tom Daschle? The demand for “up or down votes” by e

Tom Engelhardt: The Withdrawal Follies

[Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and, most recently, the author of Mission Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters (Nation Books).] Withdrawal is now so mainstream. Last week, debate abo

Ted Widmer: George Bush I

[Mr. Widmer directs the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.] None of us can control our ancestors. Like our children, they have minds of their own and invariably refuse to do our bidding. Presidential ancestors are especially unruly — they are numerous and easily discovered, and they often act in ways unbecoming to the high station of their descendants. Take George Bush. By whom I mean George Bush (1796-1859), first cousin of the president’s great-great-great

Juan Cole: US-Iran Alliance Against Sunni Guerrillas?

The headlines will probably concentrate on the shouting match between US Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Iranian diplomat Hassan Kazemi Qomi at their meeting in Baghdad. Crocker accused the Iranians of giving training and weapons to Shiite militias, some of which ended up being used against US troops in Iraq. The Iranian diplomat denied the charges. But in my view the money graf in this Telegraph report is this one: ' [t]he two countries did agree to form a security committee, with Iraq

Juan Cole: Bush's incompetence gives al-Qaida new life

In the past week, worrying signs of a resurgence of al-Qaida surfaced in cyberspace, in Pakistan and in Washington, D.C. The Pakistani military's invasion of a major mosque and seminary complex in the country's capital set off an unprecedented, violent wave of protests and car bombings in the north of the country. A new National Intelligence Estimate warned that al-Qaida was reconstituting itself in those very areas of northern Pakistan. A U.S. threat to send Special Forces into Pakistan in sear

Gary Leupp: Christian Rightist Bush Speechwriter Calls for Attack on Syria

[Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.] Neocon officials in the D

Daniel Pipes: Salvaging the Iraq War

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his blog.]Two positions dominate and polarize the American body politic today. Some say the war is lost, so leave Iraq. Others say the war can be won, so keep the troops in place.I split the difference and offer a third route. The occupation is lost but the war can be won. Keep U.S

Andrew Meyer: A Tale of Two Occupations

[Who Andrew Meyer is:"After living in mainland China and Taiwan for four years and in Japan for one year I returned to the U.S. and earned a doctoral degree in Chinese history, which I teach at the City University of New York."] The US occupation of Japan was obviously a major historical model upon which Bush administration officials drew in planning for the invasion of Iraq. The United States' perceived success in bringing postwar order and democracy to Japan stood testimony, so ou

Michael B. Katz: Why Aren't U.S. Cities Burning?

[Sociologist Michael B. Katz is Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. His most recent book, co-authored with Mark J. Stern, is One Nation Divisible: What America Was and What It Is Becoming (Russell Sage Foundation, 2006). This article is based on the author’s presidential address to the Urban History Association in January 2007. A much longer and fully documented version will appear in the Journal of Urban History (January 2008).] The summer of

Frank Askin: Congress's Power To Compel

[The writer, a professor at Rutgers School of Law, is director of the Rutgers Constitutional Litigation Clinic.] It seems that the House Judiciary Committee is considering seeking help from the Justice Department to enforce contempt citations against Bush administration officials such as Joshua Bolten who refuse to respond to congressional inquiries into alleged White House wrongdoing. That would be a mistake. Such a strategy leaves Congress beholden to hostile executiv

Joseph S. Nye, Jr.: American Foreign Policy After Iraq

[Joseph S. Nye Jr. is a university distinguished-service professor at Harvard. His recent books include The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone (Oxford University Press, 2002), and Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (Public Affairs, 2004).] What comes after Iraq? If President Bush's current surge of troops fails to produce "victory," what lessons will the United States draw for its future foreign policy? Will it turn

Ira Chernus: The Democrats' Iraqi Dilemma

[Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of Monsters To Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin. He can be contacted at chernus@colorado.edu.] Pity the poor Democratic candidates for president, caught between Iraq and a hard place. Every day, more and more voters decide that we must end the war and set a date to start withdrawing our troops

Gary Leupp: Hillary's Inquiry "Reinforces Enemy Propaganda"

[Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.] Eric Edelman is ba

Jon Wiener: Interview with Carl Bernstein About Hillary Clinton

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter on Watergate has just published “A Woman in Charge,” a biography of Hillary Clinton, for which he interviewed almost 100 of her friends and enemies. Carl Bernstein spoke recently with Truthdig’s Jon Wiener about the first former first lady to make a bid for the presidency. Jon Wiener: When Hillary arrived at Wellesley as a freshman in 1965, she was a Goldwater Republican. What happened then? Carl Bernstein: Like many

Victor Davis Hanson: Dark predictions for a post-withdrawal world

[Victor Davis Hanson is professor emeritus at California State University, Fresno, where he initiated the classics program.] The present Washington parlor game is to argue over the consequences of a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq. Vietnam is often the referent for both sides — the Left claiming that at least American human and material costs ceased after 1975, as Vietnam eventually found a weary sort of equilibrium. The Right replies with the genocide in Cambodia, the Boat People,

Mark J. Rozell: A battling president and Congress should remember why we compromise

[Mark J. Rozell is a professor of public policy at George Mason University. He is the author of the book Executive Privilege: Presidential Power, Secrecy and Accountability (University Press of Kansas, 2nd edition, 2002).] A constitutional storm is rumbling along Pennsylvania Avenue. The House Judiciary Committee may hold Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, in contempt for refusing to testify this month. President George W. Bush is asserting executive privilege to keep Mi