Roundup: Historians' Take

Daniel Pipes: Unleash the Iranian Opposition

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his blog.] Navigating the fractious currents of émigré politics is never easy, and especially for the Iranian opposition group known as the Mujahedeen-e Khalq or the People's Mujahedeen of Iran. Simply put, the rogue oil state regime it opposes terrifies one half the West and tempts th

Shlomo Avineri: Post-Zionism doesn't exist

[Shlomo Avineri is a prominent Israeli political scientist.] In recent years a phenomenon called "post-Zionism" has developed in the political-intellectual discourse in Israel. Fundamentally, this is a radical criticism not just of Israel's policy; at its base is total denial of the Zionist project and of the very legitimacy of the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish nation-state. The arguments called "post-Zionist" have various aspects -

Niall Ferguson: A PM offering to reduce his powers?

[Niall Ferguson is Laurence A Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University www.niallferguson.org.] Britain’s new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was a day early with his Independence Day celebrations. Last Tuesday, on July 3, he made one of the most startling statements ever made by a newly installed premier before the House of Commons. Unless my ears mistook me, Mr Brown pledged to transform the United Kingdom of Great Brita

Sean Wilentz: 20 years ago Cheney revealed his views on presidential power

[Sean Wilentz, a professor of history at Princeton, is the author of a forthcoming book on the Reagan administration and its legacy.] TWENTY years ago this week, Lt. Col. Oliver North testified for six days before a special joint House and Senate investigating committee. Permitted by the Democratic majority to appear in his bemedaled Marine uniform, and disastrously granted immunity, Colonel North freely admitted that he had shredded documents, lied to Congress and falsified officia

Mary L. Dudziak: Which side Brown is on

[Mary L. Dudziak is Judge Edward J. and Ruey L. Guirado Professor of Law, History and Political Science, University of Southern California.] Ken Mack, Harvard Law School, who is writing a greatly anticipated history of civil rights lawyers, had this to say in the Los Angeles Timeson Wednesday:AS THE Supreme Court wrestled wit

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom: The Dangers of Dim Sum History

[JEFFREY N. WASSERSTROM, a professor of history at UC Irvine, is the author of "China's Brave New World -- And Other Tales for Global Times," published this month.] HISTORY HAS been trotted out recently by both domestic defenders and international critics of Chinese Communist Party rule. But while both groups have stressed the value of looking back roughly 70 years, they have drawn sharply different conclusions from what they see.

John Fabian Witt: Bush should re-read the Declaration of Independence

[John Fabian Witt, a professor of law and history at Columbia University, is writing a book on the laws of war in American history.] ... We all know that the Declaration of Independence announced the United States' freedom from the British Empire. We all remember that it declared certain truths to be self-evident. But what you probably haven't heard is that the declaration also advanced an idea about war. The idea was that war ought to be governed by law. In late June 1

Sally Marks: Whither Iraq? A Commentary for Americans

[Diplomatic historian Sally Marks is the author of The Illusion of Peace: International Relations in Europe, 1918–1933 (1976; a revised second edition was published in 2003) and Innocent Abroad: Belgium at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (1981), which won the George Louis Beer and Phi Alpha Theta prizes. Her most recent book is The Ebbing of European Ascendancy: An International History of theWorld 1914-1945.] The debate over Iraq thus far has focused on whether the United States s

Daniel Pipes: When Conservatives Argue about Islam

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his blog.] Allies in the Cold War trenches generally, but not always, still work together against radical Islam.Take the key question of which Muslims are on the enemy's side and which on ours. With exceptions, the Right shuns

David Halberstam: Bush, the Historian

We are a long way from the glory days of Mission Accomplished, when the Iraq war was over before it was over—indeed before it really began—and the president could dress up like a fighter pilot and land on an aircraft carrier, and the nation, led by a pliable media, would applaud. Now, late in this sad, terribly diminished presidency, mired in an unwinnable war of their own making, and increasingly on the defensive about events which, to their surprise, they do not control, the president and his

Ilan Pappe: Towards a Geography of Peace ... Whither Gaza?

[Ilan Pappe is senior lecturer in the University of Haifa Department of political Science and Chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian Studies in Haifa. His books include, among others, The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (London and New York 1992), The Israel/Palestine Question (London and New York 1999), A History of Modern Palestine (Cambridge 2003), The Modern Middle East (London and New York 2005) and his latest, Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006).] The Gaza Strip

Barry Rubin: Why you shouldn't be shocked to learn about doctors who blow things up

[Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center. His latest book is "The Truth About Syria."] THE arrest of seven doctors in the attempted British terror bombings has shocked many people. Sadly, it shouldn't. All seven are Muslims working at government-financed hospitals, their salaries paid by the British taxpayer. Dr. Muhammad Hanif practiced at Halton Hospital in Runcorn, Cheshire; Dr. Muhammad Asha, at the North Staffords

Andro Linklater: The geographical center of the US keeps changing

[Andro Linklater is the author of “The Fabric of America: How Our Borders and Boundaries Shaped the Country and Forged Our National Identity.”] IT’S just a red stake stuck in an anonymous spread of pasture 20 miles north of Belle Fourche, S.D., a rodeo town of about 5,000 inhabitants. But it is also the geographical center of the United States of America, as defined by the National Geodetic Survey in 1959. Or at least it is for now. To find it, says Teresa Schanzenbach,

Joshua Brown: The Cover-up (Illustration)

  Joshua Brown, co-director of the New Media Lab, is also Executive Director of the Center for Media and Learning/American Social History Project (ASHP) at the CUNY Graduate Center. Before assuming those duties in 1998, Brown served as CML/ASHP's Creative Director, su

Daniel Pipes: Shoeless George Bush

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his blog.] When Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicated the Islamic Center in Washington, D.C., in June 1957, his 500-word talk effused good will ("Civilization owes to the

Michael Kazin: Rove fails where his hero succeeded

[Michael Kazin teaches history at Georgetown University. He is author, most recently, of "A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan" (Knopf, 2006).] It may be admirable to model oneself on a successful figure from the political past. Who wouldn't want to write like Lincoln, transform policy like FDR and inspire his followers like Reagan and Debs? But to equal the accomplishments of one's idol is a far more difficult task. History, after all, has a way o

Mark Naison: George Bush, Hurricane Katrina and the Unmasking of American Conservatism

[Dr. Naison is Professor of History and African American Studies at Fordham University. He is the author of Communists in Harlem During the Great Depression, White Boy: A Memoir, co-editor of The Tenant Movement in New York City, and over 100 articles on African American politics, social movements and American culture and sports. Dr. Naison is the Principal Investigator of the Bronx African American History Project.] I saw New Orleans Saw the people left for dead

Kenneth C. Davis: The Founding Immigrants

[Kenneth C. Davis is the author of “Don’t Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned.”] A PROMINENT American once said, about immigrants, “Few of their children in the country learn English... The signs in our streets have inscriptions in both languages ... Unless the stream of their importation could be turned they will soon so outnumber us that all the advantages we have will not be able to preserve our language, and even our gove

Juan Cole: Libby was the Small Fish ... Bush really Commuted the Sentences of Rove and Cheney

George H. W. Bush called those who leak the names of CIA operatives"the most insidious of traitors."In his son's administration, CIA covert operative Valerie Plame's name was leaked to the press to pu

Roger Morris: Robert Gates now has to deal with the Islamist movement he himself helped create years ago

[Roger Morris is an award-winning author and investigative journalist who served in the Foreign Service and on the Senior Staff of the National Security Council under Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. Before resigning over the invasion of Cambodia, he was one of only three officials comprising Henry Kissinger's Special Projects Staff conducting the initial highly secret "back-channel" negotiations with Hanoi to end the Vietnam War in 1969-1970.] ... The very pos