Roundup: Historians' Take

Ralph R. Donald: An Appeal to Fear Ain’t Nothin’ New

[Ralph R. Donald, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville.] Ralph Donald examines the similarities between the rhetoric found in war films of the World War II era and the rhetoric used by President Bush in America’s wars against terrorism in Afghanistan and against Saddam Hussein and in Iraq. He compares the propaganda appeals used by the makers of popular Hollywood feature films during World War II to the speeches in which President Bush attempts to persuade the American people to s

Jonathan Zimmerman: Sports and the American Ideal

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author of"Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century" (Harvard University Press, 2006).] Quick question: what did Don Imus' bigoted remarks and the dismissed Duke rape charges have in common? If you answered “race and gender,” you’re only partially correct. There was a third shared element in these stories, which gave them their special power and prominence in American

Daniel Martin Varisco: How Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech plays today

[Daniel Martin Varisco is Chair, Anthropology Department at Hofstra University.]“May day, may day.” You can take this in two ways. First, this is the day in which many working people in the world celebrate being workers. This is not the way it will be commemorated on the front lawn of the White House today. Then there is the military version of a Spitfire on fire and a pilot knowing it is time to bail out. The pilot currently occupying the White House is wielding his veto pow

Lawrence S. Wittner: How the Peace Movement Can Win

[Lawrence S. Wittner is professor of history at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book is Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford University Press). He serves on the board of Peace Action.] The peace movement is a very important part of American life. Much like the labor movement, the racial justice movement, and the women's movement, the peace movement is comprised of an array of organizations an

Tom Engelhardt: Bush's Texas Chainsaw Massacre

[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), the first collection of Tomdispatch interviews.] It had taken

Juan Cole: Bush didn't want war?

Condi Rice on Sunday denied allegations by former CIA director George Tenet that Bush came into office determined to have a war against Iraq. This is the interview by Wolf Blitzer of CNN:QUESTION: Because you remember Paul O'Neill, the first Treasury Secretary, where he wrote in his first book, The Price of Loyalty with Ron Suskind, and what Ron Suskind later wrote in his own book, The One Percent Solutio

Frederick Kagan: Two Months in -- The Consequences of the Surge

[Frederick W. Kagan is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of Finding the Target: The Transformation of the American Military (Encounter).] The new effort to establish security in Iraq has begun. At this early stage, the most important positive development is a r

Scott McConnell: Algeria ... The Model

[Scott McConnell founded The American Conservative with Pat Buchanan and Taki Theodoracopulos in 2002. A Ph.D.in history from Columbia University, he was formerly the editorial page editor of the New York Post and has been a columnist for Antiwar.com and New York Press. His work has been published in Commentary, Fortune, National Review, The New Republic, and many other publications.] When contemplating Iraq, Americans look into a murky crystal ball. History naturally presents itself as a

Victor Davis Hanson: The Twenty-Five Hundred Years’ War

[Victor Davis Hanson, a classics scholar and military historian, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.] If a no-nonsense Greek infantryman holding the pass at Thermopylae were to be told that, 2,500 years in the future, Western constitutional states would still be facing an apocalyptic struggle with a totalitarian government in Persia, he would hardly be surprised. Persians, or Iranians as they’re called today, have been at odds with both

Frederick Kagan: Congress and Iraq

[Frederick W. Kagan is a resident scholar at AEI.] As Congress prepares to vote on a supplemental defense appropriations bill that includes timelines for the withdrawal of U.S. forces, the lines in the debate over Iraq strategy have become ever starker. The administration and other defenders of the present strategy insist that it be given the chance to succeed. Opponents, including the Democratic leadership in Congress, insist that it is time to begin winding down America's involvem

Frederick Kagan: Al-Qaida has hit back with its own 'surge'. But for the US, grounds for optimism are rising

The new effort to establish security in Iraq has begun. At this early stage, the most positive development is a rise in hostility to al-Qaida in the Sunni community. Al-Qaida has responded with its own "surge", which so far has not revived support for the terrorists or reignited sectarian violence. The coalition has also made unexpectedly rapid progress in reducing the power of Moqtada al-Sadr, killing or capturing more than 700 members of his Mahdi army. At the same time, the rhetoric

Stanley Kutler: How to support the troops

President Bush has reiterated his oft-repeated assertion that we must support the troops. He must not be allowed to monopolize"patriotism,""the flag," and"the troops." The rest of us can pay our respect to the idea of the nation, in our own mindful way, and as we see fit. On his own grounds, however, the president has a lot to answer for. He can begin to support our troops by a) apologizing to the family of Pat Tillman; 2) apologizing to Jessica Lynch and her family; and c) apolo

Edward Luttwak: It's time to ignore the Middle East

[Edward Luttwak is senior adviser at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC.] Why are middle east experts so unfailingly wrong? The lesson of history is that men never learn from history, but middle east experts, like the rest of us, should at least learn from their past mistakes. Instead, they just keep repeating them. The first mistake is "five minutes to midnight" catastrophism. The late King Hussein of Jordan was the undisputed

Frederick Kagan and Michael O’Hanlon: The Case for Larger Ground Forces

We live at a time when wars not only rage in nearly every region but threaten to erupt in many places where the current relative calm is tenuous. To view this as a strategic military challenge for the United States is not to espouse a specific theory of America’s role in the world or a certain political philosophy. Such an assessment flows directly from the basic biparti- san view of American foreign policy makers since World War II that overseas threats must be coun- tered b

Daniel Pipes: A Madrasa Grows In Brooklyn

Come September, an Arabic-language public secondary school is slated to open its doors in Brooklyn. The New York City Department of Education says the Khalil Gibran International Academy, serving grades six through 12, will boast a"multicultural curriculum and intensive Arabic language instruction." This appears to be a marvelous idea, for New York and the country need native-born Arabic speakers. They have a role in the military, diplomacy, intelligence, the courts, the press, the academy

John Arquilla: Reagan Foreign Policy Ideas Still Relevant

[John Arquilla is a professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School, where he has taught in the special operations curriculum since 1993. He also serves as director of the Information Operations Center. He is the author of The Reagan Imprint.] If you were asked to name the three most important initiatives that characterize American strategy toward the world today, what would they be? More likely than not, you would list: 1) The war on terror; 2) The goal of spreading

Steven Aftergood: Presidential Secrecy and the Law

Presidential secrecy is best understood not as an expression of executive strength but as a sign of weakness and insecurity, according to a provocative new book on the subject. "When the president lacks diplomatic or interpersonal skill, he is likely to compensate by shielding his activities -- even shielding his very self -- from the public, relying on secrecy rather than diplomacy," write political scientists Robert M. Pallitto a

Warren Goldstein: Why It's OK to Rat On Other Students

[Warren Goldstein is chairman of the history department at the University of Hartford. He is the author of William Sloane Coffin Jr.: A Holy Impatience (Yale University Press, 2004).] ... Look: I'm a dyed-in-the-wool civil libertarian who has publicly condemned the USA Patriot Act, the FBI, and the trumped-up "war on terror," and I've given half-a-dozen speeches (one the night of September 11, 2001) defending civil liberties in time of war. But I'm suggesting that we adopt

Harvey Sicherman: What went wrong in Iraq

[Harvey Sicherman is president of the Foreign Policy Research Institute and served three Secretaries of State from 1981–92.] ... On May 9, 2003, Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, known to associates as “Jerry”, lunched with President George W. Bush at the White House, just before a National Security Council meeting on his new mission to Iraq. An athletic man with a youthful appearance and quick grin, Bremer shared with Bush an enthusiasm for running, which excused their modest meal of

Niall Ferguson: We can see the causes of Cho's rampage now, so why not before?

[Niall Ferguson is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University www.niallferguson.org © Niall Ferguson, 2007.] It was predictable. Cho Seung-Hui was a taciturn, moody loner. Four of his professors expressed concerns about the content of his work or classroom conduct. After complaints by two female students, the campus police and a college counsellor tried to have him committed to a mental institution. But a doctor didn't agr