Roundup: Historians' Take

Gary Leupp: A Third to Half of Americans Still Link Saddam, 9/11

[[Gary Leupp is a Professor of History, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion, at Tufts University and author of numerous works on Japanese history. He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu.] The caption of the angus-reid.com report was"Some Americans Still Link Hussein to 9/11." Some, indeed. As of September 2006, 46% of Americ

Juan Cole: On Bush and Rockefeller

Two controversies are swirling. One regards President Bush's address to the nation on the anniversary of September 11, which Democrats say was too nakedly political for that solemn occasion. The other concerns remarks by Jay Rockefeller that seemed to say it would have been better to leave Saddam in power. With regard to the second controversy, I have a suggestion for war opponents in this debate. It is to make war the issue. The question is not whether the Saddam regim

Martin Kramer: The Israeli-Islamist War

[Martin Kramer is the Wexler-Fromer Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and a Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center, Jerusalem. ] Who won the summer war between Israel and Hizbullah? Right after the ceasefire, Hizbullah and its Iranian patrons declared the war a "divine victory," and the Economist concurred, running this headline across its cover: "Nasrallah Wins the War." Israel sank into a funk of self-recrimination.

Neve Gordon: Fighting the Larger War

[Neve Gordon teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University, Israel, and is the editor of From the Margins of Globalization: Critical Perspectives on Human Rights. He can be reached at nevegordon@gmail.com ] While the fighting in Lebanon was still raging, many analysts claimed that Hezbollah’s modern weaponry and use of civilian spaces for military purposes distinguished the war from any other. “Never before in history has a terrori

Ira Chernus: The Day that Changed Everything (No, Not 9-11)

[Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His latest book is Monsters To Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin. He can be contacted at chernus@colorado.edu.] Yes, it changed everything -- not September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers collapsed, but November 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell and left the U.S. at sea, drifting without an enemy in a strang

Tom Engelhardt: The Real Link Between 9/11 and Iraq (Finally) Revealed

[Mr. Engelhardt is the author of The End of Victory Culture and co-editor of History Wars, the Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past.] You've heard the President and Vice President say it over and over in various ways: There was a connection between the events of September 11, 2001 and Iraq. Let's take this serio

Paul Sullivan: Losing the War of Ideas

[Paul Sullivan is a Professor of Economics at the National Defense University and a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. All opinions expressed are those of the author alone and do not necessarily represent those of the National Defense University or of any other entity of the U.S. Government.] The “war on terror” reads like a “war on Islam” in the Muslim world. Why do Muslims have this perception? Perhaps because the U.S. is attacking Muslim countries and the U.S.

Juan Cole: The War with al-Qaeda

The war with al-Qaeda has many dimensions. There is the war with the organization itself. There is the struggle against its offshoots and copycats. There is cooperation with Muslim governments and communities in derailing the threat. There is the question of the strength of Sunni fundamentalist parties that might support al-Qaeda. And there is winning hearts and minds in the Muslim world. The war with the organization itself largely succeeded by 2003 and no further progress seems to have bee

Niall Ferguson: Empires with Expiration Dates

Empires drive history. But the empires of the past 100 years were short lived, none surviving to see the dawn of the new century. Today, there are no empires, at least not officially. But that could soon change if the United States—or even China—embraces its imperial destiny. How can they avoid the fate of those who came before them? Empires, more than nation-states, are the principal actors in the history of world events. Much of what we call history consists of the deeds of the 50

Daniel Pipes: Nike and 9-11

Five years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, it is clear how terrorism has set back the cause of radical Islam.The horrors of 9/11 alarmed Americans and fouled the quiet but deadly efforts of lawful Islamists working to subvert the country from within. They no longer can replicate their pre-9/11 successes. This fits an ironic pattern whereby terrorism usually (but not always) obstructs the advance of radical Islam. For an illustration of this change, consider an example from rad

Jonathan Dresner: That 9-11 Incident

Of course I remember 9/11/01. You don’t forget the day when you think you’re watching a rerun of a terrible accident — how quickly they got footage, you marvel briefly — and realize that you’re actually watching an atrocity in progress. You don’t forget the day when a student’s cell phone gets a text message that a plane has crashed on the Mall in DC (one day when you don’t care about them text messaging in class, and you don’t forget the relief that it wasn’t true, either). You don’t forget the

Mark Naison: Schools Alone Can't Prepare Low Income Youth For the World That Awaits Them

[Mark Naison is Professor of AFrican American Studies and History, Fordham University.] For the last six months, I have been involved in a series of discussions about how to re-engage African-American and Latino youth with the educational system , and give them an alternative discourse and moral framework to contest the worldview they are immersed in through commercial hip hop and popular media. It would be comforting to think that educational reforms such as reduced c

Niall Ferguson: Did the U.S. overreact to Sept. 11?

It's the year 2031--one generation removed from Sept. 11, 2001--and Americans are commemorating the 30th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington. How well did America respond to that day, when viewed with the benefit of hindsight? How has history judged our leaders' actions? Here, a historian looks back on that distant event and explains how 9/11 would change America, and the world, in ways that few could have imagined. Nineteen terrorists. Four hijacked

Juan Cole: Shiite vs. Shiite

Among the best-selling jewelry items in Iraq today is a pendant consisting of a whole map of the country. It's the symbol of a national unity many Iraqis see slipping away, because now even the majority Shiites are fighting among themselves. The ongoing ethnic cleansing and piecemeal partition of Iraq most often takes place along ethnic and sectarian lines. Kurds fight Arabs, Sunnis fight Shiites, and so on. The recent battles in Diwaniyah, Karbala and Basra, however, raise the spe

Thomas Sowell: Fanatics with Nukes

It is hard to think of a time when a nation-- and a whole civilization -- has drifted more futilely toward a bigger catastrophe than that looming over the United States and Western civilization today. Nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran and North Korea mean it is only a matter of time before there are nuclear weapons in the hands of international terrorist organizations. North Korea needs money. Iran has brazenly stated its aim as the destruction of Israel, and both its actions and

Daniel Pipes: Piggybacking on Terror in Britain

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his HNN blog.] Two days after British authorities broke up an alleged plot to blow up multiple aircraft over the Atlantic Ocean, the "moderate" Muslim establishment in Britain published an aggressive open letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair. It suggested that Mr. Bla

Bob Batchelor: Race and Katrina

[Bob Batchelor is an award-winning business writer and historian. He teaches Public Relations in the School of Mass Communications at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Visit him on the Web at www.bobbatchelor.com.] Under the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina, the Louisiana Superdome -- the "crown jewel of the New Orleans skyline" -- quickly became a cesspool of waste, sewage, and most lurid of all, death. The city's poor who f

Daniel Martin Varisco: Bush's Misleading Talk About Democracy

[Daniel Martin Varisco is Chair, Anthropology Department at Hofstra University.] In a speech yesterday before the annual convention of the American Legion, President Bush launched yet another premptive strike against anyone who dares to question the strategic logic and moral worth of his failed policies in the Middle East. Near the end of his self-co

David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz: 9/11: Katrina Started at Ground Zero

[David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz are the authors of the just published Are We Ready? Public Health Since 9/11, (University of California Press/Milbank Fund). Rosner is Professor of History and Public Health at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Markowitz is Distinguished Professor of History at John Jay College and CUNY Graduate Center. On September 11th, Markowitz anxiously awaited word from his wife, who worked only a few blocks from the World Trade Center, while Rosner f

Tom Engelhardt: 9/11 in a Movie-Made World

[Mr. Engelhardt is the author of The End of Victory Culture and co-editor of History Wars, the Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past.] We knew it was coming. Not, as conspiracy theorists imagine, just a few top officials among us, but all of us--and not for weeks or months, but for more than half a century before September