Roundup: Historians' Take

Gary Leupp: "Kill All Military Age Men!"

[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.] Col. Michael Steele is a hero to some for his role in the "Black Hawk Down" affair in Somalia back in 1993. Recall that the first President Bush had sent in U.S. troops on a "humanitarian" mission, maintained by his

Stephen L. Sass: Scarcity, Mother of Invention

[Stephen L. Sass, a professor of materials science and engineering at Cornell, is the author of “The Substance of Civilization: Materials and Human History From the Stone Age to the Age of Silicon.”] IN the wake of the closure of a BP oil field in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, oil prices shot up to $77 a barrel on Wednesday, and the chorus of doomsayers concerned about the dire consequences of our fossil fuel dependency has reached a crescendo. If oil hits $100 a barrel, the impact on our ec

Mark LeVine: 101 Uses of Chaos

Mark LeVine is a professor of modern Middle Eastern History at UC Irvine and author of Why They Don't Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil (Oneworld, 2005) and the forthcoming Heavy Metal Islam (Random House/Verso). His website is www.culturejamming.org. Click here for his HNN blog. Perhaps the g

Bernard Lewis: On the chances "MAD" would deter Iran from using nukes

[Mr. Lewis, professor emeritus at Princeton, is the author, most recently, of "From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East" (Oxford University Press, 2004).] ... It seems increasingly likely that the Iranians either have or very soon will have nuclear weapons at their disposal, thanks to their own researches (which began some 15 years ago), to some of their obliging neighbors, and to the ever-helpful rulers of North Korea. The language used by Iranian President A

Walid Phares: Hezbollah's Political Blitzkrieg

[Dr Walid Phares is a Senior Fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a Visiting Fellow with the European Foundation for Democracy. He most recent book is Future Jihad and he was the author of the memo that introduced UNSCR 1559 in 2004.] Many in the media and sectors within public opinion are wondering why isn't the US able to get a mild French draft of a UN resolution passed quickly via the UN Security Council? Others are stunned to watch Lebanon's Prime Minis

Mark von Hagen: History is dividing Ukraine

[Mr. von Hagen is Boris Bakhmeteff professor of Russian and East European studies and chair of the history department at Columbia University.] Fifteen years after Ukraine's surprise birth, the struggle continues over its place in the world. The Orange Revolution of 2004 didn't settle it. Nor did this spring's parliamentary elections. Last week, following four months of political paralysis, brought the surprise return, as prime minister, of pro-Russian politician Viktor Yanukovych, w

Michael B. Oren: Israel could lose the war but win the peace

[Mr. Oren is a senior fellow at the Shalem Center, an academic research institute in Jerusalem, and the author of "Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present," forthcoming from Norton next year.] Israel, it is often observed, wins wars but loses the subsequent diplomatic contests. Though it has emerged victorious from at least five wars and two intifadas, Israel has been unable to transform those triumphs into peace and security

Juan Cole: Bush, Islamic Fascism and the Christians of Jounieh

Bush is on vacation, his favorite place to be during a major crisis. The August retreat is the only open admission he makes that Cheney and Rumsfeld are actually running the country, and he just doesn't need to be in his office. The only difference between his stonewalling of Lebanon and the way he let New Orleans drown is that he has put away the banjo this summer, at least in public view. He had someone tie a necktie on him and stopped manically clearing brush for long enough to come out w

Daniel Pipes: Seattle Rampage Is a Case of 'Sudden Jihad Syndrome'

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his HNN blog.] At about 4 p.m. on July 28, on the eve of the Jewish sabbath, a Muslim terrorist of Pakistani origins named Naveed Afzal Haq forced a 14-year-old girl to get him into the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle building by holding a gun to her back. He then pulled out the two l

Juan Cole: How the Lebanon War May Fit into a Larger Israeli/American Strategy

The wholesale destruction of all of Lebanon by Israel and the US Pentagon does not make any sense. Why bomb roads, bridges, ports, fuel depots in Sunni and Christian areas that have nothing to do with Shiite Hizbullah in the deep south? And, why was Hizbullah's rocket capability so crucial that it provoked Israel to this orgy of destruction? Most of the rockets were small katyushas with limited range and were highly inaccurate. They were an annoyance in the Occupied Golan Heights, especially

Tom Engelhardt: Hiroshima Story

[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.] Even though we promptly dubbed the site of the 9/11 attacks in New York City "Ground Zero" -- once a term reserved for an atomic blast -- Americans have never really come to grips

Daniel Martin Varisco: Bombs Away

Today is a day that lives in infamy. I am referring to a defining event of World War II, but I am not thinking of the bombing of Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941). On August 6, 1945, a single American B-29 bomber dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. An estimated 70,000 of the 300,000 civilian population and 43,000 military died immediately from the blast and radiated heat. In five years the death toll may have reached 200,000 from the impact of the radiation on cancer and othe

Immanuel Wallerstein: What Can Israel Achieve?

[Mr. Wallerstein is a sociologist and is considered by some "the dean of global history."]The State of Israel was established in 1948. Ever since, there has been continuous violence between Jews and Arabs in Israel, and between Israel and its neighbors. Sometimes, the violence was low-level and even latent. And every once in a while, the violence escalated into open warfare, as now. Whenever full- scale violence broke out, there was an immediate debate about wha

Howard G. Brown: A nation compromises its democratic ideals in an effort to safeguard them. Sound familiar? But it was France

[Howard G. Brown is a professor of history at the State University of New York at Binghamton and the author of Ending the French Revolution: Violence, Justice, and Repression From the Terror to Napoleon (University of Virginia Press, 2006).] Extremist violence threatened liberal democracy, posing grave challenges for a political class riven by systemic corruption and bitter partisanship. Leaders resorted to whatever tactics could help them retain power, regardless of the consequence

Elizabeth Edwards Spalding: Of Presidents and God

[Elizabeth Edwards Spalding, assistant professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, is the author of The First Cold Warrior: Harry Truman, Containment, and the Remaking of Liberal Internationalism, forthcoming in May from University Press of Kentucky.] Since George W. Bush assumed the presidency five years ago, arguments about the proper role of religious faith in politics have been at the center of American political debate. To many members of the intellectual and media est

Victor Davis Hanson: The Brink of Madness

When I used to read about the 1930s - the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the rise of fascism in Italy, Spain, and Germany, the appeasement in France and Britain, the murderous duplicity of the Soviet Union, and the racist Japanese murdering in China - I never could quite figure out why, during those bleak years, Western Europeans and those in the United States did not speak out and condemn the growing madness, if only to defend the millennia-long promise of Western liberalism. Of cour

Victor Davis Hanson: It's Not Just About Land

Despite the claims of terrorist organizations, Israel's current two-front war is not just about land. After all, Hezbollah and Hamas fired rockets from Lebanon and Gaza well after Israel had withdrawn from both places. Indeed, if sacred Arab ground were the driving force of the Middle East crisis, then surely Syria itself would now be willing to risk a shooting war over the all important Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Meanwhile, Cairo is still perhaps the nexus of virulent Arab ant

Michael B. Oren: How Israel Can Still Win

For three weeks now, Israel has presented a textbook case of how not to wage a war. As a result, the European Union is demanding a cessation of hostilities, and the United Nations seems poised to demand a ceasefire; and both will likely pressure the Bush administration to arm-twist the Israelis to comply. An immediate end of the fighting will leave Hezbollah largely intact militarily and with its political prestige greatly enhanced. Syrian and Iranian influence will be immeasurably strengthened.

Walter Dellinger et al: Untangling the Debate on Signing Statements

This post has been co-written by the following, all of whom have served in the Office of Legal Counsel: David Barron (Harvard Law School) Walter Dellinger (Duke Law School) Dawn Johnsen (Indiana School of Law, Bloomington) Neil Kinkopf (Georgia State Law School) Marty Lederman (Georgetown Universty Law Center) Chris Schroeder (Duke Law School) Richard Shiffrin (University of the Pacific McGeorge School of

Joseph A. McCartin: Remembering the day the strike died, 25 years ago

[Joseph A. McCartin teaches history at Georgetown University in Washington. He is writing a book on the PATCO strike. ] This week will mark the 25th anniversary of a turning point in American economic history. On Aug. 3, 1981, some 12,000 members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization walked off their jobs directing the nation's air traffic for the Federal Aviation Administration. Defying laws that prohibited federal workers from striking, PATCO members tried to fo