Roundup: Historians' Take

Andrew Meyer: Haditha Tragedy

[After living in mainland China and Taiwan for four years and in Japan for one year Mr. Meyer returned to the U.S. and earned a doctoral degree in Chinese history, which he teaches at the City University of New York.] U.S. soldiers entered a town after the enemy had surrendered. A group of unarmed civilians accused of looting were gathered together in a bombed-out factory and summarily shot. Among the dead were children. The town was Canicatti, Sicily during July of 1943. The

Ronald Bruce St John: A Savage War of Peace

[Ronald Bruce St John, an analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus (www.fpif.org) has published extensively on Middle Eastern issues for almost three decades. He is the author most recently of the Historical Dictionary of Libya (1991, 1998, 2006) and Libya and the United States: Two Centuries of Strife (2002).] Early on in the Iraq War, “The Battle of Algiers,” Gillo Pontecorvo's 1965 film about the urban guerrilla struggle between French troops a

Gary Leupp: Behind the Iran Talks Charade

In 2003, after the U.S. criminally invaded Iraq, France and Germany, the core of the European Union, feared that the U.S. might expand its aggression into neighboring Iran. They feared this both because an attack on Iran might produce further disorder in the region, with unpredictable consequences; and because if successful, the U.S. would likely establish a string of client states stretching from Central Asia to the Mediterranean coast of Syria. That Southwest Asian empire, embracing the Caspia

Anthony James Joes: Recapturing the Essentials of Counterinsurgency

[Anthony James Joes is professor of political science at St. Joseph’s University and author of Resisting Rebellion: The History and Politics of Counterinsurgency (University of Kentucky Press, 2004). This essay is based on a presentation on March 24, 2006 as FPRI’s W. W. Keen Butcher Lecture on Military Affairs.] In recent years, a lamentable tendency has arisen, among persons who should know better, to use the terms “terrorist” and “guerrilla” as if they were synonyms.

Frederick Kagan: A Plan for Victory in Iraq

[Frederick W. Kagan is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of The End of the Old Order: Napoleon and Europe, 1801-1805 (forthcoming). He is grateful to Daniel Barnard for assistance with this article.] In eastern Ramadi, U.S. Army Capt. Joe Claburn visited a house beside an alley from where four guerrillas . . . had attacked a guard tower on a U.S. base. . . . Claburn asked the man if he was willing to signal U.S. troops when insurgents tur

Greg Grandin: The Swift Boating of America

Greg Grandin teaches Latin American history at New York University and is the author of Empire's Workshop: Latin America, The United States, and The Rise of the New Imperialism.An illegal war, torture rooms, warrantless wiretapping, manipulated intelligence, secret prisons, disinformation planted in the press, graft, and billions of reconstruction dollars gone missing: just when it seemed that the Bush admi

Mark Naison: Taking the Long Way With The Dixie Chicks: Country Radio' Punishes It's Core Audience

[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. ] For the last three days, I have been living with the Dixie Chick's new al

Jim Sleeper: What's Happened to the Great University?

[Jim Sleeper, a lecturer in political science at Yale, holds a doctorate in education from Harvard and was a Shorenstein Center fellow there in 1998.]"Despite our confidence in our national greatness, the American tradition is both nebulous and surprisingly infertile," wrote Theodore Goff, a Yale junior, in January on his application to a seminar I teach there. Still waters run deep, thought I as I followed his soundings in civic-republican seas across the semester. I told Goff that his

Juan Cole: Chickens Coming Home to Roost in Afghanistan

"We have conducted a thorough assessment of our military and reconstruction needs in Iraq, and also in Afghanistan. I will soon submit to Congress a request for $87 billion. The request will cover ongoing military and intelligence operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, which we expect will cost $66 billion over the next year. This budget request will also support our commitment to helping the Iraqi and Afghan people rebuild their own nations, after decades of oppression an

Tom Engelhardt:: Proliferation Wars in the Intelligence Community

[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 the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of American triumphalism in the Cold War. His novel, The Last Days of

Gary Leupp: The Disinformation Campaign for War on Iran

According to Laura Rosen of the Los Angeles Times, the Office of Special Plans has been reincarnated as the Office of Iranian Affairs, apparently housed in the same Pentagon offices inhabited by its predecessor and involving some of the same slimy personnel. Notably, Abram Shulsky, who headed the OSP under Douglas Feith, is back. His crew will be reporting to none other than Elizabeth Cheney, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, and daughter of the Vice President. Dick Cheney i

Gary Leupp: More Disinformation on Iran

[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.]Jim Lobe and Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com have both posted columns about the latest episode in the neocons’ relentless Iran disinformation campaign. A Canadian paper, the National Post, published an article on May 19 by Iranian-American journalist Amir Taheri reporting that o

Timothy Burke: ACTA Report, “How Many Ward Churchills?”

[Mr. Burke, a historian at Swarthmore, is a member of the HNN blog, Cliopatria.] Are you interested in defending academic standards? Let me tell you what I consider to be a few important academic standards. These apply across the disciplines. 1. Careful collection of evidence. 2. Constraining claims or arguments to the evidence available. 3. Proportionality of argument or analysis, especially in making demands for action or changes in practice. 4. Careful definition of

Abbas Amanat : The Persian Complex

[Abbas Amanat is a professor of history at Yale and author of the forthcoming "In Search of Modern Iran."] IT is easy to label Iran's quest for nuclear energy a dangerous adventure with grave regional and international repercussions. It is also comforting to heap scorn on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his earlier denial of the Holocaust and his odious call for the obliteration of the state of Israel. The rambling intransigence expressed in his recent letter to Presiden

Vincent J. Cannato: A Harvard prof reflects on the hollowness of higher ed

[Mr. Cannato teaches history at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.] Are American universities now in their golden age? Many rank as the leading research institutions in the world. A college education is within reach for more Americans than ever before. Applications continue to rise as colleges attract the best and the brightest from the U.S. and from overseas. And yet it is hard not to get the feeling that there is something amiss at American schools. Recent headl

Neve Gordon: Bitter Wine for Israel's Bedouins

The crowded room felt like a sauna, a natural effect of the scorching sun hitting the tin roof and the lack of a fan or air conditioner to ease the desert heat. Everyone was talking about the "Wine Route," the Israeli government's plan for a series of farms and wineries designed to draw tourists to the Negev, and the latest insult to its marginalized Bedouin population. "It is high time to strategize," one person said. "There is no way to oppose it," a

Jonathan Zimmerman: Should School Kids Have Cell Phones?

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author of the forthcoming book "Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century."] Let's get one thing straight about the Great New York Cellphone War: It's not about "safety." It's about anxiety. Last month, New York officials stepped up their efforts to bar students from carrying cellphones into public schools. In a stubborn defense of the policy, Mayor

Juan Cole: Critique of US Policy in Iraq

Bush Administration policies in Iraq have largely been a failure. It has created a failed state in that country, which is in flames and seething with new religious and ethnic nationalist passions of a sort never before seen on this scale in modern Iraqi history. The severe instability in Iraq threatens the peace and security of the entire region, and could easily ignite a regional guerrilla war that might well affect petroleum exports from the Oil Gulf and hence the health of the world economy.

Juan Cole: The Black Psy-Ops Campaign against Iran

The Iranian regime is despicable in its lack of respect for basic human rights and in its regimentation of its citizens into a rigid theocracy. But it is no more of a threat to the United States than Burma or the Congo, both of which are just as oppressive. Iran has a very weak military and just isn't a serious threat to any other country. Its values are not US values. But if we are going to do things like send Marines into Iran to force Iranian women to wear bikinis at the beach, we are going

Roger Daniels: An Old New Immigration Policy, Flaws and All

[Roger Daniels is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Cincinnati. His most recent book, Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants Since 1882, was published in 2004 by Hill and Wang.] NOTE: The following essay was published in the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2004.--Editors President Bush heralded his recent proposal for sweeping reform of American immigration policy as "a new temporary-worker program." In