Roundup: Historians' Take

Mark Naison: The Crisis of African American and Latino Male Youth: A Bronx Perspective

[Dr Mark Naison, Fordham University, is Principal Investigator, Bronx African American History Project.] It’s a daunting task to be asked to give a historical overview of the position of Black Men in American society in 15 minutes. Even if I were John Hope Franklin, I don’t think I could summarize the impact of slavery, jim crow, deindustrialization and the rise of the prison industrial complex in that brief a period What I will do is talk about my own res

Daniel Pipes: About those Iraqi WMD

The great mystery of the 2003 war in Iraq -"What about the WMD?" has finally been resolved. The short answer is: Saddam Hussein's persistent record of lying meant no one believed him when he at the last moment actually removed the weapons of mass destruction.In a riveting book-length report issued by the Pentagon's J

Arthur Schlesinger Jr.: Bush's Thousand Days

The Hundred Days is indelibly associated with Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the Thousand Days with John F. Kennedy. But as of this week, a thousand days remain of President Bush's last term -- days filled with ominous preparations for and dark rumors of a preventive war against Iran. The issue of preventive war as a presidential prerogative is hardly new. In February 1848 Rep. Abraham Lincoln explained his opposition to the Mexican War: "Allow the President to invade a neighboring

Sean Wilentz: The Worst President in History?

George W. Bush's presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of Am

Jim Sleeper: Public intellectuals, once supportive of the war, are now quietly exiting the stage they helped set

[Jim Sleeper is a lecturer in political science at Yale.] In a recent New York Times review of America at the Crossroads -- Francis Fukayama’s account of his change of heart on the Iraq War and the national-security strategy behind it -- Paul Berman revealed perhaps more than he intended about pro-war intellectuals who are now wavering. Like Berman more than like Fukuyama, many public thinkers who trumpeted reasons to invade Iraq -- David Brooks, and Charles Krauthammer come Immedi

Daniel Pipes: Islamic Law at Belmont U

Who would have thought that Belmont University of Nashville, Tennessee, would apply the Islamic law to its staff? But just that happened earlier this month.Bill Hobbs, a Republican political advisor, blogger, and news writer for Belmont, which bills itself as"the largest Christian university in Tennessee," was upset in February 2006 about the cowardice of

Walid Phares: Bin Laden's "State of Jihad" Speech

[Dr Walid Phares is a Senior Fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, a professor of Middle East Studies and the author of Future Jihad.] One more time Al Jazeera pomotes an Usama Bin Laden speech. After airing portions of the Bin Laden audiotape al Jazeera posted large fragments of the “speech” on its web site. This was the longest version possible we were able to have access to. After caref

Daniel Pipes: CAIR Backs Down from Anti-CAIR

In a stunning setback, the Council on American-Islamic Relations' defamation suit against Andrew Whitehead of Anti-CAIR has been dismissed with prejudice.The Anti-CAIR website, www.anti-cair-net.org, reports a"mutually agreeable settlement," the terms of which are confidential. However, Whitehead notes that he issued no public apology to CAIR, made no retractions or corrections, and left the Anti-CAIR website unchanged, so that it continues t

Tony Judt: A Lobby, Not a Conspiracy

IN its March 23rd issue the London Review of Books, a respected British journal, published an essay titled "The Israel Lobby." The authors are two distinguished American academics (Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago) who posted a longer (83-page) version of their text on the Web site of Harvard's Kennedy School. As they must have anticipated, the essay has run into a firestorm of vituperation and refutation. Critics have charged that

Martin van Creveld: Knowing Why Not To Bomb Iran Is Half the Battle

One of my teachers, a former chief of Israeli military intelligence, used to say that going to war is not like asking a girl out on a date. It is a very serious decision, to be made on the basis of carefully crafted answers to even more carefully crafted questions. Some serious questions, then, about whether the United States should bomb Iran's nuclear installations. The first and most obvious question is whether it is worth doing in the first place. Starting right after Hiroshi

Michael Klare: On Greeting Hu with a 21-Gun "Salute"

[Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum (Owl Books, 2005).] Slowly but surely, the grand strategy of the Bush administration is being revealed. It is not aimed primarily at the defeat of global terrorism, the incapacitation of rogue states, or the spread of democracy in the Middle East. These may dominate the rhetorical ar

Mark Naison: All in the Family: Crossing Racial Boundaries in America's "White" Working Class

This weekend, I had an experience which reminded me that racial boundaries in the United States are being redrawn in some surprising places. The adventure began when my neighbor in East Hampton, John_____ invited me to come to an Easter Sunday gathering at his home. To someone prone to make judgments on appearance, John might seem to be the last person you'd expect to host a multiracial gathering. A crew cut navy veteran in his late forties, John works in a lumber yard,

Daniel Pipes: Telephoning the Enemy

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his HNN blog.] North America's leading Islamist organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, enjoyed a seeming endorsement last week when it hosted the FBI on a television show. But if America's

Gil Troy: The Quest for Values at Universities

[Gil Troy is professor of history at McGill University.] Lighten up, last Monday's Gazette editorial counselled. So what if Playboy magazine declared McGill University "North America's 10th-best party school"? Yet after the fall football hazing scandal, with another elite institution Duke University roiled by rape allegations against its lacrosse players, McGill's distress is understandable and laudable. This is not a PR problem. This issue gets to the essence of McGill's

Tom Engelhardt: History Ambushes the Bush Administration

[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 can count on one thing. All over Washington, Republicans are at least as capable as I am of watching and interpreting the polling version of the smash-up of the Bush administration. With

Jonathan Zimmerman: Recruiting is also a scandal at Duke

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author of the forthcoming "Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century."] Let's imagine three high school kids with identical academic records who are applying to the same elite private university. The first is African-American; the second is a "legacy," a white guy whose father attended the university, and the third is also white, but he's an all-state athlete.

Howard Zinn: Until We Face Up to Our Nation's Historic Sins and Arrogance We Will Always Follow Foolish Leaders Down the Path to Foolish Wars

Now that most Americans no longer believe in the war, now that they no longer trust George Bush and his administration, now that the evidence of deception has become overwhelming (so overwhelming that even the major media, always late, have begun to register indignation), we might ask: How come so many people were so easily fooled? The question is important because it might help us understand why Americans -- members of the media as well as the ordinary citizen -- rushed to declare

Caleb Carr: Let Them Have Their Civil War

[Caleb Carr is the author of "The Lessons of Terror: A History of Warfare Against Civilians" (Random House). He teaches military studies at Bard College.] As the violence in Iraq has expanded, analysts have been asking: Are we witnessing the beginning of a formal Iraqi civil war? But far more important when we consider what role our troops might play in the extended fighting is the question: Does the United States have any right to forcibly stop such a war, when and if it

Mike Davis: A History of the Car Bomb (Part 1)

[Mike Davis is the author most recently of The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu (The New Press) and Planet of Slums (Verso). He lives in San Diego.]Buda's Wagon (1920)"You have shown no pity to us! We will do likewise. We will dynamite you! -- Anarchist warning (1919) On a w

Mike Davis: A History of the Car Bomb (Part 2)

[Mike Davis is the author most recently of The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu (The New Press) and Planet of Slums (Verso). He lives in San Diego.] The CIA's Car Bomb University (the 1980s)"The CIA officers that Yousef worked with closely impressed upon him one rule: never use the terms sabotage o