Roundup: Historians' Take

John Radzilowski: How Soviet-era documents can help us wage the war against terrorism

[John Radzilowski, Ph.D., is senior fellow at the Piast Institute (www.piastinstitute.org) and the author of the forthcoming book A Traveller’s History of Poland.] Poland's new conservative government recently made public some 1,700 volumes of previously secret Warsaw Pact documents. Poland’s Defense Minister, Radek Sikorski, who approved the transfer of the documents to a public archive, called it “a symbolic end of the communist era.”

Thomas J. Sugrue: Burn, Bébé, Burn

[Thomas J. Sugrue is Kahn Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and author of The Origins of the Urban Crisis, selected as one of Princeton’s one hundred most influential books of the last hundred years. He was a visiting professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris in 2002. During the 2005–2006 academic year, he is a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.] ... France today looks more like America in July 1967 t

Daniel Pipes: The Pope and the Koran

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his HNN blog.]Click here to read a significant update on this piece. Islam and Muslims are expected to be a priority for Pope Benedict XVI, but he has been publicly quite muted on these topics during his first nine months

Joseph Ellis: Finding a Place for 9/11 in American History

... Whether or not we can regard Sept. 11 as history, I would like to raise two historical questions about the terrorist attacks of that horrific day. My goal is not to offer definitive answers but rather to invite a serious debate about whether Sept. 11 deserves the historical significance it has achieved. My first question: where does Sept. 11 rank in the grand sweep of American history as a threat to national security? By my calculations it does not make the top tier of the list,

Don A. Rich: A Tale of Two Texans ... George W. Bush, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and the Wars in Iraq and Vietnam

Mr. Rich is Director of Research Council on Emerging National Secuirty Affairs and Instructor of Political Science and Economics at Montgomery County Community College.Periodically in discussions of the current war in Iraq, the dreaded V word is raised, which is to say that analogies are drawn between the war in Vietnam and the war in Iraq, in which the substance of the argument is that the current Iraqi war is drifting towards a fiasco on a Vietnam-like scale. While there are certai

Gary Leupp : After the Hamas victory, does Bush still believe in democray?

[Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.] I've been recallin

Joshua Brown: Bush's All-Purpose Weapon (Illustration)

 

Daniel Pipes: The Hamas electoral victory ... Democracy's bitter fruit

Now that Hamas has apparently won the Palestinian elections, the West is hoist with its own petard. On the one hand, Hamas is a terrorist group that unabashedly targets Israeli civilians and calls for the elimination of the Jewish state. On the other hand, it just won what observers deem to have been a reasonably fair election, and so enjoys the legitimacy that comes from the ballot box. Every foreign ministry now confronts a dilemma: Nudge it to moderation or give up on it as irred

Gil Troy: Palestinians are becoming the biggest victims of Palestinian violence

Thursday's suicide bombing in Tel Aviv triggered the usual media coverage - and journalistic scuffles. Once again we saw pictures of civilian life violated violently, with what looked like unfurled metal banners hanging limply from the top of the bombed out, blood-spattered shwarma stand. Once again we heard the speculations about whether Islamic Jihad, Hamas or some al Fatah group claimed "credit." Once again we held our breaths hoping that "casualties" meant wo

Jonathan Zimmerman: Bush Has Backward View of Dissent

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author of "Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools" (Harvard University Press).] ... [President] Bush has lashed out at Americans "who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people." True, the president said, some "honest critics" have condemned his decisions about Iraqi reconstruction, U.S. troop dep

Thomas E. Woods, Jr.: Since long before Bush, the White House has abused its powers

[Thomas E. Woods Jr. is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History.] ... According to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the reason the administration did not seek to revise FISA to give the president the clear and unambiguous power to order these wiretaps was that even a Republican Congress would not have gone along. In a Dec. 19 press briefing, the attorney general said, "We have had discussions with Congress in the past-ce

Daniel Pipes: Don't deal with terrorists

As Hamas, the Islamist terror group, surges in the polls with a prospect of joining the Palestinian Authority or even running it, governments worldwide must decide on their responses. An increasing number of voices are calling for Hamas to be recognized, arguing that the imperatives of governance would tame it, ending its arch-murderous vocation (it has killed around 600 Israelis) and turning it into a responsible citizen. Even President Bush made this argument in early 2005: "

Juan Cole: Top Ten Mistakes of the Bush Administration in Reacting to Al-Qaeda

Usamah Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri murdered 3,000 Americans, and they both issued tapes in the past week, blustering and threatening us with more of the same. Most of us aren't wild about paying for the Bush administration with our taxes, but one thing we have a right to expect is that our government would protect us from mass murderers and would chase them down and arrest them. It has not done that. When asked why he hasn't caught Bin Laden, Bush replies, "Because he's hidin'." Is

Howard Segal: What Bill Ford Is Learning from Great-Grandpa

[Howard Segal is a professor of history at the University of Maine and the author of"Recasting the Machine Age: Henry Ford's Village Industries" (2005).] Now that Ford Motor Company has announced its"Way Forward" restructuring plan, does the auto maker have a real future? Without doubt. Can its current chairman and CEO, William Clay Ford, Jr., finally stop its growing losses in money, market share and respect?   Probably, but it won't be easy. Many business analysts remain skep

Jesse Lemisch: Weather Underground, Redone in Pomo, Rises from the Ashes

I attended part of a January 20 "day workshop of interventions" -- aka "a day of dialogic interventions" -- at Columbia University on "Radical Politics and the Ethics of Life" (see below for program). The event aimed "to bring to light... the political aporias [sic] erected by the praxis of urban guerrilla groups in Europe and the United States from the 1960s to the 1980s." (See below for the postmodernist context indicated by the language.) Hosted by Colu

Juan Cole: We shouldn't be making war on the Caliphate

Karl Vick of the Washington Post does his readers an enormous favor by explaining the idea of the Sunni Muslim caliphate, its history, and why many Sunnis want it revived.The article also contains a critique of Bush's recent speech in which he warned of the caliphate ideology of al-Qaeda, saying it wished to establish the institution from Spain to Indonesia. The problem is that a calip

Mark Naison: Every City Should Be a Chocolate City

[Dr. Naison is Professor of History and African American Studies at Fordham University.] When New Orleans Mayor Nagin said, in the course of a Martin Luther King Day speech, that New Orleans should remain a "chocolate city," the whole country jumped on him. So many people, inside New Orleans and out, accused him of being a racist that he had to apologize for his remarks. Not me! I think his critics lack imagination! Chocolate is one of the great things

Juan Cole: MLK on Iraq

Every year we honor Martin, and we hear again his stirring speech, "I have a Dream." But in many ways, that speech is among the least challenging of his charges to us, however hard and unfulfilled it remains. He dreamed other dreams, of the end of exploitative materialism and relentless militarism, of an America devoted to social justice and creative non-violence, which our mainstream media do not dare repeat over and over again. We do not have Martin among us to guide us with his

William Lambers: The Need to Talk with Iran

[William Lambers is a writer for the History News Service and the author of"The Road to Peace: From the Disarming of the Great Lakes to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty" (2004).] What can the United States do about Iran and its nuclear ambitions? Conceivably, it could support sanctions or even use military action. But the best tactic for the United States is to open a dialogue with Iran. Diplomacy can prevent a nuclear-armed Iran from emerging in an already turbulent Middle East. The Unite

Michael Meckler: Princeton Group Linked To Alito Much Ado About Nothing

[Michael Meckler is a journalist and historian who lives in Columbus.] During the confirmation hearings of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, much has been made of his membership in the group Concerned Alumni of Princeton. Senators repeatedly have discussed the nature of this organization, and pundits have speculated about the group and its aims. The problem with nearly all of the talk about Concerned Alumni of Princeton is the failure to talk to actual alumni of Princeton fro