Roundup: Historians' Take

Niall Ferguson: Looking Back At The Conflict With Tehran

[Niall Ferguson is a professor of history at Harvard University.] Are we living through the origins of the next world war? Certainly, it is easy to imagine how a future historian might deal with the next phase of events in the Middle East [hereafter Feguson plays future historian]: With every passing year after the turn of the century, the instability of the Gulf region grew. By the beginning of 2006, nearly all the combustible ingredients for a conflict -- far bigger i

David Kahn: Gentlemen Don't Read Other People's Mail

[David Kahn is the author of "The Codebreakers" and "The Reader of Gentlemen's Mail," a biography of the cryptologist Herbert O. Yardley.] PRESIDENT Bush's ordering the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants contradicts a long evolution toward the secrecy of communications. Centuries ago, people in England, France and the German states fought for the right to send letters without their being opened by the "black chambers" of

Juan Cole: Ariel Sharon's smarter way of locking up the Palestinians

Even as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stirs fitfully from his coma, in the aftermath of a massive stroke and several operations, Gazan militants with a bad aim have fired several Qassam rockets into Israel. Israel is now, and is likely to remain for some time, a dark postmodern terrain of wealthy fortress communities besieged by hopeless unemployed militants from isolated ghettos. This archipelago of anxiety, reminiscent of the noir science fiction film "Blade Runner," is in some

Tom Engelhardt: War, Trials, Leakers, Investigations, Packed Courts, and a Constitutional Crisis

[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.] 2006 is sure to be the year of living dangerously -- for the Bush administration and for the rest of us. In the wake of revelations of warrantless spying by the National Security Agency, w

Gary Leupp: What a Difference a Year Can Make ... Will 2006 be 1966?

[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.] When you look at charts of casualties in earlier American wars, the Iraq War figures still seem pretty low. Deaths off the battlefield have been comparatively low: 20% of the total compared to 18% in Vietnam, 38% in World War II and a

Gary Leupp: Neocons Considered Planting WMD Evidence in Iraq?

[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.] A recent Raw Story report by Larissa Alexandrovna suggests that the notorious Office of Special Plans didn’t just stovepipe cherry-picked “intelligence” to the White House and press. It also sent teams into Iraq after the invasion bega

Cass R. Sunstein: The 9-11 Constitution

[Cass R. Sunstein is a contributing editor at TNR. He is the author of Radicals in Robes: Why Extreme Right-Wing Courts Are Wrong For America (2005).] After the attacks of September 11, constitutional law was bound to change. Serious threats to national security have always had large effects on the nation's understanding of its founding document. A major reason is that the president's lawyers tend to see the Constitution as a highly flexible instrument, permitting their client to do

Daniel Pipes: The Mystical Menace of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his HNN blog. Thanks to the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a new word has entered the political vocabulary: mahdaviat. Not surprisingly, it's a technical religious term. Mahdaviat derives from mahdi, Arabic for "rightly-guided one," a major figure in

Ronald Radosh: Why Professor Sami al--Arian got off this time

[Ronald Radosh, an adjunct senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, is coauthor of The Rosenberg File.] The acquittal on December 6 of Sami al--Arian, a former professor of computer engineering at the University of South Florida, on eight counts relating to terrorism was a setback not only for the Department of Justice and the Bush administration, but also for the struggle against Islamic extremism itself. That the Florida jury deadlocked on another nine counts, however, leaves open t

J.D.M. Stewart: Canadians Often Well-Served By Leaders Who Do Right Thing

[J. D. M. Stewart teaches Canadian history at The Bishop Strachan School in Toronto. He has twice been a finalist for the Governor General's Award for Excellence in Teaching Canadian History.] In private life be courteous, in handling public business be serious, with all men be conscientious. Even though you go among barbarians, you may not relinquish these virtues. -- Confucius Poor Confucius. Every aspect of this quotation has been violated this year. Whether it was w

Ken Kersch: Instructive parallels between the Alito and Louis Brandeis nominations

[Mr. Kersch teaches constitutional law and American politics at Princeton.] The press informed readers that they were about to witness "one of the bitterest contests ever waged against a presidential nominee," and the most controversial Supreme Court nomination ever. The president, it was said, might have selected a nominee who would unite the country, not divide it. Instead, the Washington Post reported, he had "sent a bomb to the United States Senate."

Benny Morris: In the Shadow of Sharon

IT is too early to assess Ariel Sharon's legacy. To be sure, he will be remembered as one of Israel's great field commanders, the wily, bulldozing general who cracked the Egyptian bastion at Um Katef-Abu Awgeila in 1967 and led the crossing of the Suez Canal in 1973, turning the tables in the Yom Kippur War. With greater ambiguity, he will go down as the defense minister who orchestrated the 1982 invasion of Lebanon that, paradoxically, set Yasir Arafat on the road to Oslo and (however insincere

Michael Oren: Ariel Sharon personified Israel's formative era

Irrespective of his prospects for recovery, Ariel Sharon has clearly ended his term as Israel's prime minister and as the leader of the nascent Kadima Party, which was expected to win a landslide victory in the coming national elections. His passing from public life represents not only the fall of the pre-eminent figure in Israeli politics but, more fundamentally, the conclusion the formative era in Israel's history--a period Mr. Sharon personified. Mr. Sharon has been intimately id

Davi Runciman: Blair, not Bush, will end up trapped in a paradox

[The writer is author of The Politics of Good Intentions: History, Fear and Hypocrisy in the New World Order (Princeton University Press).] As they struggle desperately to nail down their legacies, Tony Blair appears to have one big advantage over George W. Bush: he can pick the timing of his departure. Mr Bush, like all lame duck US presidents, has no option but to limp through to the finish line. The British prime minister can choose his moment to get out on top. But the lesson of

James MacGregor Burns & Susan Dunn: No More Second-Term Blues

AS George W. Bush's leadership flounders a little more than a year after his re-election, we are seeing a return of an old affliction in American politics, "second termitis." The protracted woes of Richard Nixon's Watergate, Ronald Reagan's Iran-contra affair, and Bill Clinton's impeachment were all, in part, manifestations of that malady. Is there some human failing that affects second-term presidents, like arrogance or sheer fatigue? To some degree, perhaps. But the mai

Daniel Pipes: After Sharon Israeli Politics Will Revert to Its Past

Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his HNN blog. Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has suffered a massive brain hemorrhage; at the very least, his long political career appears to be over. What does that mean for Israeli politics and for Arab-Israeli relations?Basically, it signals a return to business as u

Richard Arum and Jonathan Zimmerman: In Education, Alito is an Activist

[ Richard Arum and Jonathan Zimmerman teach sociology and history, respectively, at New York University's Steinhardt School of Education. Arum is the author of Judging School Discipline: The Crisis of Moral Authority and Zimmerman is the author of Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools, both from Harvard University Press.]   Sam Alito is a conservative. Eschewing judicial activism, Alito defers to the good-faith efforts of prosecutors, p

Daniel Pipes: Two Germans vs. Islamism

In Baden-Wurtenberg, Heribert Rech of the ruling Christian Democratic Union party has overseen the administering of a 30-topic loyalty test for applicants to become naturalized citizens. Following an intensive and sophisticated study by the Baden-Wurtenberg government of Muslim life, it devel

John Hirst: Australia's National Museum Set To Advance Aboriginals' Place In History

[John Hirst, a historian at La Trobe University in Melbourne, is deputy chairman of the National Museum of Australia council.] There is a dark history to the collection of Aboriginal human remains. The collectors in the 19th and early 20th centuries robbed recent graves and burial sites. Aborigines feared to die because of the prospect that their bones would not be properly interred but be taken off to museums and laboratories. Scientists measured Aboriginal skulls on live and dead

Allan Levine: Canada's Stephen Harper Can Learn From Diefenbaker's 1957 Campaign

[Allan Levine is a Winnipeg-based writer and historian. His most recent book is The Devil in Babylon: Fear of Progress and the Birth of Modern Life.] Across the country, voters had had enough. The Liberals had displayed an unacceptable arrogance - and for far too long. They had rammed through a controversial bill to build a pipeline; shown wanton disregard for taxpayers' money; and introduced a less than satisfactory budget. Their leader looked old and tired. ... When