Roundup: Historians' Take

Sean Wilentz: The Rise of Illiterate Democracy

The nonfiction best-seller lists these days are often full of partisan screeds labeling Democrats as elitist traitors and Republicans as conniving plutocrats. But look over on the fiction side, and politics appears almost nowhere. Some critics read Philip Roth's "Plot Against America" as an allegory of the current White House, and there have even been a few blunt and appalling political fantasies, like Nicholson Baker's "Checkpoint," a brief dialogue between a man who wants t

Victor Davis Hanson: The Truth about Torture

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., recently proposed an amendment to a defense appropriations bill in an attempt to plug loopholes in already existing anti-torture laws. The amendment, which President Bush opposes, is a good idea for America — but not necessarily for the reasons cited by most critics of the administration. Contrary to popular belief, throughout history torture has brought results — either to gain critical, sometimes lifesaving intelligence or more gratuitously to obtain emb

Morton Keller: None Dare Call It Conspiracy

Variations of "Bush lied" have been part of the political scene ever since America plunged into its permanent overseas embroilment in the Second World War. Reviewing that record won't settle the current dispute over how and why we got into Iraq. But it should remind us that George W. Bush's accusers are hardly walking in fresh snow. The charge that FDR knew of the Japanese intention to attack Pearl Harbor, but used it to ensure U.S. entry into the war against the Axis, sur

Thomas Palaima: Longing for an America that's no longer with us

[Palaima is Dickson Centennial Professor of Classics at the University of Texas at Austin.] "America, love it or leave it" was an ultimatum, and a bumper sticker, popular in the late '60s among the silent majority when it wanted to say something. Just over 36 years ago, President Richard Nixon delivered his famous Silent Majority speech. In it, he laid out our troubles in Vietnam and at home; he surveyed our available options for "bringing peace" to

Neve Gordon & Yigal Bronner: Murder in Jerusalem

[Neve Gordon teaches human rights at Ben-Gurion University in Israel and is the editor of From the Margins of Globalization: Critical Perspectives on Human Rights. He Can be reached at nevegordon@gmail.com. Yigal Bronner teaches in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. Until this year, he taught in Tel Aviv University's Department of East Asian Studies.] A short article posted on the Web sit

Walter Laqueur: After France

[Mr. Laqueur, a historian, is the author, inter alia, of "A History of Terrorism" (Transaction, 2001).] The riots in France have died down, and European politicians and observers are putting forward optimistic scenarios (at least in public) that rule out any encores. The Germans, for example, argue that ethnic upheavals won't happen there if only because their housing conditions are different. It's quite true that Germany didn't put up high-rise buildings in t

Tom Engelhardt: "Gone Fishing," How the President Got a Life

The "usually disengaged" President, as columnist Maureen Dowd labeled him, had just returned from a prolonged, brush-cutting Crawford vacation to much criticism and a nation in trouble. (One Republican congressman complained that "it was hard for Mr. Bush to get his message out if the White House lectern had a ‘Gone Fishing' sign on it.") Democrats were on the attack. Journalistic coverage seemed to grow ever bolder. Bush's poll figures were dropping. A dozen prominent Republ

Caroline Elkins: Why Malaya Is No Model for Iraq

[Caroline Elkins is the Hugo K. Foster associate professor of African studies at Harvard University and the author of Imperial Reckoning.] Tham Yong remembers the events that took place in Batang Kali in early December 1948 with disturbing clarity. It was the early days of the communist insurgency in Malaya, and British soldiers had arrived in her village. They singled out scores of Chinese civilians, accusing them of supplying the communists with food. The women were loaded onto t

Daniel Pipes; More Converts to Terrorism

Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his HNN blog.My column yesterday,"Converts to Terrorism," delved into the issue of converts to Islam who engage in terrorism. Space constraints limited the information I could include, so here, I add to it in three ways: (1)

Daniel Pipes: Israel, U.N. Favorite

Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his HNN blog. Each round of Israeli disengagement, withdrawal, retreat (or whatever one wishes to call it) wins the temporary approval of the wide world, as symbolized by the United Nations General Assembly.After the Oslo accords were signed in September 1993, the General Assembly

Richard Reeves: Is Bush the Worst President Ever?

President John F. Kennedy was considered a historian because of his book "Profiles in Courage," so he received periodic requests to rate the presidents, those lists that usually begin "1. Lincoln, 2. Washington ..." But after he actually became president himself, he stopped filling them out. "No one knows what it's like in this office," he said after being in the job. "Even with poor James Buchanan, you can't understand what he did and

Theodore C. Sorensen & Arthur Schlesinger Jr.: What Would J.F.K. Have Done?

[Theodore C. Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. were, respectively, special counsel and special assistant to President John F. Kennedy.] ... As we listened to Mr. Bush's speech [last week before the Naval Academy], our thoughts raced back four decades to another president, John F. Kennedy. In 1963, the last year of his life, we watched from front-row seats as Kennedy tried to figure out how best to extricate American military advisers and instructors from Vietnam. Alt

Juan Cole: How Bush Created a Theocracy in Iraq

The Bush administration naively believed that Iraq was a blank slate on which it could inscribe its vision for a remake of the Arab world. Iraq, however, was a witches’ brew of dynamic social and religious movements, a veritable pressure cooker. When George W. Bush invaded, he blew off the lid. Shiite religious leaders and parties, in particular, have crucially shaped the new Iraq in each of its three political phases. The first was during the period of direct American rule, large

Jack Rakove: Just who's responsible for activist courts?

[Jack N. Rakove, a Stanford University history professor, won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for "Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution."] Enjoy the holiday season while you can. Once it's over, the Senate Judiciary Committee will open its hearings on the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. Once again, we will have to steel ourselves to withstand Sen. Joseph Biden's rambling disquisitions on the Constitution, while we marvel at

Paul Nagel: The differences between the 2 sons of presidents who became president

[Paul C. Nagel is the author of three books about the Adams family, including "John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life."] IN a recent article in The New Yorker, Brent Scowcroft, a close friend of and former national security adviser to President George H. W. Bush, sharply criticized the current administration and, in all but name, its leader, President George W. Bush. That set tongues wagging anew about filial relations in the Bush family, which had earlier been b

Mark LeVine: Waist Deep in Big Oil

[Mr. LeVine, professor of modern Middle Eastern history, culture, and Islamic studies at the University of California at Irvine, is the author of a new book, Why They Don't Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil (Oneworld Publications, 2005). Click here for his website and here for his HNN blog.] The mid-No

Victor David Hanson: The project in Iraq can succeed, and leave its critics scrambling

Almost everything that is now written about Iraq rings not quite right: It was a “blunder”; there should have been far more troops there; the country must be trisected; we must abide by a timetable and leave regardless of events on the ground; Iraq will soon devolve into either an Islamic republic or another dictatorship; the U.S. military is enervated and nearly ruined; and so on. In fact, precisely because we have killed thousands of terrorists, trained an army, and ensure

Tom Engelhardt: How (Not) to Withdraw from Iraq

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

Max Holland: Was Howard Baker Really Mr. Clean?

In an above-the-fold Op-Ed in the New York Times on November 2, GOP über-lobbyist Kenneth Duberstein offered President Bush a timely history lesson on how to rescue his flagging administration. Duberstein certainly has the credentials to give such advice. In 1987, when Ronald Reagan's public approval rating was about as low (because of the Iran-contra scandal) as Bush's is now, Duberstein became part of the new White House team that rescued Reagan from being not just a lame duck, but a "dea

Daniel Pipes: Muhammad Ali v. George W. Bush

Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org.George W. Bush honored the boxer, Muhammad Ali, and 13 others with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, called"the nation's highest civilian award," on November 9 at the White House. The president praised Ali for his sports a