Roundup: Historians' Take

Eric Alterman: Bush & FDR ... Quite Different Even If They Did Both Lie

I spent a beautiful autumn weekend at the Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York, not long ago at a conference of diplomatic historians examining FDR's legacy in conjunction with the opening of a new exhibition--FDR as "Commander-in-Chief"--at the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute. The one point of agreement was that FDR's legacy is both ambiguous and inescapable. Steve Gillon of the University of Oklahoma terms Roosevelt "the father of modern America" and argues, &q

Stanley Michalak: The UN at 60

[Stanley Michalak is the John C. Kunkel Professor of Government, emeritus at Franklin and Marshall College and an FPRI Senior Fellow. His books include A Primer in Power Politics (2001) and Competing Conceptions of American Foreign Policy: Worldviews in Conflict (1991).] As the United Nations' 60th anniversary (October 24) approaches, the usual ritualistic spate of editorials, columns, and op-ed essays will barrage the American public. Liberals will excoriate th

Daniel Pipes: Europe Under Siege

Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his HNN blog.Two recent stories dramatically illustrate Europe's looming immigration problem.One concerns a gang reported to have smuggled 100,000 illegal immigrants, mainly Turkish Kurds, into Great Britain. These economic migrants paid between £3,000 ($3,600) and £5,000 ($6,000

Martin Kramer: Will Bush's Iraq War Have the Impact of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt?

Over the last few weeks, the French press has been full of reviews of the Louvre's

Sean Wilentz: Bush's Ancestors

Ever since Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, the strength of American conservatism has largely confounded historians and intellectuals. Before then, a generation of influential scholars claimed that liberalism was the core of all American political thinking and suggested that it always would be. Well into the 1970's, many observers wondered whether a Republican Party that allied itself with the conservative movement could long survive. History has, to say the least, disproved these

Victor Davis Hanson: An American “Debacle”?

In a recent Los Angeles Times op-ed entitled “American Debacle” Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national-security adviser to President Carter, begins with:Some 60 years ago Arnold Toynbee concluded, in his monumental “Study of History,” that the ultimate cause of imperial collapse was “suicidal statecraft.” Sadly for George W. Bush's place in history and — much more important — ominously for America's future, that adroit phrase increasingly seems applicable to the policies pursued

Gerard W. Gawalt: America and the Barbary Pirates ... An International Battle Against an Unconventional Foe

[Gerard W. Gawalt is the manuscript specialist for early American history in the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.] Ruthless, unconventional foes are not new to the United States of America. More than two hundred years ago the newly established United States made its first attempt to fight an overseas battle to protect its private citizens by building an international coalition against an unconventional enemy. Then the enemies were pirates and piracy. The focus of the United

Jonathan F. Vance: Virtual Records Of WWI Canadian Expeditionary Force Keep Memory Alive

[Jonathan F. Vance holds the Canada Research Chair in Conflict and Culture in the history department of the University of Western Ontario. He is also the author of Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning and the First World War.] As a child, I was fascinated by my grandfather's hands. They were long and bony, and covered with skin that looked so thin and papery that I was afraid it might slide off. I had some vague idea of what those hands had done decades earlier -- carried 18

Guenter Bischof: Impressions Upon Returning to New Orleans

This is an excerpt from a long letter Mr. Bischoff circulated to friends on Oct. 5 after venturing into New Orleans. Mr. Bischof is a professor of history at the University of New Orleans, whose campus is still closed. He recently started teaching New Orleans area “DP” students at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. I visited New Orleans today. Like Northern France after World War I, Hurricane “Katrina” left a virtual “waste land” (T.S. Elli

Daniel Pipes: Bush Declares War on Radical Islam

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his HNN blog.] A courageous speech by George W. Bush last week began a new era in what he calls the"war on terror."To comprehend its full significance requires some background. Islamists (supporters of radical Islam) began their war on the United States in 1979, when Ayatollah Khome

Juan Cole: Bush Gives Another Speech Against Terrorism

Bush articulated his War on Terror yet again on Thursday. But I think the American public has heard all this over and over again and it is increasingly just not convinced.It is time for another installment of the ever-popular"Arguing with Bush" series.Bush, predictably, began with September 11:"Recently our country observed the fourth anniversary of a great evil, and l

Victor Davis Hanson: To build confidence Europe needs to stand alone

[Europeans now often mock America, but they aren't doing too well themselves.] ... Before World War II, the weak coalition governments of Germany’s Weimar Republic finally collapsed when 6 million Germans were out of work. Beware: At one point this year, unemployment in Germany reached the 5 million mark. And once again Germans eerily assign blame to someone else. This time the scapegoats are often American venture capitalists, George Bush or the bogeymen neo-conservatives

Elif Shafak: Histories at Issue in Question over Turkey's Admission to the EU

[Ms. Shafak, a novelist, is professor of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Arizona and author, most recently, of "The Saint of Incipient Insanities" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004).] 'The Ottomans were loved and respected by the nations they ruled. The millet system was a righteous system in which every religious minority could preserve and practice their religion freely as long as they paid their taxes," we Turks were taught at school. Furnishe

Richard Jensen: On Bush's Bad Choice of Harriet Miers

[Mr. Jensen is emeritus professor of history at the University of Illinois, Chicago and the founder and editor of the conservative list, cnet.] Most of the bloggers left and right seem to be looking at Miers as merely one of 9 voters—will she vote for or against my position? The Supreme Court is much more complex than that. We can ask about the depth and content of her decisions; will she be a Brennan pushing the law to the left or a Rehnquist pushing to the right? Will she be a

Daniel Pipes: Stupid Terrorists

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his HNN blog.] One would think Mahmoud Maawad, a 29-year-old illegal immigrant from Egypt living in Memphis, Tenn., would lay low and stay out of trouble. But no, he defiantly did just the o

Tom Engelhardt: Experiencing Withdrawal Symptoms in 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.] ...The truth of the matter ... is plain enough for all to see. There is no Iraqi national army. "The only really effective units of the new security forces," as Time magazine's Tony Karon pointed out at his

Robert S. McElvaine: O.J., W, `us' and `them'--and truth

Ten years ago Monday, America received one of its periodic wake-up calls on how deep the racial divide in our society remains. Almost exactly a decade later, we have just been exposed once more to this unhappy truth. On Oct. 3, 1995, a Los Angeles jury, after less than four hours of deliberation following more than eight months of trial, found Orenthal James Simpson not guilty of murder. With few exceptions, white Americans were shocked. When they saw jubilant African-Americans cel

Jason Scott Smith: A New Deal, Part II?

[Jason Scott Smith is a history professor at Cornell University and the author of the upcoming book Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-1956.] ...Before the details of the president's plan emerge, now seems a promising moment to take a step back and recall what the New Deal did. Roosevelt's New Deal marked an unprecedented use of federal authority in response to the Great Depression. In 1933, nearly a quarter of the American workfor

David Greenberg: Bush Is No FDR (Not Even a Hoover)

IT LOOKED AT FIRST as if Hurricane Katrina would be a turning point. The government's failure at all levels to respond to the plight of New Orleans—to say nothing of the racial and class stratification that the storm laid bare—seemed to have issued a wake-up call. Believers in activist government took heart. As George W. Bush's approval ratings hit new lows, he spoke of spending generously to repair the Gulf Coast. Senate Republican leader Bill Frist shelved plans to abolish the est

Bruce J. Schulman: Bush's Jimmy Carter Problem ... The Limits of Power

[Bruce Schulman is a professor of history at Boston University and the author of "The Seventies" (DaCapo).] Last week President Bush -- the same president who drives a gas-guzzling Ford pickup truck around a 1,600-acre Texas ranch with seemingly boundless horizons -- asked the nation to recognize some limits. Trading in his rugged individualism for a summons to collective restraint, this former oilman and avatar of the nation's long-standing faith in endless a