Roundup: Historians' Take

June 10, 2005

Timothy Garton Ash: Decadent Europe

Timothy Garton Ash, in the Guardian (6-9-05) [Mr. Ash is Professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford. He is the author, most recently, of Free World: America, Europe and the Surprising Future of the West. (April 2005)] Contemplating the European Crisis (I think a capital C is called for) I find myself driven even to

June 10, 2005

Timothy Garton Ash: The French Said No Out of Fear

Timothy Garton Ash, in the Guardian (6-3-05) [Mr. Ash is Professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford. He is the author, most recently, of Free World: America, Europe and the Surprising Future of the West. (April 2005)] For the French to say no to Europe is like the English saying no to beef or the Russia

June 9, 2005

Max Boot: Who's Really Abusing the Koran?

Max Boot, in the LA Times (6-9-05)All the headlines about "Abuse of the Koran at Gitmo" are absolutely accurate. Brig. Gen. Jay Hood's internal investigation has uncovered some shocking incidents. On at least six occasions, Korans were ripped up. They were urinated on three times, and attempts were made to flush them down the toilet at least three

June 9, 2005

James Pinkerton: For Good or Ill, Science Will March On

James Pinkerton, in Newsday (6-7-05)The stem-cell debate grows increasingly angry as the science behind it gains momentum. Indeed, the science has a whole lot of momentum - four centuries' worth.On May 24 the House of Representatives voted to lift federal limits on embryonic stem-cell research. But President George W. Bush vows to veto any bill that reaches his desk

June 7, 2005

Gil Troy: Legacy of Ronald Reagan

Gil Troy, in the Montreal Gazette (6-4-05)[Gil Troy teaches history at McGill University and is author of Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan invented the 1980s.] The Ronald Reagan mourning rites last June continue to mystify a year later. In the 1980s, who would have predicted such a send-off for such a controversial president?In fact, the week-long eulogies showed two competi

June 7, 2005

Daniel Pipes: Is Turkey Going Islamist?

Daniel Pipes, in the New York Sun (6-7-05) Is Turkey going Islamist? Is it on the road to implementing Islamic law, known as the Shari'a?I replied in the affirmative to these questions in a symposium at FrontPageMag.com a month ago. Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, I wrote, plans to undo the secular Atatürk revolution of 1923-34 and repla

June 2, 2005

Max Boot: Why Europeans Are as Mad as Hell at the New Europe

Max Boot, in the LAT (6-2-05):This is a Howard Beale moment in Europe. Remember the O'Reillyesque commentator in the 1976 movie "Network," who kept shouting, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore"? It was never clear exactly what he felt was wrong, who was to blame, or what should be done about it. He just wanted to prote

May 30, 2005

Edward L. Ayers: What We Can Learn from Our Reconstruction that Will Help in Iraq

Edward L. Ayers, in the NYT Magazine (5-30-05): [Edward L. Ayers is dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia. This essay is adapted from his book ''What Caused the Civil War? Reflections on the South and Southern History,'' which will be published next month by W.W. Norton.]For more than a hundred years now the United States has been one of the great agents of social transformation in the world. From the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century to Iraq

May 26, 2005

Max Boot: Gay or Female, Uncle Sam Should Want You

Max Boot, in the LAT (5-26-05):At a time when the Army and Marine Corps are struggling to fill their ranks, many conservatives are determined to limit the ability of women and gays to contribute to the war effort. Are they more concerned with winning culture wars at home or winning the war on terrorism abroad? The issue of women in combat has arisen aga

May 25, 2005

Howard Zinn: Graduation Address, Spelman College

Howard Zinn, at tomdispatch.com (5-24-05):Howard Zinn is the author with Anthony Arnove of the just published Voices of a People's History of the United States (Seven Stories Press) and of the international best-selling A People's History of the United St

May 25, 2005

Niall Ferguson: Failure in Iraq Would Be Ghastly

Niall Ferguson, in the NYT (5-24-05): [Niall Ferguson, a history professor at Harvard and a senior fellowthe Hoover Institution at Stanford, is the author of "Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire."]I think that this could still fail." Those words - uttered by a senior American officer in Baghdad last week - probably gave opponents of the war in Iraq, particularly those clamoring for a hasty exit, a bit of a kick. They should be careful what

May 25, 2005

Tom Engelhardt: The Return of Bodycounting

Tom Engelhardt, at tomdispatch.com (5-23-05): On March 19th, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld discussed the "metrics" of measuring success in Iraq with Steve Inskeep of National Public Radio's "Morning Edition." Here is part of that interview: "NPR: I want to start, Mr. Secretary, with something you said recently. You were at a meeting with troops, taking questions from troops. You talk

May 25, 2005

Kevin Starr: Will LA Finally Have a Mayor Who Defines the City?

Kevin Starr, in the LAT (5-22-05): [Kevin Starr, state librarian emeritus, is professor of history at USC. His latest book is "Coast of Dreams: California on the Edge, 1990-2003."]Every flourishing city is held together, in part, by a collective narrative. No one is more responsible for this narrative than a city's mayor. To cite this truism in the context of the Los Angeles mayor's race that at long last ended on Tuesday is to remind ourselves that this cit

May 25, 2005

Ralph Luker: James Watt's Misguided Swipe at the Religious Left

Ralph Luker, on CNET (5-22-05): I find it perfectly fascinating that James Watt of all people is accusing the religious left of attempting to "divide the people of faith" -- when: -- Some evangelical Protestants in these latter days declare that some evangelical Protestant judges and justices are greater threats to our national security than are Islamic ter

May 25, 2005

Daniel Pipes: The Mad Conspiracy Theory that's Blocking the End of Polio in Muslim Countires

Daniel Pipes, in the NY Sun (5-24-05):A worldwide campaign begun in 1988 to eradicate the polio infection was on the verge of success when, early in 2003, a conspiracy theory took hold of the Muslim population in northern Nigeria. That conspiracy theory has single-handedly returned polio to epidemic proportions.The theory's source seems to be a physician and the president of Nigeria's Supreme Council for Shari'a Law, Ibrahim Datti Ahmed, 68. Dr. Ahmed, an Islamist, accuses Ameri

May 24, 2005

Bernard Lewis: Disgruntled Iraqis Need to Remember the Prized Role of the Loyal Opposition

Bernard Lewis, in the WSJ (5-24-05): The Iraqis have made tremendous progress toward democracy, first by holding fair and contested elections, then by freely negotiating a series of compromise agreements, to form a coalition government comprising diverse and even previously conflicting elements. In a country where freedom and compromise were equally unfamiliar, these are giant steps forward. But an important step still remains. The underlying assumption of the Iraqi pa

May 21, 2005

Juan Cole: The Memo that Proves Bush Lied Us into War

Juan Cole, at Salon.com (5-19-05): When Newsweek's source admitted that he had misidentified the government document in which he had seen an account of Quran desecration at Guantánamo prison, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita exploded, "People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?" Di Rita could have said the same things about his bosses in the Bush administration. Tens of thousands of people are dead in Ira

May 20, 2005

Daniel Pipes: Amazon.com's Koran Desecration Problem

Daniel Pipes, at frontpagemag.com (5-20-05):As the Koran-flushing-in-Cuba episode becomes old news, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) has helpfully found a way to keep Koran desecration in the public eye. It does so – and I draw on MPAC's two press releases (here and here), plus reports from the Associate

May 19, 2005

Max Boot: Mubarak Must Think Bush Is a Chump

Max Boot, in the LAT (5-19-05):Hosni Mubarak must think that George W. Bush is a chump. The Egyptian pharaoh apparently realizes that the U.S. president is serious about spreading freedom and democracy to the Middle East, but he still thinks he can get away with cosmetic changes that do nothing to seriously change the ugly nature of his regime. Mubarak grand

May 19, 2005

Jon Wiener: Israeli Boycott ... A Mistake

Jon Wiener, in the Nation (5-19-05):The blacklist of Israeli academics declared by Britain's leading union of university faculty is a bad idea. The 50,000-member Association of University Teachers (AUT), seeking to support Palestinian rights, passed resolutions late in April targeting faculty members at two universities in Israel, Haifa and Bar-Ilan. Professors there are banned from"any f