Roundup: Historians' Take

May 19, 2004

Tom Engelhardt: A Review of the Past Week's Insanity in Iraq

Tom Engelhardt, in his blog, TomDispatch.com (May 16, 2004):I don't care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass." President George W. Bush, September 11, 2001 (quoted by Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies) Madness Nicholas Berg's murder, grisly beyond imagining, was literally staged as the al-Qaeda equivalent of an MTV-style recruitment video or,

May 19, 2004

U.S.Army War College: Comparing Iraq and Vietnam

Jeffrey Record and W. Andrew Terrill, in Strategic Studies Institute (U.S. Army War College)(May 2004): Unfolding events in Iraq have prompted some observers to make analogies to the American experience in the Vietnam War. The United States has, they argue, stumbled into another overseas “quagmire” from which there is no easy or cheap exit. Reasoning by historical analogy is an

May 19, 2004

Daniel Pipes: The Threat from Islamic Immigrants Living in Europe

Daniel Pipes, in the NY Sun (May 18, 2004):Whence comes the main danger to homeland security in North America and Western Europe?With the exception of the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, notes Al-Qaeda authority Rohan Gunaratna, all major terrorist attacks of the past decade in the West have been carried out by immigrants. A closer look finds that these were not just any immi

May 18, 2004

The Media Are Oversimplifying the Conflict in the Sudan

R. S. O'Fahey, professor of African history at the University of Bergen, Norway, in the International Herald Tribune (May 15, 2004): The genocidal war in Darfur, Sudan’s westernmost province, is being presented in the news media as a war between Arabs and Africans. This simplifies and misrepresents a very complex ethnic reality. . Darfur, an area about the size of France, has three ethnic zones. The no

May 14, 2004

Juan Cole: How the U.S. Managed to Unite All of Iraq

Juan Cole, in Le Monde diplomatique (May 2004):Washington never predicted, even never seemed to consider that the most successful way to revive Iraqi nationalism, and beyond that Arab nationalism, was to occupy the country and treat it contemptuously and rapaciously: this has created unexpected alliances between enemies. THE Iraqi rebellion in April signals th

May 14, 2004

Thomas H. O'Connor: The First Catholic Chaplain in the U.S. Army ... There's a Lesson Here

Thomas H. O'Connor, historian at Boston College and author of Boston Catholics: A History of the Church and Its People, in the Boston Globe (May 10, 2004):MAJOR SHAREDA Hosein of Quincy is waiting for word on her application to become the US Army's first female Muslim chaplain. She is reportedly in limbo, with two decision dates having passed and no word on when one will be made. Her story creates some interesting reverberations in Americ

May 13, 2004

Matthew Dallek: So Kerry's Being Dismissed Early? So Were Others Who Ended Up in the White House

Matthew Dallek, the author of The Right Moment: Ronald Reagan's First Victory and the Decisive Turning Point in American Politics, in the LAT (May 9, 2004):Ever since Sen. John F. Kerry effectively clinched the Democratic presidential nomination in March, the media have increasingly wondered out loud if he's up to the task of taking on President Bush. Some commentators have proclaimed that Kerry's campaign is sinking even before he's formally nomina

May 13, 2004

Bernard Lewis: Islamists Were Corrupted by Fascist Western Ideas

Bernard Lewis, in the course of an interview with Elizabeth Wasserman, in the Atlantic (April 29, 2004):... In a 1957 lecture about tensions in the Middle East you said that Westernization, in spite of its benefits, was the chief cause"of the political and social formlessness, instability and irresponsibility that bedevils public life of the Middle East." I wonder, as

May 12, 2004

Fouad Ajami: Now Is the Time to Stay the Course in Iraq

Fouad Ajami, in the WSJ (May 12, 2004):Consider a tale of three cities: In Fallujah, there are the beginnings of wisdom, a recognition, after the bravado, that the insurgents cannot win in the face of a great military power. In Najaf, the clerical establishment and the shopkeepers have called on the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr to quit their city, and

May 12, 2004

Daniel Pipes: Muslim Europe

Daniel Pipes, writing in the NY Sun (May 11, 2004):"Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam." So declares Oriana Fallaci in her new book,

May 12, 2004

Tim Furnish: Why I Am Appalled by Abu Ghraib

Tim Furnish, Assistant Professor of World History, Georgia Perimeter College (Dunwoody), in a special piece for HNN: As a former 101st Airborne Arabic interrogator, I am appalled by the photos of abused Iraqi prisoners. As a conservative, I am disgusted by Republicans who dismiss the mistreatment as just desserts for "thugs." And as an American, I am revolted by liberals who are exploiting this rare lapse in military discipline to go after the U.S. military and the

May 12, 2004

Ben Macintyre: The American Who Warned the British About the Danger of Occupation

Ben Macintyre, author of The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan, in the NYT (May 8, 2004):... Military domination is fatally undermined when occupiers, even if only a tiny minority of them, misuse their power to demean the conquered. The perils of such behavior resonate throughout history. As America finds itself ever more deeply embroiled in Central Asia and Iraq, it need only look at the experience of its coalition par

May 12, 2004

David L. Chappell: Is There an Alternative to Affirmative Action?

David L. Chappell, author of A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow, in the NYT (May 9, 2004):The 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision this month is a well-deserved feel-good moment for civil rights strategists, but it is only a temporary distraction from the deep conflicts that remain. Many people earnestly b

May 11, 2004

Nicholas Turse: Atrocities Were Common in Vietnam (We Just Didn't Hear About Them)

Nicholas Turse, in the Village Voice (May 11, 2004):Just last month, the Toledo Blade won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing a series of brutal war crimes committed by American troops during the Vietnam War. It took more than 35 years for the horrors committed by a "Tiger Force" unit to be fully exposed, but the Blade got more ink in the national press and TV for winning the Pulitzer

May 11, 2004

Lawrence Wittner: The Bush Administration Is Pushing Ahead with Plans for Mini-Nukes

Lawrence Wittner, in ZNet (May 10, 2004):This May, before Congress adjourns for its Memorial Day recess, the Senate and House of Representatives are scheduled to vote on the annual defense authorization bill. This bill is expected to include several provisions in the Bush administration's budget proposal that make preparations for the building of new nuclear weapons.

May 11, 2004

Tom Engelhardt: We Have Become What We Accused the Soviets of Being

Tom Engelhardt, in www.tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute (May 9, 2004): Novelist and former British intelligence officer John Le Carré wrote a series of Cold War thrillers, of which the most famous were The Spy Who Came In from the Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. All of them cumulatively offered an essential insight for that era. Although the Russian KGB, B

May 11, 2004

David Brooks: Our Child-like Fantasies About Iraq

David Brooks, in the NYT (May 11, 2004): It's still too soon to declare the Iraq mission a failure. Some of the best reporting out of Iraq suggests that many Iraqis have stared into the abyss of what their country could become and have decided to work with renewed vigor toward the democracy that both we and they want. Nonetheless, it's not too early to begin thinking about what was clearly an intellectu

May 10, 2004

Victor Davis Hanson: Suppose Jimmy Carter Had Not Appeased Iran in 1979?

Victor Davis Hanson, in the WSJ (May 10, 2004):Imagine a different Nov. 4, 1979, in Tehran. Shortly after Iranian terrorists storm the American Embassy and take some 90 American hostages, President Carter announces that Islamic fundamentalism is not a legitimate response to the excess of the shah but a new and dangerous fascism that threatens all that liberal society holds dear. And

May 8, 2004

Howard Zinn: Opposing the War Party

Howard Zinn, in the Progressive (May 2004): The Progressive has been a thorn in the side of the establishment for almost a hundred years. Its life span covers two world wars and six smaller wars. It saw the fake prosperity of the Twenties and the tumult of the Thirties. Its voice remained alive through the Cold War and the hysteria over communism.Through all that, down to the present day,

May 8, 2004

Anti-Semitism and the Internet

Ellen Haskell, a Ph.D. candidate in History of Judaism at the University of Chicago Divinity School, in Sightings (Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School, May 6, 2004): In the weeks before Passover and Easter, a search on the word"Jew" at the popular Internet search engine Google returned a vehemently anti-Jewish site, JewWatch.com, as the first link. "