Roundup: Historians' Take

James Q. Wilson: Bush's Poll Numbers Don't Mean a Thing Right Now

James Q. Wilson, in the WSJ (Feb. 27, 2004): In January, CBS News reported that President Bush's approval was"sinking." This month, USA Today has said it was hitting"a new low." And there is no doubt that the president's approval rating has fallen, down from nearly 90% right after 9/11 to about 51% today. But does any of this matter? Since 1945, only three presidents (Eisenhower, Reagan, and Clinton) have retained a high approval rating during their entire period in

Joshua Brown: Bush's Missing Year

Cruel Images Of Irish Need To Disappear

J. Michael Finn, State historian, Ancient Order of Hibernians, in a letter to the editor of the Columbus Dspatch (Feb. 21, 2004): With St. Patrick's Day quickly approaching, it is good to address the subject of Irish defamation. We Irish continue to allow the most heinous forms of defamation of our history and culture that would not be allowed by any other nationality or religion. It is time we all stepped forward to rid the marketplace of these stereotypes.

Chen Ching-chih: China's Designs on Taiwan Are Similar to Japan's on Korea a Century Ago

Chen Ching-chih, professor emeritus of history at the Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville and a researcher at the Los Angeles-based Institute for Taiwanese Studies, in the Taipei Times (Feb. 20, 2004): Beijing has never tired of claiming that Taiwan is part of China, despite the fact that Taiwan is by most standards an independent, sovereign state and the fact that the gre

An Interview with Noam Chomsky: Iraq, the Media, History

From an interview with Noam Chomsky conducted by Kirk W. Johnson, editor, American Amnesia (Feb. 2004):AA: To ask a question I put to [Howard] Zinn – What do you feel about the role of citing historical events in the media these days? NC: If you’re down at a bar in the slums, and you say something that people don’t like, they’ll punch you or shriek four-letter words. If you

Daniel Pipes: Why Do Some Muslims Consider Valentine's Day a Threat?

Daniel Oipes, in the NY Sun (Feb. 17, 2004: Last Saturday, a young man in Karachi, Pakistan, greeted a young woman in a university classroom with"Happy Valentine's Day." In most of the world these would be innocuous good wishes; in Karachi, they were fighting words. Other students objected to them, leading to a fist fight and the injury of two students. As this incident suggests, in some cultures V

A Lesson from Napoleon for Mr Bush

Dmitry Shlapentokh, historian and contributing fellow for Central European and Eurasian studies at the Hudson Institute, writing in the Straits Times (Singapore) (Feb. 16, 2004) AS RECENTLY revealed by American inspectors in Iraq, Saddam Hussein did not have any stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, the major pretext for the war. This discovery, or lack thereof, provided a fresh line of attack on the present administration from an array of political opponents who p

Max Boot: Iraq Doesn't Discredit Wars of Preemption

Max Boot, in the Weekly Standard (Feb. 16, 2004): Now that the occupation of Iraq is approaching the one-year mark, with still no chemical, biological, or nuclear stockpiles found, but plenty of Americans and Iraqis getting killed, learned commentators are proclaiming that the preemption doctrine has disappeared as thoroughly as Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction. As e

Anders Lewis: Randall Robinson Says Good-Bye to America

Historian Anders Lewis, in frontpagemag.com (Feb. 11, 2004): Randall Robinson, the godfather of the reparations movement, has finally taken his criticism of this country to its logical conclusion: he has moved out of the United States. Robinson's new book, Quitting America: The Departure of a Black Man from his Native Land , recounts his growing disillusionment with his native land, and his decision to leave it and escape to the tiny Caribbean island of St. Kitts.

Gaddis Smith: Bush Is One of the 3 Presidents Who Have Shaped the Grand Strategy of U.S. Foreign Policy

Laura Secor, in the Boston Globe (Feb. 8, 2004): EVERY PRESIDENT makes foreign policy. Only a select few, over the sweep of history, design what scholars term grand strategy. Grand strategy is the blueprint from which policy follows. It envisions a country's mission, defines its interests, and sets its priorities. Part of grand strategy's grandeur lies in its d

Omer Bartov: Hitler Is Dead, Hitlerism Lives

Omer Bartov, reviewing a new edition of Hitler's Second Book; in the New Republic (Feb. 2, 2004):Reading Hitler's second book is useful, of course, for students of Nazism. But they will have already read it in part or in whole, and nothing that Hitler says here will come to them as much of a surprise. This is a book that should be read, rather, by contemporary journalists

Chalmers Johnson: Bush Should Appoint Journalists to the Panel Looking into Our Intelligence Failure in Iraq

Chalmers Johnson, writing in www.tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute (Feb. 4, 2004): So the Bush administration -- under considerable pressure from people outraged that we invaded Iraq not only without U.N. approval but on false intelligence that Saddam Hussein had"weapons of mass destruction" -- has now decided to investigate itself.  For this important task it is proposing a panel of former CIA

Niall Ferguson: Kerry's Going and Coming on Both Iraq and Vietnam

Niall Ferguson, writing in the WSJ (Feb. 4, 2004): In Sen. Kerry's eyes, Vietnam and Iraq are both"win-win" issues. For his courage as a Swift Boat officer in Vietnam, he was awarded a Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V and three Purple Hearts. If that doesn't make a man a war hero, what does? But his testimony before the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations in 1971 also established

Mike Davis: Are We in for Another Pandemic Like 1918?

Mike Davis, writing on www.tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute (Feb. 2, 2004): Mass death soon may be coming to a neighborhood near you, and the Department of Homeland Security will be helpless to prevent it.  The terrorist in this case will be a mutant offspring of influenza A subtype H5N1: the explosively spreading avian virus that the World Health Organizatio

Faulty Intelligence Has Misled America in a String of Wars

Matthew Wall, author of a forthcoming book on Grenada, writing in Slate (Feb. 3, 2004):After dragging its feet, the Bush administration has joined concerned Republicans and Democrats in calling for an inquiry into the intelligence failures in Iraq that helped pave the way for the American attack. But don't count on us to learn from our mistakes. Iraq is only the latest episode in a centurylong ser

Roger Daniels: Bush's New Immigration Policy Is as Unlikely to Succeed as Those in the Past

Roger Daniels, emeritus professor of history at the University of Cincinnati and author of Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants Since 1882, writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscribers only) (Feb. 2, 2004): President Bush heralded his recent proposal for sweeping reform of American immigration policy as"a new temporary-worker program." Indeed, in his S

Sean Wilentz: The Republican Plan to Subvert American Democracy

Sean Wilentz, writing in Dissent (Winter 2004):Over the past ten years, there has been a growing gap in perception over the state of American democracy. The vast majority of the Washington press corps-including many pundits critical of the Bush administration-is inclined to see what has happened (and is happening) as basically hard-knuckled politics as usual. The fights may sound harsher, the

Eric Rauchway: How the Democrats Can Win the South Back

Eric Rauchway, writing in Altercation (Jan. 30, 2004):Folks in the press are rattling on about South Carolina being "the gateway to Southern primaries," which is supposed to mean the white candidates have to get their good ol' boy on to win. So Dean flashes his NRA card, and Kerry -- well, Kerry says he's "mainstream," if you know what he means. But did you notice what the

So the Number of Jews Is Small? We'll Survive: Size Isn't All

Historian Berel Wein, writing in the Jerusalem Post Jan. 23, 2004):The current discussion on Jewish demographics, which has become so heated, is being conducted as though the issue has no historical context. It is obvious that Judaism and the State of Israel cannot exist without a critical mass, yet it's unclear just how many people constitute a critical mass. The Bible records that there were 600,000 Jewish males between the ages of

Douglas Brinkley on John Kerry

From an interview on CNN on January 26, 2004 with Douglas Brinkley, author of the new book, Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War:WOLF BLITZER: Was there a John F. Kennedy moment that we all know about with Bill Clinton when he was in high school and went to Boys Nation, was in the Rose Garden, and Bill Clinton as a high school kid supposedly thought that maybe one day he'd like to be president of the United States? Was there a J