Roundup: Historians' Take

Joshua Brown: Stay the Course?

Benny Morris: In '48, Israel Did What It Had to Do

Benny Morris, writing in the LAT (Jan. 26, 2004): On July 12, 1948, Israeli soldiers battling the Arab Legion and local irregulars in the towns of Lydda and Ramle, just south of Tel Aviv, were ordered to empty the two towns of their Arab residents. Over two days, between 50,000 and 60,000 inhabitants were driven from their homes. Many were forced to walk eastward to the Arab Le

Joshua Brown: So Iraq Didn't Have WMD? So What

Francis Fukuyama: America Is an "Assimilation Powerhouse"

Francis Fukuyama, writing in the WSJ (Jan. 26, 2003): We have seen demonstrations all over Europe and the Middle East to protest the French government's proposed prohibition of Muslim girls from wearing headscarves in public schools. This ban is part of a larger struggle taking place throughout Europe over the continent's cultural identity. France and other European countries are host to

Tom Engelhardt: Bush's Speech Was All About Fear

Tom Engelhardt, author of The End of Victory Culture and co-editor of History Wars, The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past, writing . on www.tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute (Jan. 22, 2004): Picking up the New York Times, m

It's Always Difficult to Convey What Is Really Happening in a War to the Folks on the Homefront

Thomas A. Desjardin, a historian with the Maine Department of Conservation, writing about President Bush's complaint that the American people are getting a jaundiced view of the war in Iraq from the media; in the Boston Globe (Dec. 7, 2003):The truth is, people on the home front never get an accurate perception of what happens in large-scale conflicts

Niall Ferguson: Bush Can Have Both Guns and Butter (For Awhile)

Niall Ferguson, writing in the NYT (Dec. 7, 2003):GUNS or butter: this is the choice historians conventionally say that governments face. Either they can build up their military capabilities to wield power abroad, or they can aim to increase their citizens' living standards. In "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers," the Yale historian Paul M. Kenned

Ruth Rosen: FDR Should Remain on the Dime

Ruth Rosen, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle (Dec. 11, 2003): YOU'D THINK that Republicans would be content to control the presidency and both houses of Congress, but apparently not. Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., and 89 co-sponsors have launched a symbolic crusade to repeal the New Deal by replacing President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's visage on the dime with that of President Ronald Reagan. It's a bad idea -- for all kind of reasons. It's inappropri

Lisa Duggan: How Neoliberalism Has Helped Undermine the New Deal and the Great Society

An interview on NPR with historian Lisa Duggan, author of the new book, The Twilight of Equality: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy (Dec. 8, 2003):TAVIS SMILEY: Let me start by asking you what you mean by neoliberalism? Prof. DUGGAN: When I talk about neoliberalism, it's actually a term that's very well recognized in Europe and Latin America and some other parts of the world. In the United States it's less of

Juan Cole: On the Differences Between Cheney and Wolfowitz

Juan Cole, writing on his blog (Dec. 7, 2003):I was on an Iraq panel at MIT on Friday with Ivo Daalder,, co-author of the just-published America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy. I found his views of how the policy in Iraq has developed very interesting, and they provoked me to some thoughts of my own. He distinguishes between the "Democratic Imperialists" (Wolfowitz and many of th

Why We Have Wars

Peter Furtado, editor of History Today, writing in the Times Higher Education Supplement(Dec. 12, 2003): Historians have always been fascinated by wars. Thucydides and Xenophon saw war as the result of political calculation and shifts in the balance of power, although both considered the wars they described as cultural clashes between two distinct and ultimately antagonistic world-views - to Thucydides b

What the Vietnam War Tells Us About Iraq

Henry Ryan Butterfield, a writer for the History News Service (Dec. 2003): Memories of the Vietnam War of the 1960s and 1970s hover over our occupation of Iraq like sullen ghosts, calling out warnings to American policy makers.President Bush obviously hears them, and he is determined that Iraq will not scar him as Vietnam did Presidents Johnson and Nixon. Above all, he doesn't want this crisis to turn him out of the White House a

Martin Halpern: Japan Should Not Send Troops to Iraq

Martin Halpern, writing in Japan Times (Dec. 13, 2003):A recent New York Times carried the story that Japan will send 600 ground troops to southeastern Iraq. I read this news with sadness as I prepared to lead a discussion in my upper level class in 20th-century U.S. history on the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan's role as voice for peace an

Jay Winik: Resistance in Iraq Will Continue

Jay Winik, writing in the NYT (Dec. 16, 2003):[T]he stunning capture of Mr. Hussein, the symbolic leader of the resistance, is bound to be a serious blow to the guerrillas. But in spite of this remarkable turn of events, it would be a profound mistake for American leaders to believe the worst is over in Iraq....At its essence, guerrilla warfare is how the weak make war against the s

Samantha Power: McNamara's Lessons

Samantha Power, writing in the NYT (Dec. 14, 2003):SOMETIME in the mid-1960's, the Vietnam War became known as "McNamara's War." In the seven years Robert S. McNamara served as Secretary of Defense for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon. B. Johnson, the United States commitment in Vietnam soared — in a soothingly gradual fashion — from fewer than a thousand

Juan Cole: How the Republican Party Coddled Saddam

Juan Cole, writing on his blog (Dec. 20, 2003): Well, the Democratic Party seems too nice or inept to do anything with it, but as the Washington Post points out, the good folks at the National Security Archive are continuing to document the long history of Republican Party coddling of Saddam Hussein, and their hypocritical winking

Juan Cole: Iraqis Should Be Leary About Putting Saddam on Trial in Iraq (And So Should We)

Historian Juan Cole, in the course of an interview published in the Ann Arbor News (Dec. 21, 2003) Q: What concerns do you have about the suggestions of putting Saddam Hussein on trial? A: There are several. The Bush administration and Iraqi interim Governing Council both seem to think it's a good idea to try him in Iraq, and I understand why. But one wonders at what cost this will come. A lot of Sunni Muslims in Ira

Iraq's Christian Heritage

Juan Cole, writing on his blog (Dec. 25, 2003): For the history of Iraqi Christianity click here. Iraqis believe Christianity was brought to what is now Iraq, an Aramaic-speaking area, around 35 AD by Thomas the doubting apostle (some say Peter also preached in Mesopotamia). The religions of Iraqis at that time included Babyloni

Bernard Lewis: Our Enemies Fear Democracy Will Succeed in Iraq, Our Friends Fear It Won't

Bernard Lewis, writing in the Wall Street Journal (Dec. 22, 2003): The American military intervention in Afghanistan and then in Iraq has had two declared objectives: the first and more immediate, to deter and defeat terrorism; the second, to bring freedom, sometimes called democracy, to the peoples of these countries and beyond. The sponsors and organizers of terrorism a

Frederick W. Kagan: We Must Win in Iraq

Frederick W. Kagan, the military historian, writing in the LAT (Dec. 28, 2003): The capture of Saddam Hussein could be a turning point in the U.S. war on terrorism. Properly handled, it may restore momentum to flagging U.S. efforts to establish a stable democracy in Iraq . In addition, a Hussein trial might end, once and for all, the divisive and enervating argument over whether the war was justified in the first place. Above all, Hussein's capture and possible trial might