Roundup: Historians' Take

January 23, 2004

The Founding Fathers Honored Secularism by Leaving God Out of the Constitution

Susan Jacoby, writing in the NYT (Jan. 8, 2004): When I lecture on college campuses, students frequently express surprise at being told that the framers of the Constitution deliberately omitted any mention of God in order to assign supreme governmental power to ''We the People.'' Dismissing this inconvenient fact, some on the religious right have suggested that di

January 23, 2004

Kevin Starr: Arnold Should Govern Like a Bi-Partisan Figure in the Mold of Hiram Johnson

Kevin Starr, state librarian of California, writing in the LA Times (Nov. 16, 2003):Of necessity, Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger must run a fusion government....This will be an easier task if the new governor revives the bipartisan "Party of California" that animated four previous — and great — governors: Hiram Johnson, Earl Warren, P

January 23, 2004

Daniel Pipes: Finally We Are on a More Realistic Path in Iraq

Daniel Pipes, writing in the Jerusalem Post (Nov. 19, 2003):Stay the course – but change the course. That was the meaning of the sudden, sharp, and understated change in Washington's Iraq policy last week. After the American civilian administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, made a hurried visit to the White House, President George W. Bush said he wants "the Iraqis to be more involved in the governance of their country" and offered some ide

January 23, 2004

Paul Kennedy: Talk of an Exit Strategy Is a Mistake

Paul Kennedy, writing in the Guardian (Nov. 26, 2003):It is difficult for conservatives here in the US not to concede that things have failed to go according to plan in Iraq, but only a few admit that things are a mess. Meanwhile, among the critics of the Bush administration's "forward school" - ranging from retired army generals through Middle East experts to anti-war radicals - there seems little satisfaction at having been proved

January 23, 2004

Tom Engelhardt: Bush's Trip to Baghdad Shows More Evidence of Imperial Folly

Tom Engelhardt, writing in www.tomdispatch.com (Nov. 27, 2003): The ritualistic presidential trips abroad of this administration were all flipped on their head yesterday when the President visited"Iraq" (or at least the beleaguered American version of it at Baghdad International Airport). Previously on his imperial peregrinations, he had imposed his"bubble" world on whole cities -- from Manila to Sydney to London --

January 23, 2004

John Patrick Diggins: So the Republican Party Is to Be Trusted with National

John Patrick Diggins, writing in the American Prospect (Dec. 2003):THE AFTERMATH OF THE IRAQ WAR WILL SURELY SEE U.S. foreign policy at the forefront of national debates for years to come. Conservatives will claim -- as they have been claiming for months -- that only they were sufficiently prescient about "the present danger" of Saddam Hussein. And liberals will again find themselves on the defensive. Sound familiar? Back duri

January 23, 2004

The Dutch Who Settled New York: The Un-Pilgrims

Russell Shorto, writing in the NYT (Nov. 27, 2003):Three hundred and eighty years ago, a huddled band of Europeans set out across the Atlantic to seek a new life in wilderness America. They survived hardship, gave thanks, ate turkeys and eventually flourished. And every year at Thanksgiving we ignore them. No, I'm not talking about the Pilgrims, nor about that other sect often

January 23, 2004

Max Boot: Bush's Secret Trip to Baghdad Reminds Me of FDR's Trips to Meet

Max Boot, writing in the Wall Street Journal (subscribers only) (Dec. 1, 2003):The most compelling evidence of the success of President Bush's trip to Iraq was the reaction of the opposition. No, not the Iraqi opposition -- or "resistance," as the French have taken to calling it. I mean the American opposition: the Democrats and the news media....

January 23, 2004

Juan Cole: W Sneaks into Iraq

Juan Cole, writing on his blog (Nov. 28, 2003):W. must have envisaged his triumphal first trip to Baghdad very differently. Last spring, before the war, he was told by Ahmad Chalabi via Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith, that the Iraqi people would welcome him this November with garlands and dancing in the street. They would regard him as the great liberator, a second Roosevelt or T

January 23, 2004

Sept. 11, Like Pearl Harbor, Is Subject to Multiple Meanings

Emily S. Rosenberg, professor of history at Macalester College, writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscribers only) (Dec. 3, 2003): The images and references to Pearl Harbor seem to be all around us as the anniversary of the attack looms. They are instantly recognizable. But what do they mean? The analogies came easily after September 11, 2001, when newspaper headlines picked up

January 23, 2004

Thomas Powers: The Vanishing Case for War

Thomas Powers, writing in the NY Review of Books (Nov. 5, 2003):The invasion and conquest of Iraq by the United States last spring was the result of what is probably the least ambiguous case of the misreading of secret intelligence information in American history. Whether it is even possible that a misreading so profound could yet be in some sense "a mistake" is a question to wh

January 23, 2004

Arnold Beichman: The Necessity of Preemption

Arnold Beichman, writing in the Washington Times (Dec. 1, 2003):On Oct, 25, 1984, then Secretary of State George Shultz laid out what came to be known as the "Shultz Doctrine": "We must reach a consensus in this country that our responses should go beyond passive defense to consider means of active prevention, pre-emption and retaliatio

January 6, 2004

James Banner: Why the EU's Trouble Creating a Constitution Is Not Surprising

James M. Banner Jr., Writing in the Los Angeles Times (Dec. 4, 2003) Constitution-making is never easy. But the Europeans who recently failed in Brussels to pull together a workable, agreed-on document to govern themselves should take heart from the hard-fought history of the U.S. Constitution. That constitution, too, was difficult to draft -- yet it was ultimately written and ratified, and it has survived.If the leaders of the European Union can summon fresh

January 2, 2004

Martin Kramer: Turn the Middle East Democratic? Forget It

Martin Kramer, writing on his blog (Nov. 10, 2003):George Bush took an unequivocal stand on the Arab democracy debate, in a speech to the National Endowment for Democracy: Time after time, observers have questioned whether this country, or that people, or this group, are "ready" for democracy--as if freedom were a prize you win for meeting our own Western standards of progress. In fact, the daily work of democracy itsel

January 2, 2004

Max Boot: We Are Repeating One of the Big Mistakes of Vietnam

Max Boot, writing in the NYT (Nov. 16, 2003): This month's setbacks in Iraq — the downing of American helicopters, the suicide bombing of an Italian headquarters — have made President Bush's mantra of "progress" ring increasingly hollow. It's true that 80 percent of Iraq remains peaceful and stable, but we seem to be losing in the other 20 p

January 2, 2004

An Interview with Victor Davis Hanson: Re. Iraq and Anti-Americanism

An interview with Victor Davis Hanson on ABC Radio National (Nov. 9, 2003):VICTOR DAVID HANSON: We still have lost about 300 Americans, which is just 10 per cent of what we lost in one hour on 9/11. We lost 262 in Lebanon in 1983. So after taking over two countries, if I could use that term, and liberating 50 million people and planning to install consensual government at a cost

January 2, 2004

Gabriel Kolko: Iraq Is Very Much Like Vietnam

Gabriel Kolko, writing in the Australian Age (Nov. 10, 2003)There are 130,000 American troops in Iraq now - twice the number Bush predicted would remain by this month - but, as in Vietnam, their morale is already low and sinking. Bush's poll ratings have fallen dramatically. He needs more soldiers in Iraq desperately and foreign nations will not provide them. In Vietnam, president Nixon tried to "Vietnamize" the land war and trans

January 2, 2004

Robert Brent Toplin: "The Reagans": The Spirit of Censorship Lives

Robert Brent Toplin, in a syndicated piece for the History News Service (Nov. 11, 2003):Relatively few Americans will see the CBS Television mini-series, "The Reagans," when it's released in the months ahead. A barrage of protests from Republicans and conservative groups evidently convinced CBS executives that the controversial series was more appropriate for a small, paying Showtime audience than a network broadcast. Reagan supporters

January 2, 2004

Michael Bellesiles: The Limits of Technology

Michael Bellesiles, writing in an op ed syndicated by the History News Service (HNS) (Nov. 10, 2003):The United States began its war against Iraq with a campaign of "shock and awe." An overwhelming demonstration of American airpower was designed to persuade the Iraqis to throw down their arms and surrender even while rising in revolt againAst Saddam Hussein. Sadl

January 2, 2004

Juan Cole: How Iraq Is Hurting Bush's Poll Numbers

From the blog of Juan Cole (Nov. 3, 2003):An ABC News-Washington Post poll released Sunday: Percentage of Americans who disapprove of Bush administation policy in Iraq: 51 Percentage who approve: 47 Percentage who think Bush has made the US more prosperous: less than 10 Percentage who say Bush cannot understand their problems: 58 Percentage who disapprove of Bush's handling of the economy: 53 Percentage who think the eco