Fact & Fiction

Is Gavin Menzies Right or Wrong?

by Timothy Furnish

Every college world history textbook discusses the early 15th c. CE Chinese naval expeditions, commissioned by the Ming Emperor Zhu Di and commanded by the legendary admiral Zheng He, that sailed as far as East Africa and the Red Sea. Indeed, one of the favorite themes of the history subgenre known as alternative history is: why didn't these Chinese flotillas beat the Portuguese and Spanish to the New World--and what if they had? Gavin Menzies, a former British Roya

So Trade Deficits Don't Matter?

by Dean Baker

In December 2002 the trade deficit was $44.2 billion. As NPR reported, this was a record. So was the annual trade deficit.But National Review has decided that the U.S. trade deficit was good news:Leaving aside the particular debate about the December numbers, recent data indicate that the trade balance tends to move in the opposite direction of growth in GDP. In

Does the Munich Analogy Fit?

by Robert Cook

Recent world events have stimulated an increase of interest into the events of the September 1938 Munich Conference that, among other things, gave us the so-called Munich Analogy for appeasement. Students, journalists, pundits and even neighbors are discussing the current debate about Iraq in terms of British and French foreign policy of 1938. Historical analogies rely on continuities; that is, the analogy draws on those things that were the same then as they are now. Like litera

Did the United States Supply Saddam with Biological Weapons in the 1980s?

by Steven Aftergood and Joyce Battle

Is Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld an evildoer? If not, then what is he doing shaking hands with Saddam Hussein? An innocent person might be forgiven for asking such questions upon seeing a striking photograph of Rumsfeld making nice with the Iraqi dictator in 1983.In a "debate" over U.S. policy towards Iraq that depends largely on facile slogans and self-dramatization, the Ru

Did Saddam Gas the Kurds?

by Juan Cole

In a recent New York Times op-ed, Stephen Pelletiere argued that the March, 1988,

Desegregation with a Wink

by Melvin Small

Reacting to the furious assault on the Republican Party's alleged racism inspired by Trent Lott's foot-in-mouth disease, George

What Is a "White Nigger" Anyway?

by Andrew D. Todd

There has been a more or less considerable furor over Sen. Robert Byrd's (D-WV) usage of the term.

CNN's Pearl Harbor Mistake

by HNN Staff

Watching CNN over the Pearl Harbor Holiday Weekend (previously known as Memorial Day Weekend) reminded us at History News Network that there may just be a reason historians so often hold the media in contempt. In the middle of a story about the Disney Pearl Harbor blockbuster up popped some black and white footage of gunners firing their weapons into the sky. According to the CNN reporter, this was"actual footage" of the Pearl Harbor attack. That is, this was not like the footage in the re

How the Media Misconstrue Jihad and the Crusades

by Timothy Furnish

It's axiomatic among historians that winners write (or sometimes rewrite) history. How strange it is, then, that on the topic of Jih

Has the U.S. Really Played Its Hand Immorally in the Middle East?

by Barry Rubin

"It is important to gain respect, rather than sympathy." Syrian President Bashar al-Asad, Interview in al-Safir, July 16, 2001."Aggres

Is America Integrated?

by Leonard Steinhorn

"Recent comments by Senator Lott do not reflect the spirit of our country," said President Bush as he publicly rebuked the Senator for making comments in s

Jihad: How Academics Have Camouflaged Its Real Meaning

by Daniel Pipes

LAST SPRING, the faculty of Harvard College selected a graduating senior named Zayed Yasin to deliver a speech at the university's commencement exercises in June. When the title of the speech—"My American Jihad"—was announced, it quite nat

Thanksgiving Day Myths

by Timothy Walch

So what do most Americans believe happened on that first Thanksgiving Day?

Historians Say that American Politics Has Always Been Negative: Why This Claim Is Misleading

by Thomas Patterson

In his new book, The Vanishing Voter, Mr. Patterson confirms the widespread impression that the media are negative. One survey he cites found that in the 2000 presidential election, network coverage of both Al Gore and George W. Bush was negative 60 percent or more of the time. Many historians--and journalists--have observed that negativity is hardly a new phenomenon in American politics. Mr. Patterson dissents from this analysis. Some journalists claim it has always been

News Flash: U.S. House of Representatives Says Alexander Graham Bell Did Not Invent the Telephone

by HNN Staff

"Bell, Alexander Graham (b. Edinburgh, Scotland, 1847; d. Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, 1922), inventor of telephone."Dictionary of American Biography"Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the life and achievements of Antonio Meucci should be recognized, and his work in the invention of the telephone should be acknowledged." United States Hou

What the Media Forgot to Mention When Bob Toricelli Dropped Out of the Race for Senate

by Howard N. Meyer

As the embargo against Cuba crumbles, the disgrace of Ex-Congress member Torricelli is marked by mediamnesia about how he elevated himself from representative to senator. Toricelli's lower house constituency embraced Union City, N J. That had become, by 1992, a branch of embittered expatriate Miami emigre Cubans, dominated by a segment bitterly hostile to the Cuban Revolution. In behalf of this segment of his district, Rep. Torricelli drafted (or accepted their draf

Enough with the Hitler Analogies

by Matthew Engel

Round here, we are not very keen on the notion of banning words of any kind. The time has come to make an exception. The following words should be banned henceforth from political discourse: "Hitler" and "Nazi."This would not apply to discussion of German history in the years up to 1945. That is not the problem. The problem is the incessant appearance of the words as a resort to win

Is Economics Behind the New Bush Doctrine?

by Curt Cardwell

On a recent evening television talk show former CIA director James Woolsey equated President Bush's new national security directive, called the "Bush Doctrine" by the New York Times, with a national security directive of 1950 known as NSC 68, short for National Security Council document paper 68. Few people in America have probably heard of NSC 68. Fewer still have read it or know what it contains. Yet, it touched all of us directly, and not just here

Everything You Think You Know About the American Way of Fighting War Is Wrong

by Max Boot

We meet in a time of war. On distant battlefields, from Kandahar to the Hindu Kush, American soldiers are risking their lives to defeat a shadowy enemy. But it doesn't feel like a war, does it? Industry hasn't been mobilized, civilians haven't been drafted. There have been some added security measures at home but nothing like the rationing and other disruptions that we experienced during World War II. So what kind of war is this anyway? It's a small war, a term of art popular around t

Muhammad Was a Terrorist?

by Juan Cole

Jerry Falwell, the fundamentalist televangelist, has said, "I think Muhammad was a terrorist." On CBS's Sixty Minutes, the reverend contrasted Moses and Jesus as men of peace with Muhammad, whom he saw as warlike. News of the slur ricocheted through the Muslim world, and crowds rioted in Kashmir, raising questions as to whether Falwell himself is exactly promoting love and peace. Falwell's comments are problematic for many reasons, not least wit