Roundup: Historians' Take

Victor Davis Hanson: American Decline Is a State of Mind

[Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern] We are hearing all sorts of reasons why the United States is doomed to decline. After all, America is piling up deficits at a record rate of about $1.5 trillion a year while other countries are slashing their spending. The national debt cascades over $13 trillion and is on track to

Stephanie Cronin: Afghanistan's Armies, Past and Present

[Stephanie Cronin is Departmental Lecturer in the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford. She is currently working on a comparative study of military-led modernisation entitled Armies, Tribes and States in the Middle East. stephanie.cronin@orinst.ox.ac.uk]Since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the overthrow of the Taliban, the United States and its NATO partners have become drawn in to the project of rebuildi

Ian Milligan: Contextualizing G20 Policing in Toronto

[Ian Milligan is an editor at ActiveHistory.ca and a third-year PhD student in Canadian history at York University. For his dissertation, he is studying the relationship between the New Left, Youth, and Labour in the 1960s and early 1970s. Ian is also a Book Review Editor with Left History, a peer-reviewed academic journal published out of the history department at York University.] As Sean Kheraj noted last week, many commentators seemed sur

Christine McLaughlin: The Moral Economy of the 2010 Toronto G20 Crowd?

[Christine McLaughlin is an editor at ActiveHistory.ca. She is in her third year of the PhD program in history at York University. She is interested in the contested meanings and experiences of community, family and work. Her dissertation explores these themes as they played out in twentieth-century Oshawa, Ontario. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, a group of historians sought to rescue terms like “crowd,” “mob” and “riot” from the “condescension of posterity,” illustrating that cr

Andrew J. Bacevich: Obama the Non-Believer

[Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. He is the author of Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War (2010), The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (2008), and The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (2005), among other books.] ...Bush’s Freedom Agenda ended in abject failure—no liberalizing tide has swept the Islamic world. The promised Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the evi

Daniel Pipes: On NASA's Strange Priorities

[[Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.]Barack Obama's grand speeches in Istanbul and Cairo as well as his repeated insistence on"respect" made Americans very aware that he hopes to win Muslim favor. But we did not know how de

Daniel Pipes: Trust the Palestinian Authority?

[Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.]Under Yasir Arafat, the Palestine Liberation Organization notoriously said one thing to Arab/Muslim audiences and the opposite to Israeli/Western ones, speaking venomously to the former and in dulcet tones to the latter. What about Arafat's mild-mannered successor, Mahmoud Abbas? Did he

Ron Radosh: A Poor Historian Tries to Make a Case for the U.S. Breaking with Israel: Where He Goes Wrong

[Ronald Radosh is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at The Hudson Institute, and a Prof. Emeritus of History at the City University of New York's Queensborough Community College.Writing today at The Daily Beast, historian Thaddeus Russell tries to make the case for the United States breaking its special relationship with Israel

Martin Kramer: Amazingly, Ayatollah Fadlallah Dies of Natural Causes

[Martin Kramer is now a senior fellow at the Adelson Institution of Strategic studies and a Senior Fellow at the Olin Institute at Harvard.] Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah has passed away in Beirut at the age of 74. He had been in poor health for some years, suffering from diabetes and heart problems. Fadlallah became famous (and, to his enemies, notorious) in the 1980s, for his role in channeling the message of Hezbollah to thinking young Shi'ites and to the world. He p

Jeffrey Wasserstrom: Fear of China is Overblown

[Jeffrey Wasserstrom teaches at University of California, Irvine, and is the author of"China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know."]"When the Chinese become our overlords, will they be benevolent overlords – or horrific task masters?" The Daily Show host Jon Stewart made that joke three years ago, but American anxiety over China's rise is more intense today.

Julian Zelizer: Gotcha Politics Gone Wild

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security -- From World War II to the War on Terrorism," a book on the presidency of George W. Bush and a book on former President Carter, to be published next fall by Times Books.] While nostalgia is always a dangerous thing, during the dominance of major newspapers and network news in the 1950s and 1960s, there was a

Stanley Kutler: It's Still All About Race

[Stanley Kutler is the editor of The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War (Scribner's, 1995) and the The Wars of Watergate (Alfred A. Knopf). He is the E. Gordon Fox Emeritus Professor of American Institutions at the University of Wisconsin, and also professor of law.] Elena Kagan's confirmation is likely if no other reason than the emptiness of the Republican case against her. Her hearing had, in her own well-chosen words, "an air of vacuity and farce." Nevertheless, the Republic

Thaddeus Russell: Does Israel Make Us Safer?

[Thaddeus Russell is the author of the forthcoming A Renegade History of the United States (Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2010). He teaches history and cultural studies at Occidental College and has taught at Columbia University, Barnard College, Eugene Lang College, and the New School for Social Research.] When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits the White House Tuesday, President Obama will have the chance to be the first American president since the founding of Is

Victor Davis Hanson: Afghanistan Agonistes

[Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.] The growing consensus is that the United States and its NATO allies cannot prevail in their aim of creating a stable constitutional government in Afghanistan, free of radical Taliban insurrectionists who will facilitate terrorism beyond their borders and seek to reinstitute their medieval theo

Juan Cole: On Fourth of July, Let Iraq Go

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.] The Fourth of July celebrates the Declaration of Independence of the American colonies of Great Britain, on the grounds that they deserved representative government and popular sovereignty– something denied to them by the British crown. Iraq was occupied by American troops in 2003 after an illegal invasion, and it is still so occupied.

Eva Balogh: How European Politicians Get American History Wrong

[Eva Balogh is former professor of history at Yale University.] It was on July 1 that the United States Embassy celebrated Independence Day. Such events are very important in the life of the American colony abroad. The diplomatic corps and the most important government officials of the host country are invited. According to the American ambassador Eleni Tsakopulos Kounalakis, "it was a special privilege ... to welcome Prime Minister Orbán as our guest of honor."

Roberto Cintli Rodriguez: From Manifest Destiny to Manifest Insanity

[Dr. Roberto Cintli Rodriguez, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona, can be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com.] As a result of several recent draconian laws, Arizona's image has taken a drubbing internationally. And yet, Arizona is but the spear. In reality, its politics are not dramatically different from those of other states, or from Washington's. More than a dozen states are waiting in the wings with copycat legislation, and the

Ussama Makdisi: Understanding Past Could Help Restore U.S.-Arab Ties

[Makdisi is a professor of history at Rice University. He is the author of "Faith Misplaced: The Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations, 1820-2001."] A year after Barak Obama's Cairo speech, the dialogue between the Arab world and America is nowhere to be seen or heard. As the bloody events of last month have demonstrated, the Arab-Israeli conflict constantly upstages and undermines even the best-intentioned American diplomacy in the Arab world. The quagmires in Afghanistan

Gary Leupp: The McChrystal Affair: A Boon for Obama?

[Gary Leupp is a Professor of History, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion at Tufts University, and author of numerous works on Japanese history.] In the now famous Rolling Stone interview by Michael Hastings, Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his staff disparage a number of top officials, including President Obama, Vice President Biden, Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, and Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry. Among the comments made

Rodolfo Acuña: The Death of the Fourth Estate

[The author is professor emeritus at California State University, Northridge.] The press, in theory, is supposed to safeguard democratic principles. During a parliamentary debate in 1787, Edmund Burke supposedly referred to the press corps reporting the activities of the House of Commons as the Fourth Estate. Hypothetically, the press was the champion of the public. According to its supporters, the Fourth Estate acted as a mediator between the public and the elite. Jour