Roundup: Historians' Take

Andrew Wiest: Is Afghanistan Today's South Vietnam?

[Andrew Wiest is professor of history at the University of Southern Mississippi, where he is co-director of the Center for the Study of War and Society. He is the author of "Vietnam's Forgotten Army: Heroism and Betrayal in the ARVN," (New York University Press, 2008).] After the fall of South Vietnam in 1975, U.S. Col. Harry Summers remarked to his North Vietnamese counterpart, "You know you never defeated us on the battlefield." After a moment, the North Vietna

Sean Wilentz: Obama, Fire Your Staff!

[Sean Wilentz is a history professor at Princeton University whose books include The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln and The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008. He is a contributing editor at The New Republic, and historian-in-residence at Bob Dylan's official Web site.] Now that President Obama has confronted some harsh political realities over health-care reform and has seen his public-approval ratings fall down to earth, he can do many things to set his administ

Piers Brendon: Is America Like Rome Before the Fall? Not Yet

[Piers Brendon, a fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, is the author of “The Decline and Fall of the British Empire.”] Vice President Joe Biden complains that he is being driven crazy because so many people are betting on America’s demise. Reports of it are not just exaggerated; they are, he insists, ridiculous. Like President Obama, he will not accept “second place” for the United States. Despite the present crippling budget deficit and the crushing burden of projected debt, he

Victor Davis Hanson: The ‘I Am Not George Bush’ Policy

[NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.] The first year of the Obama administration has been a vertiginous pile of confusions and contradictions. In hunting for a theme to its decision making, we might start with Obama’s relation to his predecessor. THE WORLD WAR II AN

Ashley Cruseturner: Healthcare May Be “Manifest Destiny” for this President and Congress

[Ashley Cruseturner teaches American history at McLennan Community College in Waco, Texas.] After thirteen months on the job, President Obama’s renewed call to “move forward in a bipartisan fashion” faces an increasingly skeptical and entrenched opposition. As he prepares to convene a highly publicized peace conference concerning the health care impasse, Republican leaders openly suspect the meeting is merely a diversion to rally public opinion on his behalf. Perhaps

Kate Merkel-Hess: As China Beat Heads Into Its Third Year…

[Kate Merkel-Hess is an ACLS/Mellon postdoctoral fellow at the University of California - Irvine, the editor of"The China Beat" blog/electronic magazine, and a co-editor of China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance.] In January, we marked the end of our second year online. China Beat has changed a lot during that time, and will be changing more in the coming weeks and months as China Beat’s new editor, Maura Cunningham, takes the helm. It’s been my pleasure

Jonathan Tremblay: A Brief History of Heroin at Oxford University

[Jonathan Tremblay is a Historian and works as a Breaking News Editor for the History News Network] It was recently revealed by an anonymous e-mail to the authorities that heroin sale and use at Oxford’s Christ Church College is “rampant”. Analysts suggests that this is no surprise and that it is even part of a “decades-long drug culture” that has been running wild at Oxford and other high-level institutions of schooling since the 1960s. One would think, with a reputation as one of

Jonathan Zimmerman: Schools Must Teach Our Children that Free Speech Requires Civility

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University and lives in Narberth. He is the author, most recently, of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory" (Yale University Press). He can be reached at jlzimm@aol.com.] Let's suppose a student walks through the halls of her high school carrying a big banner denouncing one of her teachers. I'd be OK with the school's confiscating the banner, and I bet you would

Andrew J. Bacevich: Why the United States Must Withdraw from NATO

[Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University.] Over the course of the disastrous 20th century, inhabitants of the liberal democratic world in ever-increasing numbers reached this conclusion: War doesn't pay and usually doesn't work. As recounted by historian James J. Sheehan in his excellent book, Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?, the countries possessing the greatest capability to employ force to further their political aims lost the

Daniel Mandel: The Concept of "International Opinion" is Beyond Bogus

[Daniel Mandel is a fellow in history at Melbourne University, director of the Zionist Organization of America's Center for Middle East Policy and author of H.V. Evatt and the Establishment of Israel: The Undercover Zionist (Routledge, London, 2004).] In recent days, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren was heckled relentlessly and interrupted vociferously by members of University of California at Irvine's Muslim Student Union. Such negation of civility, discourse an

Richard Samuelson: Why China Views Google as a Tool of the U.S. Government

[Richard Samuelson is the 2009–2010 Garwood Visiting Fellow at Princeton University’s James Madison Program, and an Assistant Professor of History at California State University, San Bernardino.] The clash between China and Google is the first shot in what could be a long war. Why should this be the case when, as Fareed Zakaria notes, the U.S. and China “have powerful reasons to cooperate with one another”? Those reasons, however powerful, might not be enough. The troub

Julian Zelizer: Don't Blame Congress for Leaders' Faults

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. His new book is "Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security: From World War II to the War on Terrorism," published by Basic Books. Zelizer writes widely about current events.] When Sen. Evan Bayh announced that he would step down from the Senate, he said that Congress had become a dysfunctional institution. "I love helping our citizens make the

Dominic Sandbrook: Argentina is living in a nationalist dreamland

[Dominic Sandbrook’s latest book, State of Emergency (Penguin), will be published later this year.] Loafing around Budapest last week during a welcome break from our miserable economic headlines, I found myself in the gift shop of one of the Hungarian capital’s oldest churches. Amid the postcards, statues and religious icons, my eye was drawn to a fine, brightly coloured map of Hungary hanging on the wall — mine for just a few thousand forints. It was no antique, but there was somet

Walter Russell Mead: Drinking Tea in America Today

[Walter Russell Mead is Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. He blogs at The-American-Interest.com.] At the tea parties here in glamorous Queens we make sure we serve genuine Devonshire clotted cream with the scones and we keep our pinkies carefully extended while lifting the delicate porcelain cups to our lips, but a very different kind of Tea Party has my friends

Maura Elizabeth Cunningham and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom: A Tale of Two Presidents in China

[Maura Elizabeth Cunningham is the Editor of the “China Beat” blog/electronic magazine and a graduate student in history at the University of California, Ivrine. Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is a Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, and the author, most recently, of “China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know” (Oxford University Press, April 2010). Note: an earlier version of this essay appeared on the “History News Network” website.]

Tom Engelhardt: Fixing What's Wrong in Washington... in Afghanistan

[Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), an alternative history of the mad Bush years.]Explain something to me.In recent months, unless you were insensate, you couldn’t help running across someone talking, writing, speaking, or pontificating about how busted government is in the United States.  State g

Victor Davis Hanson: Some Thoughts on the War on Terror

[Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.] Is there any logic in the confusion of the Obama administration's actions and statements on fighting the war on terror? On the one hand, we had a two-year campaign (2007–08) of damning the Bush protocols, from renditions and military tribunals

Juan Cole: The Decline of the Israeli Right and the Increasing Desperation of the 'Anti-Semitism' Charge

[Juan R. I. Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For three decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context.]The great divide between liberal Jewish Americans and the Israeli Right has lurked as an issue since the Likud Party first challenged Labor dominance in the late 1970s. It is now coming to a boiling point, e

William J. Astore: Why the U.S. Military Fetishizes the Wehrmacht

[William J. Astore (wastore@pct.edu), a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and TomDispatch regular, teaches history at the Pennsylvania College of Technology. To catch him in a Timothy MacBain TomCast audio interview discussing the U.S. military's fascination with the Wehrmacht, click here.]I’ve always been interested in the German military, espe

Teresa Iacobelli: What is the Use of Official Apologies to Historical Misdeeds?

[Teresa Iacobelli is a PhD student at the University of Western Ontario.] In March 2010 the Qikiqtani Truth Commission (QTC) will draw to a close with the release of a final report and recommendations for the future. While the QTC has been ongoing since 2007 most Canadians remain unaware of its existence, and of the historical and social issues that it addresses. The QTC was created with a mandate to research and report on the facts surrounding the alleged dog slaughters, relocati