Roundup: Historians' Take

Damon Linker: How Obama found himself in trouble this time: charting the ignominious history of "born alive" abortion legislation

As recently as six weeks ago, Barack Obama hoped to use his moderation and facility with religiously informed rhetoric to inspire a portion of the evangelical vote to defect to the Democratic Party in 2008--a move that might usher in a broader electoral realignment. But events during the past week may very well have derailed this plan for good. On right-wing websites, cable news programs, and near-mainstream newspapers, conservatives are doing their indignant best to spread the word that, as an

Frederick Kagan: It’s Not a Cold War ... It just sounds like one

[Frederick W. Kagan posts regular updates on the Russo-Georgian conflict at www.aei.org and www.understandingwar.org.] The most grotesque aspect of Russia’s aggression in Georgia is the repeated Russian claim that Georgia poses a threat to Russia and its citizens. In language harking back to the Orwellian rhetoric of the Cold War, all Russian troops are “peacekeepers” and all Georgian forces are “diversio

Harvey Sicherman: A Clarifying Act of Violence: Russia, Georgia, and The West

[Harvey Sicherman, Ph.D., is president of FPRI and a former aide to three U.S. secretaries of state.] In the early 1970s, Walter Laqueur described the then existing detente between the United States and the Soviet Union as “the Cold War by other means—and sometimes by the same means.” Russia’s attack on Georgia, although superficially an outburst of ill temper over a minor issue, reflects the increasingly muscular foreign policy of the Putin era. Put plainly, the Russian Prime Minis

Juan Cole: The fall of Bush's man in Pakistan

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.] It is a measure of the Bush administration's broken foreign policy that the departure of Pervez Musharraf, the corrupt, longtime military dictator of Pakistan, is provoking fears in Washington of "instability." Despite Bush's warm embrace, Musharraf gutted the rule of law in Pakistan over the

Rick Perlstein: A Liberal Shock Doctrine

[Rick Perlstein's is the author of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America and Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus.] Progressive political change

Tom Engelhardt: Double Standards in the Global War on Terror

[Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the American Age of Denial. The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), a co

Moshe Dann: Iran's ticking bomb ... why Israel must act

Last week, the pistachio nut dropped. With adequate missile defense technology, I had questioned the necessity of a pre-emptive attack on Iran's nuclear capability. Uncomfortable as living with an Iranian bomb would be, I thought, better to defend ourselves than attack first. And wh

Robert Kagan: History's Back

[Robert Kagan, a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, is the author most recently of The Return of History and the End of Dreams.] One wonders whether Russia's invasion of Georgia will finally end the dreamy complacency that took hold of the world's democracies after the close of the Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union offered for many the tantalizing prospect of a new kind of international order. The fall of the Communist empire and the apparent embrace of democracy b

Victor Davis Hanson: Brave Old World

[Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the author of "A War Like No Other" (Random House).] Russia invades Georgia. China jails dissidents. China and India pollute at levels previously unimaginable. Gulf monarchies make trillions from jacked-up oil prices. Islamic terrorists keep car bombing. Meanwhile, Europe offers moral lectures, while Japan and South Korea shrug and watch - all in a globalized world tha

Walter Laqueur: Why Russia acted

Some have said that the Kremlin is unpredictable. I always found the Soviet (Russian) leadership more predictable than the White House. According to Vladimir Putin, the breakdown of the Soviet Union was the greatest disaster of the 20th century. If so, one ought to undo (or reduce) the damage, and Moscow is now in a position to do so. In his view, this does not necessarily mean physical occupation. The Central Asian governments need Russian political and economic help i

Timothy Snyder: History Does Not End, Nor Do Its Hard Lessons

[Timothy Snyder is a professor of history at Yale University. His most recent book is "The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke."] Americans find it easy to look around the world and see figures like Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden who remind them of Adolf Hitler. But do we remember Hitler's rise, and the rise of the Third Reich, in the right way? Germany, unlike Iraq, had been a leading democracy before Hitler, and the first lesson to take fr

Dominic Sandbrook: If you miss the Cold War, you weren't there

[Dominic Sandbrook is a British historian and writer.] John le Carré has a new book out in a month's time, and you have to admire the old fox's timing. It is almost 20 years since the end of the Cold War, the conflict that inspired The Spy Who Came In From the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and yet in the last week half-forgotten memories of Brezhnev, Andropov and Mutually Assured Destruction have been flooding back with a vengeance. Russian tanks rum

Daniel Burnstein: Seattle Bag Law Not a Threat to Freedom

[Daniel Burnstein, associate professor of history at Seattle University, is the author of "Next to Godliness: Confronting Dirt and Despair in Progressive Era New York City" (University of Illinois Press 2006).] Many people contend Seattle's new law requiring a 20-cent per bag fee is frivolous and exemplifies government's tendency to curtail individual freedom. But far from being frivolous, this innovative law will decrease the annual production of bags by 184 million - and

Francis Fukuyama: Iraq May Be Stable, But the War Was a Mistake

Sometime in May 2003, shortly after U.S. forces had taken Baghdad and President Bush landed on an aircraft carrier under the banner "Mission Accomplished," an old friend remarked that he thought the war was going pretty well so far. I shook my head and said I thought we were in for trouble. I bet him that day that Iraq would be a mess in five years' time, a mess being defined as "you'll know it when you see it." I mentioned this bet to Bret Stephens three years l

Timothy Stewart-Winter: Gay Marriage and the Black Vote

[Mr. Stewart-Winter is a Ph.D. Candidate in American history. He is currently writing his dissertation,"Raids, Rights, and Rainbow Coalitions: Gay and Lesbian Citizenship and the Remaking of Chicago Politics, 1950-2000."] At a Democratic presidential forum on gay issues last year, the Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart prefaced a question to Sen. Barack Obama this way: "Now, you and I both know that there's a homophobia problem in the black community." Capehart seemed to

Victor Davis Hanson: Moscow’s Sinister Brilliance

Lost amid all the controversies surrounding the Georgian tragedy is the sheer diabolic brilliance of the long-planned Russia invasion. Let us count the ways in which it is a win/win situation for Russia. The Home Front The long-suffering Russian people resent the loss of global influence and empire, but not necessarily the Soviet Union and its gulags that once ensured such stature. The invasion restores a sense of Russian nationalism and power to its populace without the stin

Daniel Pipes: The West's Islamist Infiltrators

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his blog.] Aafia Siddiqui, 36, is a Pakistani mother of three, an alumna of MIT, and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Brandeis University. She is also accused of working for Al-Qaeda and was

Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez: Back to the USSR

As we write, reports are coming in that after a bombardment by Russia's aircraft, its tanks are advancing on the Georgian town of Gori - the birthplace of Iosif Djugashvili, better known as Stalin. This throwback to the heyday of the Soviet Union is more than symbolic. Historical analogies are never perfect, but our sense of déjà vu was acute as we watched Moscow's Soviet-style move to reassert its domination of the USSR's former fief. Moscow perceives a threat to its

William R. Polk: Rushing Toward War

[William R. Polk was Professor of History at the University of Chicago and a Member of the Policy Planning Council under President Kennedy. He is the author, among other books, of Understanding Iraq; Violent Politics, a History of Insurgency, Guerrilla Warfare and Terrorism; and, with former Senator George McGovern, Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now.] As the Bush Administration begins its final months in office, it has embarked upon two courses of action that will p

Andrew Bacevich: How the United States Did Not Reinvent War … But Thought It Did

[Andrew Bacevich, professor of history and international relations at Boston University, retired from the U.S. Army with the rank of colonel. This piece is adapted from his new book, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (Metropolitan Books, 2008). He is also the author of The New American Militarism, among other books. His writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, the Atlantic Monthly,