Roundup: Historians' Take

Tom Engelhardt: 12 Reasons to Get Out of Iraq

[Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com, is the co-founder of the American Empire Project. His book, The End of Victory Culture (University of Massachusetts Press), has been updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.] Can there be any question that, since the invasion of 2003

Jonathan Zimmerman: Americans at the bottom of the economic pile are bitter; but their lives are peachy compared to those of poor Africans

[Jonathan Zimmerman , a Pennsylvania resident and history professor at New York University, is teaching this semester at the university's study-abroad program in Accra, Ghana. He is the author of "Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century" (jlzimm@aol.com).] So here's what we've learned from the latest round of political sniping at Barack Obama: Americans really are bitter. They just don't like to be reminded of it.

Juan Cole: McCain and the Myth of al-Qaeda in Iraq

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.]I am quoted in this NYT piece today on John McCain's allegations that the US is fighting"al-Qaeda" in Iraq and that there is a danger of"al-Qaeda" taking over the country if the US leaves.

Victor Davis Hanson: Casualties of the Campaign

[Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.] It is only four months into 2008, but the presidential campaign -- already too long and nasty -- is still a long way from over. And the casualties are mounting.

Daniel Pipes: A Democratic Islam?

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his blog.] There's an impression that Muslims suffer disproportionately from the rule of dictators, tyrants, unelected presidents, kings, emirs, and various other strongmen – and it's accurate. A careful analysis by Frederic L. Pryor of Swarthmore College in the Middle East Quarterl

Michael T. Klare: The End of the World as We've Known It

[Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author of Resource Wars and Blood and Oil. Consider this essay a preview of his newest book, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy, which has just been published by Metropolitan Books.] ... Throughout history, major shifts in power have normally been accompanied by violence -- in some cases, protracted violent upheavals. Either states at the pinnacle of power ha

Robert McElvaine: Pope Should Start "Spiritual Renewal" with Bisexual God

[Robert S. McElvaine teaches history at Millsaps College. This piece is based in part on his new book, Grand Theft Jesus: The Hijacking of Religion in America, which has just been published by Crown.] On Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI asked the crowd gathered in St. Peter's Square to pray that his first visit to the United States as pontiff this week would "be a time of spiritual renewal for all Americans." Surely spiritual renewal would be beneficial to all of us -- not least

Stanley I. Kutler: Blame Obama's latest controversy on the media

[Stanley Kutler is the author of “The Wars of Watergate.”] It was inevitable for Barack Obama to beat a retreat from his recent remarks about his difficulty in reaching Pennsylvania’s working-class voters. The railroad, coal and steel jobs that once fueled the Pennsylvania economy have declined dramatically for several decades. Obama noted that the frustrations and anger of working-class families determined and dominated their voting beliefs. “It’s not surprising, then,” he said, “t

Daniel Pipes: Europe or Eurabia?

[Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube/Diller distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He is in Australia for the Intelligence Squared debate to take place this evening in Sydney. This article derives from a talk he delivered yesterday to the Quadrant.] The future of Europe is in play. Will it turn into"Eurabia," a part of the Muslim world? Will it remain the distinct cultural unit it has been over the last millennium? Or might

Julian E. Zelizer: United government no universal cure

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the co-editor of “Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s” (Harvard University Press). He is currently writing a history of national security politics since World War II that will be published by Basic Books.] The only thing that makes the brutal presidential nomination battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton tolerable for most Democrats is the hope for a b

Edwin Black: An Egyptian Jew Battles Coca-Cola in the USA for a Modern Day Injustice

[Edwin Black is the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of IBM and the Holocaust, as well as award-winning investigations of the relationships between General Motors, Ford Motor Co, Carnegie Institution and the Rockefeller Foundation with Nazi genocide.] Refael Bigio in Montreal remembers the moment that the regime of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser seized his family’s property. He was driving to the factory with his father that traumatic August day in 1962. Pol

Thomas G. Palaima: Airlines' excuses just won't fly

[Mr. Palaima is Dickson Centennial Professor of Classics in the College of Liberal Arts at University of Texas at Austin.] In Mike Nichols' classic film "The Graduate," Mr. McGuire comes up to Benjamin Braddock, played by Dustin Hoffman, and says, "I just want to say one word to you. Just one word." The one word he says is "plastics." The word has been a kind of koan for more than 40 years. It is now time to replace it. Everything is swolle

Thomas Fleming: Post-Presidency With Grace

[Mr. Fleming most recent book is "The Perils of Peace, America's Struggle to Survive After Yorktown." He is a member of the Board of HNN.] One of the most memorable experiences of my life is the two weeks I spent in Independence, Mo., in 1970 talking to Harry Truman, which is why I reacted with special dismay to the recent story about the former president, William Clinton, making tens of millions of dollars as a speaker and business consultant since he left office.

Juan Cole: Iran Supported al-Maliki against Militias

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.] George W. Bush and Dick Cheney initially rejected the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report, which advised that Iraq coul

Jonathan Zimmerman: Are the Olympic games politicized? Yes.

[The writer is a professor of history and education at New York University.] Are protesters following the Olympic torch trying to"politicize" the Beijing Games, as Chinese leaders have charged? You bet. And it's a good thing, too. Remember, the Olympics have always been political. They were in 1936, when Adolf Hitler used the Berlin Games to burnish his international image; in 1968, when two African-American medalists in Mexico City raised their fists in a black-power salute; in

Tony Perrottet: Beware of Greeks Bearing Placards

[Tony Perrottet is the author of “The Naked Olympics” and the forthcoming “Napoleon’s Privates.”] WHEN it comes to Olympic protests, the demonstrators in London, Paris and San Francisco are a pretty wimpy bunch, at least compared to the ancient Greeks. Back in the classical era, protesters really knew how to disrupt an Olympics ceremony. In 364 B.C., soldiers stormed the arena in Olympia and a pitched battle occurred on the field. It was history’s most dramatic clash of

Hillel Fradkin: Who speaks for Islam?

[Hillel Fradkin is a senior fellow of the Hudson Institute where he directs its Center on Islam, Democracy and the Future of the Muslim World. He is the founder of Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, the leading journal on contemporary Islamism (sometimes known as militant or radical Islam) which he co-edits with Husain Haqqani and Eric Brown. He is also general editor of Hudson’s monograph series on contemporary Islam and Islamism as well as the center’s website.] Who speaks for I

John J. Pitney Jr.: Wishing for 1976

[John J. Pitney Jr. is the Roy P. Crocker Professor of American Politics at Claremont McKenna College.] Representative Tom Cole (R., Okla.), chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, made a revealing but little-noticed comment to the New York Times. He said of the presidential race: “I don’t need the nominee to win; I just need him to be competitive enough that we can win behind him in the places that should be ours. I need him to be Gerald Ford.” Conser

Jon Wiener: Obama and the Palestinian Professors

[Mr. Wiener is a professor of history at UC-Irvine.] Ten years ago, Barack Obama went to a lecture by Edward Said, the prominent Palestinian intellectual. Should that be page one news now? The LA Times thinks so – they ran a story on their front page on Thursday on the event, headlined "Campaign '08: Allies of Palestinians see a friend on Obama." Obama's attendance at that speech is news today, of course, because of the Jewish vote. The Times made that clear w

Tom Engelhardt: 9 Propositions on the U.S. Air War for Terror

[Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com, is the co-founder of the American Empire Project. His book, The End of Victory Culture (University of Massachusetts Press), has been updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.] Let's start with a few simple propositions. F