Roundup: Historians' Take

Daniel Pipes: Zionism's Bleak Present

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his blog.] "We are all Keynsians now," Richard Nixon famously asserted just as the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes fell into disrepute. Likewise, one could have said with similar confidence in 1989, as Isra

Gary Leupp: David Horowitz's misguided campaign against so-called "Islamo-Fascism"

[Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.] With much fanfare,

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom: Getting Real About China

[Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, the author of China's Brave New World--And Other Tales for Global Times, is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine.] The People's Republic of China is an unusual place; as someone who teaches about China and regularly travels there, I wouldn't want it any other way. It would be boring to lecture about a country lacking distinctive elements, and spending time in China would be far less interesting if I weren't continually struck by ways that

Stephen Kinzer: “Blowback” and Responsibility: What the US Owes Iran

[Mr. Kinzer, a reporter for the NYT, is the author of All the Shah's Men.] More than half a century has passed since the United States deposed the only democratic government Iran ever had. As militants in Washington urge a second American attack on Iran, the story of the first one becomes more urgently relevant than ever. It shows the folly of using violence to try to reshape Iran. If the United States had not sent agents to depose Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh (

Henry Mark Holzer: Clarence Thomas ... An American Hero

[Henry Mark Holzer, Professor Emeritus at Brooklyn Law School, is an appellate lawyer who specializes in constitutional law. You can contact him via his website: www.henrymarkholzer.com.] Upon entering the august chamber of the Supreme Court of the United States during oral argument, one immediately sees the nine justices, almost regal in their black robes in front of a huge velvet curtain. Among his colleagues—Chief J

Bruce Cumings: Kim Jong Il confronts Bush — and wins

[Bruce Cumings teaches in the History Department and the Committee on International Relations at the University of Chicago and is the author of the two volume work The Origins of the Korean War and North Korea: Another Country.] The leaders of South and North Korea have met. The meeting had been formally delayed since the summer because of serious flooding in the North – but in fact both sides had to wait six years for this opportunity. The two Korean heads of state met

Barry Rubin: Why Real Democracies Succeed

[Barry Rubin is Director of the Global Research in International Affairs(GLORIA) Center, Interdisciplinary Center university. His latest book, The Truth about Syria was published by Palgrave-Macmillan in May 2007. Prof. Rubin's columns can be read online at: http://gloria.idc.ac.il/articles/index.html.] Working on new material for the seventh edition of the Israel-Arab Reader, a documentary work that I edit along with Walter

Eric Alterman: Why Bush vetoed the bill helping children get health care

I can't keep spending my time swatting at gnats like Brendan Nyhan, who apparently unironically carries an endorsement from Wonkette atop his blog as if he's proud of it, but I am happy to explicate further on my statement that George W. Bush vetoed the SCHIP extension because of his "preference" that poor children get sick and die, as opposed to encouraging what he calls "socialized medicine," as Instapundit, Andrew Sullivan have seized on it and I imagine others of ill will

Joyce Appleby: David Brooks is wrong about the origins of conservativism

[The writer is professor emerita of history at U.C.L.A.] David Brooks has gracefully summarized the Burkean conservative temperament, but his analysis is flawed. There is absolutely no connection between Edmund Burke, who wrote at the end of the 18th century, and contemporary American conservatives. Their historic roots go back to the beginning of the 20th century and the passage of legislation protecting children, women, workers and consumers from the dangerous excesses in business

Gunnar Heinsohn and Daniel Pipes: The Arab-Israeli conflict in the global imagination ... Arab-Israeli Fatalities Rank 49th

[Professor Heinsohn is director of the Raphael-Lemkin-Institut für Xenophobie- und Genozidforschung at the University of Bremen. Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum.] The Arab-Israeli conflict is often said, not just by extremists, to be the world's most dangerous conflict – and, accordingly, Israel is judged the world's most belligerent country.For example, British prime minister

Hugo Schwyzer: The Educrats’ Attack on Teaching

[Hugo Schwyzer teaches history and gender studies at Pasadena City College. He teaches and blogs about such issues as the interplay of faith and sexuality, American history, and masculinity.] ...Accountability is the buzzword of the decade; the taxpayers (and their duly elected representatives) want to know that they’re getting something in return for their billions. That’s not unreasonable. But as anyone who has taught the humanities with passion for any length of time will attest,

Rick Atkinson: The campaign to free Italy foreshadowed battles to come, from Berlin to Fallujah

[Atkinson is the author of "The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944," published this month by Henry Holt & Co.] Few successful wars of liberation have been more roundly condemned or more quickly forgotten than the American-led campaign to free Italy, which began 64 years ago last month. GREAT STUPIDITY? a magazine headline asked at the time. The scholar David M. Kennedy later noted the 312,000 Allied casualties suffered in two years of slogging up the

Reider Visser: The US Senate Votes to Partition Iraq. Softly.

[Mr. Visser, D. Phil., is a research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and editor of the Iraq website www.historiae.org. His latest books are Basra, the Failed Gulf State: Separatism and Nationalism in Southern Iraq (2005), and, edited with Gareth Stansfield,

Geoffrey Wheatcroft: Who Made Hillary Queen?

[Geoffrey Wheatcroft's books include "The Controversy of Zion," "The Strange Death of Tory England" and, most recently, "Yo, Blair!"] Among so much about American politics that can impress or depress a friendly transatlantic observer, there's nothing more astonishing than this: Why on Earth should Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton be the front-runner for the presidency? She has now pulled well ahead of Sen. Barack Obama, both in polls and

David Kaiser: William Kristol on Iraq, 2003-7

[Mr. Kaiser is the Stanley Kaplan Professor of History and Leadership Studies at Williams College, and the author of American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War (2000).] ... We liberal Democrats have been kidding ourselves for seven years if we really think we have anything to do with the debate over our foreign policy. We are nothing but whipping boys and girls, trotted out as defeatists eager to stab our troops in the back to rally the public behind a po

Tony Judt: Liberal Hawks should get off their high horse

[Tony Judt is director of the Remarque Institute at New York University and the author of “Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945.”] THE “liberal hawks” are back. These, of course, are the politicians and pundits who threw in their lot with George W. Bush in 2003: voting and writing for a “preventive war” — a war of choice that would avenge 9/11, clean up Iraq, stifle Islamic terrorism, spread shock, awe and democracy across the Middle East and re-affirm the credentials of a benevo

Jon Meacham: A Nation of Christians Is Not a Christian Nation

[Jon Meacham, the editor of Newsweek, is the author of “American Gospel” and “Franklin and Winston.”] JOHN McCAIN was not on the campus of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University last year for very long — the senator, who once referred to Mr. Falwell and Pat Robertson as “agents of intolerance,” was there to receive an honorary degree — but he seems to have picked up some theology along with his academic hood. In an interview with Beliefnet.com last weekend, Mr. McCain repeated what is a

Deborah Lipstadt: On using [and preferably not] the term "Jappy"

Over this weekend I was taken aback when a smart, sharp, funny, sassy [in the best sense of the word] Jewish woman used the term Jappy. My friend Miriam was commenting on a TV character and dismissed her as "Jappy, Jappy, Jappy." [She also tends to be emphatic, a characteristic with which I admit to being somewhat familiar.] Miriam is someone whose Jewish identity is integral to who she is. It's not something she takes on and off at will. More importantly, she delights in

Charles W. Hayford: Don't toy with China

[Mr. Hayford is Visiting Scholar, Department of History, Northwestern University.] The toy company Mattel has apologized for blaming China for the recall of millions of toys. It turns out that most of the recalls were caused by design flaws. Can we add this sorry affair to the list of flaps, scares, and panics that have marked relations between our two countries since 1949? The "who lost China?" flap and Chinese anti-American scare campaigns of the 1950s kicke

Allan Lichtman: The 13 Keys to the White House ... Why the Democrats will take back the White House

[Mr. Lichtman is a professor of history at American University and the author of The Keys to the White House (1996).] The election for president is more than a year away. Neither major party has as yet chosen a nominee. Yet the results of the 2008 election are already in: the Democrats will recapture the White House next fall, whether they nominate Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama, John Edwards, or Bill Richardson. Only an unprecedented cataclysmic change in American politics during