Roundup: Historians' Take

Victor Davis Hanson: An American “Debacle”?

In a recent Los Angeles Times op-ed entitled “American Debacle” Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national-security adviser to President Carter, begins with:Some 60 years ago Arnold Toynbee concluded, in his monumental “Study of History,” that the ultimate cause of imperial collapse was “suicidal statecraft.” Sadly for George W. Bush's place in history and — much more important — ominously for America's future, that adroit phrase increasingly seems applicable to the policies pursued

Guenter Bischof: Impressions Upon Returning to New Orleans

This is an excerpt from a long letter Mr. Bischoff circulated to friends on Oct. 5 after venturing into New Orleans. Mr. Bischof is a professor of history at the University of New Orleans, whose campus is still closed. He recently started teaching New Orleans area “DP” students at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. I visited New Orleans today. Like Northern France after World War I, Hurricane “Katrina” left a virtual “waste land” (T.S. Elli

Daniel Pipes: Bush Declares War on Radical Islam

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his HNN blog.] A courageous speech by George W. Bush last week began a new era in what he calls the"war on terror."To comprehend its full significance requires some background. Islamists (supporters of radical Islam) began their war on the United States in 1979, when Ayatollah Khome

Fritz Stern: Lessons from Germany About Democracy

[Fritz Stern, University Professor Emeritus at Columbia University, is the author of The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology. This essay is adapted from a speech that he gave at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York last year.] We who were born at the end of the Weimar Republic and who witnessed the rise of National Socialism are left with that all-consuming, complex question: How could this horror have seized a nation and corrupted so much of Europe? W

Juan Cole: Bush Gives Another Speech Against Terrorism

Bush articulated his War on Terror yet again on Thursday. But I think the American public has heard all this over and over again and it is increasingly just not convinced.It is time for another installment of the ever-popular"Arguing with Bush" series.Bush, predictably, began with September 11:"Recently our country observed the fourth anniversary of a great evil, and l

Elif Shafak: Histories at Issue in Question over Turkey's Admission to the EU

[Ms. Shafak, a novelist, is professor of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Arizona and author, most recently, of "The Saint of Incipient Insanities" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004).] 'The Ottomans were loved and respected by the nations they ruled. The millet system was a righteous system in which every religious minority could preserve and practice their religion freely as long as they paid their taxes," we Turks were taught at school. Furnishe

Richard Jensen: On Bush's Bad Choice of Harriet Miers

[Mr. Jensen is emeritus professor of history at the University of Illinois, Chicago and the founder and editor of the conservative list, cnet.] Most of the bloggers left and right seem to be looking at Miers as merely one of 9 voters—will she vote for or against my position? The Supreme Court is much more complex than that. We can ask about the depth and content of her decisions; will she be a Brennan pushing the law to the left or a Rehnquist pushing to the right? Will she be a

Daniel Pipes: Stupid Terrorists

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his HNN blog.] One would think Mahmoud Maawad, a 29-year-old illegal immigrant from Egypt living in Memphis, Tenn., would lay low and stay out of trouble. But no, he defiantly did just the o

Victor Davis Hanson: To build confidence Europe needs to stand alone

[Europeans now often mock America, but they aren't doing too well themselves.] ... Before World War II, the weak coalition governments of Germany’s Weimar Republic finally collapsed when 6 million Germans were out of work. Beware: At one point this year, unemployment in Germany reached the 5 million mark. And once again Germans eerily assign blame to someone else. This time the scapegoats are often American venture capitalists, George Bush or the bogeymen neo-conservatives

Robert S. McElvaine: O.J., W, `us' and `them'--and truth

Ten years ago Monday, America received one of its periodic wake-up calls on how deep the racial divide in our society remains. Almost exactly a decade later, we have just been exposed once more to this unhappy truth. On Oct. 3, 1995, a Los Angeles jury, after less than four hours of deliberation following more than eight months of trial, found Orenthal James Simpson not guilty of murder. With few exceptions, white Americans were shocked. When they saw jubilant African-Americans cel

Jason Scott Smith: A New Deal, Part II?

[Jason Scott Smith is a history professor at Cornell University and the author of the upcoming book Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-1956.] ...Before the details of the president's plan emerge, now seems a promising moment to take a step back and recall what the New Deal did. Roosevelt's New Deal marked an unprecedented use of federal authority in response to the Great Depression. In 1933, nearly a quarter of the American workfor

Tom Engelhardt: Experiencing Withdrawal Symptoms in Iraq

[Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of American triumphalism in the Cold War.] ...The truth of the matter ... is plain enough for all to see. There is no Iraqi national army. "The only really effective units of the new security forces," as Time magazine's Tony Karon pointed out at his

David Greenberg: Bush Is No FDR (Not Even a Hoover)

IT LOOKED AT FIRST as if Hurricane Katrina would be a turning point. The government's failure at all levels to respond to the plight of New Orleans—to say nothing of the racial and class stratification that the storm laid bare—seemed to have issued a wake-up call. Believers in activist government took heart. As George W. Bush's approval ratings hit new lows, he spoke of spending generously to repair the Gulf Coast. Senate Republican leader Bill Frist shelved plans to abolish the est

Bruce J. Schulman: Bush's Jimmy Carter Problem ... The Limits of Power

[Bruce Schulman is a professor of history at Boston University and the author of "The Seventies" (DaCapo).] Last week President Bush -- the same president who drives a gas-guzzling Ford pickup truck around a 1,600-acre Texas ranch with seemingly boundless horizons -- asked the nation to recognize some limits. Trading in his rugged individualism for a summons to collective restraint, this former oilman and avatar of the nation's long-standing faith in endless a

Robert McElvaine: Is God a Terrorist?

[Robert McElvaine is Professor of History at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, and author of Eve's Seed.] Is God a terrorist? Many self-professed Christians seem to think so. The devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina provided a sodden, gruesome opportunity for some who call themselves Christians to vent their distortions of the religion of Jesus. They did so by extending the old idea that a deadly storm like Katrina is an "act of God." &qu

Joel Kotkin: History Tells Us that in Disasters It's Local Authorities Who Make the Difference

[Mr. Kotkin, an Irvine Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, is the author of "The City: A Global History" (Modern Library, 2005).] ... The huge discrepancy between the Texas and Louisiana responses should call into question the assumptions that have been trumpeted since Katrina. Foremost, we need to reconsider the central focus on the role of the federal government. Historically, the first responders in a crisis have been local officials, the province being more on

Ira Katznelson: New Deal, Raw Deal ... How Aid Became Affirmative Action for Whites

Hurricane Katrina's violent winds and waters tore away the shrouds that ordinarily mask the country's racial pattern of poverty and neglect. Understandably, most commentators have focused on the woeful federal response. Others, taking a longer view, yearn for a burst of activism patterned on the New Deal. But that nostalgia requires a heavy dose of historical amnesia. It also misses the chance to come to terms with how the federal government in the 1930s and 1940s contributed to the persi

Daniel Pipes: Enforce Islamic Law in Canada?

In 1991, the Canadian province of Ontario passed what seemed at the time to be an enlightened, multicultural piece of legislation. Called the Arbitration Act, it stipulates that if two parties agree to engage a commercial, religious, or other arbitrator to settle a civil dispute, the provincial authorities will then enforce the verdict, so long as it is in accord with Canadian law. "People can use any arbitrator they want and can use a religious framework if it is mutually acce

Ruth Rosen: Get Hitched, Young Woman

Why have “out-of wedlock” pregnancies suddenly entered the national debate over President’s Bush’s astonishingly incompetent failure to rescue the poor in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina? The answer is obvious: It’s a great way to change the subject, and to remind us that in contemporary America, only unmarried mothers fail to demonstrate “personal responsibility.” Never mind that neither the Pentagon nor Congress can account for the $200 billion that have been spent

Maurice Isserman: David Horowitz and the Truth

[Maurice Isserman is professor of history at Hamilton College . The author of many books, he is currently writing a history of Himalayan mountaineering.] One way to fight back against contemporary assaults on the values of the American academy is to expose lies when we hear them. In that spirit, I offer the following story, which suggests how little respect conservative activist David Horowitz has for the truth when it proves politically inconvenient. On Tuesday evening