Roundup: Talking About History

Eric Trager: Why Does the Mideast Buy 9/11 Conspiracies?

Eric Trager, the Ira Weiner fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is writing his dissertation on Egyptian opposition parties. The 9/11 attacks catalyzed a tremendous shift in American foreign policy in the Middle East. Rather than prioritizing petrol, Washington targeted terrorist organizations, dethroned a dictator, and lobbied throughout the region for liberalization. Yet despite the billions of dollars spent policing Baghdad and protecting Benghazi, the unpopularity of the United States in the Arab world continues to be fueled by the belief that Islamist terrorists had nothing to do with 9/11, with many claiming the attacks were an American, Israeli, or joint American-Israeli conspiracy.

Benny Morris: Armenia and the Turks in the Time of Lawrence

[Benny Morris is a professor of history in the Middle East Studies Department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.] While Colonel T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") sympathized with Armenian aspirations for sovereignty and, indeed, in a map he drew up after the Great War of a desirable Middle Eastern share-out of the Ottoman Empire he provided for an independent Armenia (in Cilicia), he was also party to the prevalent anti-Armenian prejudices of his day.

Bernhard Zand: What the Arab World's Past Can Tell Us About Its Future

[Bernhard Zand is Gulf and Middle East Correspondent at DER SPIEGEL.] It's hard to think of a more peaceful place in the Middle East than the calm and orderly port town of Sohar in Oman, where hibiscus bushes bloom year-round and residents relax over water pipes and tea. All of this was true until Sunday, Feb. 27, when 2,000 men staged a protest at a large roundabout. The police shot and killed at least one protester. He and his fellow protesters had demanded higher wages and compla

Paul Kengor: Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” at 65

[Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values. His books include “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism” and the newly released “Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.”] It was 65 years ago, March 5, 1946, when Winston Churchill delivered his “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Missouri. It was a speech that rocked the world and changed history.

John Dramani Mahama: The Bridge Between Ghana and Black America

[John Dramani Mahama, vice president of Ghana, is writing a nonfiction book about Africa.] At the stroke of midnight on March 6, 1957, as the new day began, so, too, began a new nation. It was the moment at which the Union Jack was replaced with a flag of red, gold and green with a distinctive black star at is center. The British-ruled Gold Coast was now a self-ruled country, Ghana -- the first sub-Saharan nation to claim its independence from colonialism. It was a hist

Scott McConnell: History of the Camp David Accords Reveals That Even a Sympathetic President Could Not Stand Up for the Palestinians

[Scott McConnell holds a PhD in history from Columbia University.] In the midst of the Egyptian revolution, a concerned Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet that the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace was “the cornerstone of peace and stability, not only between the two countries, but in the entire Middle East as well” –a pronouncement that soon made its way to the front page of the New York Times. While the peoples of Lebanon, Iraq, Gaza and the West Bank might well wonder how much peace a

Douglas Farah: Muammar al-Qaddafi ... Harvard for Tyrants

[Douglas Farah, a former Washington Post correspondent who covered Libya's activities in West Africa, is a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center in Alexandria, Virginia.] Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi is well known now for the abuses he has inflicted on his own people during more than four decades of brutal rule in Libya, but few remember the vast campaign of carnage and terrorism he orchestrated across West Africa and Europe when he was at the height of his po

Ryan Cole and Amity Shlaes: Reassessing Warren G. Harding

[Ryan Cole served as speechwriter in the administration of George W. Bush. Amity Shlaes, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is author of a forthcoming biography of Calvin Coolidge.] Change isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. That’s what most of us have come to realize in recent years, whether the change proposed came from Pres. Barack Obama or the Tea Party movement. Still, most haven’t quite reached the point where we oppose change and fight for stability.

Takeshi Inomata: Investigating Droughts and Maya Collapse

Takeshi Inomata, a professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona, writes from Guatemala, where he and Daniela Triadan are excavating the Maya site of Ceibal.

James W. Russell: The Origins Of New Left Notes

[James W. Russell is professor of sociology at Connecticut State University.] In the summer of 1965, Jeff Shero, the newly elected Vice President of SDS, joined the national office staff in Chicago. He had a special project in mind: to build up the sporadically published SDS Bulletin into a regular monthly source of news for members. That summer, membership was climbing rapidly, in large part because of the SDS-organized April 17 March on Washington, the first national march against

David E. Hoffman: Why Gorbachev?

[David E. Hoffman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and a contributing editor to Foreign Policy.] On Mikhail Gorbachev’s 80th birthday, he is deservedly being praised for glasnost, perestroika and the end of the Cold War. All have earned their place in the history books. But here’s a question: why did it happen that Gorbachev, and not someone else, was selected on a night in March, 1985 to be the new Soviet leader?... Gorbachev was hardly a radical in his earlier years

Jonathan D. Sarna: What the Civil War Meant for American Jews

[Jonathan D. Sarna is the Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University and chief historian of the National Museum of American Jewish History. He is the co-editor, with Adam Mendelsohn, of “Jews and the Civil War: A Reader” (NYU Press, 2010).] The 150th anniversary of the Civil War is upon us. April 12 is the anniversary of the firing on Fort Sumter, the war’s opening shot. From then, through the sesquicentennial anniversary on April 9, 2

Saroj Giri: End of ‘1989’?

[Saroj Giri is a lecturer in Political Science, University of Delhi, Delhi. He writes on contemporary social and political issues and is an activist.] The people of Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and Libya have spoken truth to power with fantastic spirit and solidarity (not to forget struggles in Madison and elsewhere). Beyond particular demands, a general rebelliousness and a loosening of the hardened status quo has swept through the Arab political regimes and social life in genera

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Gorbachev at 80

[Katrina vanden Heuvel is the editor of The Nation.] The end of the 20th century witnessed an apparently irreversible wave of democratization in several parts of the world. But until the recent dramatic events in Egypt, democratization seemed to have waned - even given way to a new wave of authoritarianism around the world. Except in the promotional plans of professional democratizers, the "romance" disappeared from the news and commentary pages of most American newspapers

Melissa Harris-Perry: American History Lessons

[Melissa Harris-Perry, an associate professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton University, is completing her latest book, Sister Citizen: A Text for Colored Girls Who've Considered Politics When Being Strong Isn't Enough. She is a contributor to MSNBC.] We are in the final hours of February 2011. These are the last moments of this year’s Black History Month. February is always my busiest month for travel and public lectures as I join dozens of other professors w

Jon M. Sweeney: Happy 400th, King James Bible!

[Jon M. Sweeney is a writer and book publisher living in Vermont. His book, Verily, Verily: The KJV--400 Years of Influence and Beauty was just published (March 1, 2011) by Zondervan.]You may have heard that 2011 marks the 400th anniversary since the original publication of the King James Bible. So what? The KJV (King James Version) is not simply a Bible, it is the Bible that has influenced the English-speaking world more than any other. There are, however, several popular, m

Dr. Howard Markel: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Vaccines

[Dr. Howard Markel, a professor of the history of medicine at the University of Michigan, is the author of “An Anatomy of Addiction,” to be published in July.] As a pediatrician, I was baffled by scientifically baseless attacks on the substances that have tamed smallpox, polio and a host of other deadly and disfiguring diseases, at least in the developed world. But as a historian, I found it even more bewildering to hear speakers claim that government-sponsored vaccines

Stanley Meisler: True to the Peace Corps

[Stanley Meisler, a former LA Times staff writer, was deputy director of the Peace Corps office of evaluation and research. His latest book is "When the World Calls: The Inside Story of the Peace Corps and Its First Fifty Years."] In some ways, the Peace Corps, which celebrates its 50th anniversary Tuesday, is a shadow of what it once was. It had so much pizzazz in the early days that newspapers proclaimed the names of new volunteers as if they had just won Gu

John Yemma: What the Last Doughboy Wanted for Other Veterans

[John Yemma is the editor of the Christian Science Monitor.] One of the last things that Frank Buckles, the last surviving American soldier of World War I, asked was that other veterans not be forgotten when they arrive home. Mr. Buckles, who died Sunday at his home in Charles Town, W. Va., at age 110 survived both World War I (known at the time as "the war to end war") and being held prisoner by Japan during the even worse war that followed it. Too quickly, h

Arthur Herman: Debunking the myths of Desert Storm

[Arthur Herman is the author, most recently, of Gandhi and Churchill. His recent articles for COMMENTARY include "The 35-Year War on the CIA" (December 2009) and "The Gitmo Myth and the Torture Canard" (June 2009).] Twenty years ago today, ground op erations in Operation Desert Storm came to a halt. American arms had won their most dazzling success in two generations, perhaps ever. After five weeks of round-the-clock air strikes, forces under Gen. No