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Our Three Options in Iraq

by William R. Polk

Official inquiries have verified what independent observers have long said: the invasion of Iraq was not justified; a small, remote and poor country, Iraq posed no threat to the United States. As in the Tonkin Gulf issue during the Vietnam war, the Congress and public were misled. Those of us who said so from the beginning are tempted now to say "I told you so" but that indulgence doesn't lead anywhere. When I was the member of the U.S. State Department’s Policy Planning Council

Professor Garry Wills ... Heal Thyself!

by Sheldon M. Stern

As one of over 57 million Kerry voters, I was deeply disappointed by the outcome of the presidential election. It seemed perfectly clear to me that George W. Bush’s record in foreign and domestic affairs did not merit a second term. However, Professor Garry Wills went much further, warning in an 11/4 New York Times op-ed (abridged version here at HNN) that Bush’s victory (with 51 percent of the popular vote and

It Wasn't Morality that Divided Bush and Kerry Voters -- It Was ...

by Sean Wilentz

"It's the secular coasts versus the religious heartland," CNN's Tucker Carlson says of this year's election results. That sums up the conventional wisdom that right-wing Republicans would prefer that you believe and that too many of the rest of us do believe. The effete liberal coasts against the Real America. Situational morality against real morality. Relativism against Standards. Metrosexuals against the God-fearing. Wrong. The real electoral division isn't betwe

Was Arafat Really the Obstacle to Peace?

by Neve Gordon

The leader and symbol of the Palestinian people is dead. His departure from the political scene has far-reaching implications, particularly for Israeli-Palestinian relations. The official Israeli line for the past four years has been that there is no Palestinian partner and that Yasser Arafat is persona non grata. Arafat has been blamed for being personally involved in planning and encouraging terror attacks. He has been accused of using funds donated by the European Union to finance te

Epiphanies of a Massachusetts Liberal

by Jason Sokol

Frustration, anger, and shock pulsed through many people I know. Then a kind of sadness quickly displaced the more volatile emotions. It was something closer to confusion than melancholy, nearer to paralysis than despair. These are feelings that people of my generation never associated with politics. The charged conflicts of the 1960s were stories from my parents’ mouths, and I was three years old when Ronald Reagan won the presidency. George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservati

So the Democrats Were Surprised by the Republican Attack on Their Morality?

by P.M. Carpenter

In reading the lamentations of today’s Democratic strategists, I am convinced that not one of them has ever cracked a history book. The recent correlation between the electorate’s winning-edge support of nebulous “moral values” and voting Republican has gripped the Dems with overnight frenzy. Those clever Republicans. They employed some kind of stealth strategy. They caught us off guard. It’s all so new, this demagogic morality thing. Yes, it’s new &

Why We Are Dissatisfied with the OAH's Report on Repression

by David Beito, Robert "KC" Johnson, and Ralph E. Luker

On 25 March 2004, two and a half years after 9/11 and the passage of the Patriot Act and a year after American forces led the allied invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the executive committee of the Organization of American Historians authorized appointment of a special committee to investigate"repression" in the American academy.The initiative for the appointment of that committee came from a pe

Why the Democrats Won't Win Back the Congress for a Long Long Time

by Robert "KC" Johnson

While George W. Bush's unexpectedly sizable triumph over John Kerry has captured more press attention, the November 2 voting might bequeath a more permanent legacy in Congress. We appear to have entered a period of Republican dominance of both branches of government, although for differing reasons. Between 1932 and 1980, Democrats possessed majorities--generally comfortable ones--in both houses of Congress in all but four years (1947-49 and 1953-55). Since the Republicans seiz

Column: So Bush Wants the Line-Item Veto?

by William Thompson

As a Las Vegan (not "vegan"), I am given tidbits about national politics that come from the mouth of a very important Nevadan. Frank Farenkopf served as the national chair of the Republican Party, and he is now the President of the American Gaming (aka "Casino Gambling") Association. He is also the chair of the commission on presidential debates. In his latter role, he was privileged to drive candidate W to the first presidential debate, and candidate Edwards to t

Should We Take Away the Voting Rights of 18 Year Olds?

by Timothy Furnish

President Nixon is usually denigrated for Watergate, his “enemies list,” even his participation in post-World War II anti-Communist fervor. But there was a blunder committed by the 37th president that far outstrips all his others combined. That was signing the 26th Amendment into law in 1971, giving 18-year-olds the right to vote. Lowering the voting age such that all college freshmen, and even many high school seniors, could help choose the Republic’s leaders was und

Interview with James McPherson

by Don Adams

Mr. McPherson recently retired from Princeton University, where he has been a teacher for forty years. HNN asked him to reflect on his life and career. He kindly agreed to do so. The interview was conducted by email. What first drew you to the study of history? Are you one of those fortunate individuals who just always knew what they wanted to do, or did something specific trigger your interest in becoming a historian?I was attracted to history by an

If You Had to Put Your Finger on the One Thing that Cost the Dems the Election It Was ...

by Jim Sleeper

Since I teach a seminar on"New Conceptions of American National Identity" here at Yale, where George W. Bush, John Kerry and I overlapped as undergraduates in the late 1960s, I couldn't avoid showing my students last week how Bush is reviving an old conception of our national identity. That conception depends on assumptions about free markets and spiritual salvation that are necessary, indeed, but nowhere near sufficient -- and often even counterproductive -- to sustaining republican freedom.

4 Ways Falluja Can End

by Mark LeVine

As American forces penetrate ever deeper and more destructively into the city of Falluja, each of the major players in this violent drama is engaged in a complex, constantly shifting calculus involving ways of turning events to their advantage. Of the many possible outcomes to the battle of Falluja, the four which seem most plausible follow, starting with the one that might be viewed most positively by the Bush administration. In sum, they offer us a grim picture of how the window of

Is President Bush Fated to Fail in the Second Term?

by Rick Shenkman

Hats off to the NYT for the headline above Lou Cannon's Tuesday morning op ed: "Can Bush Break the Second-Term Jinx?" Every president of the last 100 years has faced debilitating scandals or ennui in their second term. That's a warning light on Bush's dashboard. It doesn't mean he will be similarly enfeebled as his predecessors were. History is never so neat and simple and predictions usually f

Why the Democrats Don't Have to Worry About the Voters Who Are Obsessed with Old-Fashioned Morality

by Leonard Steinhorn

In these post-election days my e-mail in-box is full of despair. Friends, former college classmates, and countless Baby Boom peers all seem to be asking the same plaintive question: "Are we out of synch with the country, are we outside the mainstream?" The e-mails are from a dry cleaner in upstate New York and a suburban mom who works part-time and a high-tech wizard in the Pacific Northwest and from Boomer liberals generally chilled by polls showing that moral values motivated mo

Can Democrats Marry Progressive Politics with Religion? (They Have in the Past)

by Ron Briley

Political pundits are labeling presidential adviser Karl Rove a genius for focusing the attention of his boss upon such “moral” issues as same-sex marriage and abortion and working to attract the four million evangelicals to the polls who sat out the 2000 election. Meanwhile, Democrats targeted Ohio and its loss of manufacturing jobs as the most likely electoral prize to upset President Bush, who is the first President since Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression to preside over

Are Gilder and Lehrman Tilting American History to the Right? A Case in Point

by Jesse Lemisch

Having had a busy autumn, I've only just seen the New-York Historical Society's Alexander Hamilton exhibit (it runs September 10-February 28; U.S. tour, 2005-2008). As we would expect from Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman, the two rich right-wingers who have in effect taken over the N-YHS, the exhibit leads inexorably to the re-election of George Bush, the rejection of the last thirty-five years of social history, and a paean to triumphalist capitalism. Richard Brookhiser, Hamilton biographer an

Lynne Cheney's Attack on the History Standards, 10 Years Later

by Gary B. Nash

Ten years ago–October 20, 1994 to be exact–brought a screaming headline to the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal. Under the title “The End of History,” Lynne Cheney, former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, maligned the National History Standards that she had funded (along with the Department of Education) as a “grim and gloomy” monument to political correctness. She pronounced the standards project a disaster for giving insu

Flip Flops Among Religious Groups in 2004

by Martin E. Marty

Having done little Monday-morning sighting of the 2004 campaign, at its end, we should, at least, look at the "flip-flops" or "changed places" among religious groups. First, Catholics: In 1960 the Vatican and American bishops assured U.S. citizens that bishops' (fatefully futile) intrusion in Puerto Rican politics (declaring it sinful for any Catholic to vote for the pro-birth control PPD) would never find a counterpart here. That first intervention under an American fla

Did the Bush Administration Consult Academics Before Invading Iraq?

Following is an exchange that has taken place on H-Diplo.Nedra Dyer McCloud, Graduate Student (10/15/04)This week, PBS aired Frontline's "The Choice 2004," a dual biography of John Kerry and George W. Bush. Bush's decision to wage war against Iraq was treated in some detail; there was no mention of his asking advice from any Middle Eastern scholars. There was no mention of any Middle Eastern scholars' having volunteered their advice abo