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Before We Move on, Let's Remember Ronald Reagan's First Victory Against Terrorism

by Daniel Pipes

The first American victory in the war on terror was won by Ronald Reagan, and it happened on Jan. 20, 1981, the first day of his presidency.That was when the jihadists running the Islamic Republic of Iran released 52 American hostages precisely as Reagan took the oath of office. After 444 days of humbling Jimmy Carter, the rulers in Tehran decided to conclude their drama at the U.S. embassy before they had to face the new president. This marke

Can History Help Us Understand What's Happening in Iraq?

by James I. Matray

"History doesn't repeat itself," Mark Twain reportedly once advised, "at best it rhymes." On 21 May 2004, four professors sought to find assonance between the Iraq War and previous American conflicts during a roundtable at the 2004 Policy History Conference near St. Louis, Missouri. Joining me as presenters were Michele Angrist of Union College, Mark Lawrence of the University of Texas at Austin, and Chester Pach, Jr., of Ohio University. During the two-hour sessi

Torture Didn't Work for the French in Algeria Either

by Shawn McHale

"We all had the same reaction. We tried not to see it. We were shocked, but powerless. At first, revolted; by the end, indifferent. It has to be said, it's shameful." These are the words of a French soldier, Raymond Dumas, who witnessed torture during France's war in Algeria in the 1950s. They could, however, be the words of torturers everywhere and in every era. The French case provides eerie parallels to today, when we are faced every day with new allegations about the

Why the Neocons Get an "F" For Failure

by Murray Polner

When an off-Broadway show opened a few seasons ago with the deliciously relevant title, "Now That Communism is Dead My Life Feels Empty," it made me think of the bright, clever neoconservatives I have known. Looking back, many of their prominent publications and groups were far too inflexible to accept that the USSR was no longer an invincible fifty-foot military monster incapable of change. By then many neoconservatives (though the term was and remains somewhat imprecise)

Why You Should Be Scared to Death of Electronic Voting

by Robert E. Mutch

Imagine what opportunities nineteenth-century politicos like Matt Quay would see in the recent trend toward paying private companies to count the votes in our elections. It might take the old Pennsylvania Republican boss a while to understand innovations like electronic voting and computerized voter lists. But he’d soon see how the new trends could give him high-tech versions of the low-tech practices he knew so well.As the GOP’s national chairman during the 1888 presidenti

Letter to Historians About Ronald Reagan

by Jude Wanniski

Memo To: American Historians From: Jude Wanniski Re: The Best of the CenturyWith the passing of Ronald Reagan, I was not surprised to learn that many of you have already decided that he really wasn’t a “great” President. A pleasant man he was, and popular because he was pleasant, but not to be ranked with the greats. You lived through the Reagan years, 1981-89, and probably concluded at the time that he was not up to the job. It will take historians anot

The Reagan Mantle

by Martin E. Marty

Friday at 4:44, four papers on our porch sometimes provide editorial-opinion texts for Sightings on deadline day.  This past Friday (June 11), President Reagan's funeral gave a theme to several, but not all.  In the Chicago Tribune, Richard Norton Smith, former director of the Reagan Presidential Library, attributes Reagan's outlook on life to childhood.  He"imbibed from his mother, Nelle, a fundamentalist [better:" conservative Protestant"] belief that eve

Why I Intend to Vote for John Kerry

by Chalmers Johnson

The United States faces a real crisis. It's not just the military failure of Bush's policies in Iraq or the discrediting of our armed forces and intelligence agencies as corrupt, incompetent, and criminal. It is above all our international isolation and disgrace because of our contempt for the rule of law. Article six of the U. S. Constitution says, in part,"all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land." The Geneva C

5 Myths About Ronald Reagan

by David Greenberg

During crises and other shared public experiences, the news media often stop worrying about their mission to tell the truth. Instead, they take on the role of national rabbi or shaman, fostering a collective sense of good feeling by recounting stories and myths we wish to hear. Since Ronald Reagan's death, the media have chosen mostly to do just that, sugar-coating his life and career rather than grappling with his difficult legacy. Herewith, then, some myths about Reagan now being bruited ab

Reagan's Vision Triumphed ... But Is His the World We Want to Live in?

by Jules Tygiel

In the aftermath of his death, Ronald Reagan's remarkable life fully deserves a period of celebration. Among American political leaders in the twentieth century, only Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose 1930s New Deal reforms reshaped the American scene for succeeding ge

Reagan's Role in Ending the Cold War Is Being Exaggerated

by Roger Chapman

Ronald Wilson Reagan is no longer this side of eternity; his battles are over. Like the Cold War, he is a part of history. How will he be judged for his role as commander-in-chief? What will the narrator of the future say about this man who in popular culture has often been portrayed as a champion of freedom and a foe of totalitarianism?One scene sentimentalists may wish to let drop on the cutting room floor is the tribute Reagan bestowed upon the Nazi dead at the Bitburg cemetery in W

Was Reagan a Great President?

by Christopher Bates

Ronald Reagan's death, like the death of any president, raises the question of how he'll be judged by history. The current proximity of his life and his presidency make an objective answer to this question difficult, but the great likelihood is that he'll ultimately be counted among the pantheon of"great" presidents. There's no doubt that Reagan is held in high esteem by a majority of Americans. A 2001 poll crowned him the greatest president of all time, just ahead of Abraham Lincoln.

When Foreign Adventures Go Bad: The Case of America's Intervention in Russia During World War I

by Robert L. Willett

In July 1918 World War I continued on the Western Front, with American doughboys now in the trenches.. The Russian Czar had abdicated, been arrested and executed; the Russians had abandoned the Eastern Front and withdrawn from the war; the Soviet Revolution was in full swing and civil war raged across the land. Into this turmoil President Woodrow Wilson, bowing to the request of his Allied friends, agreed to send American troops to Russia. The 339 th Infan

Father's Day: In Memory of My Father, Master Sergeant Miller, Combat Veteran, World War II

by Keith Miller

Whether or not they were members of the greatest generation, as expressed by Tom Brokaw in the title of his book (1998), will ever be debated. But one thing we can agree upon about those soldiers, like unto my father James L. Miller (1917-1954), who served in World War Two, they were all indeed Ernie Pyle's Brave Men (1944). That my father proved with a Bronze Star and Oak-Leaf Cluster. One embattled G I at Bastogne epitomized the courage of all with something he said, whe

How Reagan Invented the 1980s

by Gil Troy

Historians like to think that nothing surprises us. Still, who would have predicted the Sunday New York Times’s front page declaration that Ronald Reagan “managed to project the optimism of [Franklin] Roosevelt, the faith in small-town America of Dwight D. Eisenhower and the vigor of John F. Kennedy”? This same paper procalimed twenty-one years ago that “The stench of failure hangs over Ronald Reagan’s White House,” and, like much of the media, contin

Ronald Reagan, De-Mythologized

by Juan Cole

I did not say anything about Ronald Reagan's death on Saturday. The day a person dies he has a right to be left alone. But yesterday is now history, and Reagan's legacy should not pass without comment. Reagan had an ability to project a kindly image, and was well liked personally by virtually everyone who knew him, apparently. But it always struck me that he was a mean man. I remember learning, in the late 1960s, of the impact Michael Harrington's The Other America

The Wrong Lessons to Learn from D-Day

by Christopher Endy

In the spring of 2003, French protesters marched in huge numbers against U.S. policy in Iraq. Irate Americans renamed French fries"freedom fries" and accused the French of cowardly betrayal for refusing to follow the White House into war. Now, with a chance to repair American-French relations, Presidents George W. Bush and Jacques Chirac will meet June 6 on Normandy's beaches in northern France.  On D-Day's 60th anniversary, they will honor the thousands of American and

From Normandy to Jihadi Beach

by Tom Engelhardt

Last weekend, while dedicating the National World War II Memorial on the Washington Mall in front of thousands of veterans of that war, including his own father (who had bailed out of a torpedo bomber south of Japan in 1944), the president choked up while saying:"These were the modest sons of a peaceful country, and millions of us are very proud to call them Dad. They gave the best years of their lives to the greatest mission their country ever accepted." He then held center stage with his fat

Did Bush Decide to Talk to Outside Counsel Because He's in Legal Hot Water over the Plame Leak?

by John W. Dean

Recently, the White House acknowledged that President Bush is talking with, and considering hiring, a non-government attorney, James E. Sharp. Sharp is being consulted, and may be retained, regarding the current grand jury investigation of the leak revealing the identity of Valerie Plame as a CIA covert operative. (Plame is the wife of Bush critic and former ambassador Joe Wilson.)This action by Bush is a rather stunning and extraordinary development. The president of the United State

So President Bush Thinks This is WW II and He's FDR?

by Phillip Payne

On Sunday, June 6, President George W. Bush spoke in Normandy to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of D-Day and the beginning of the liberation of Europe from Nazi Germany during the Second World War. In the buildup to this event President Bush gave speeches evoking the Good War, inviting comparisons between himself and another war president, Franklin D. Roosevelt. The War on Terrorism has only increased FDR’s relevancy but also demonstrated the selective use of history that comes w