Recently Published

Face It: Intelligence Agencies Sometimes Fail

by Judith Apter Klinghoffer

The Bush administration deserves the grief it has been getting over the inclusion of the 16 words concerning Iraq's search for Uranium in Africa. For it unnecessarily insulted the British intelligence. No, the American intelligence does not always know better. Indeed, if the information uncovered by debka.co.il is correct, though the documents on which the information was based were forged, Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Niger. An American president who relies exclusively on America

The Troubling Assumptions Behind Lamar Alexander's History Project

by Jonathan Rees

On March 4th, Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee introduced the American History and Civics Education Act of 2003. If this bill becomes law, it will allow for the creation of summer residential academies to instruct both teachers and high school students about "key events," "key ideas" and "key persons" in American history. It would also create a national alliance

America and Islam Go Way Back

by Philip Jenkins

Though most of us think of the American relationship with Islam as a modern phenomenon, the encounter in fact goes back to the very first days of the nation. That encounter was from its first a troubled affair and involves the origins of U.S. military and diplomatic affairs. American conflicts with Muslim states in North Africa provide the opening to Max Boot's fine analysis of The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, and we all probably know a little

What's Wrong with Radical History ... And the Radical "Historians Against the War"

by Neil Cameron

The July 11 Frontpagemag.com carried an article by Greg Yardley, called Historians Against History. It is full of good intentions, but I'm afraid it badly misunderstands just what has gone wrong in a lot of recent historical scholarship. Yardley's ire is directed at the radical activist group within the American Historical Association who call themselves "Historians against the War."

Column: Tolerating the Intolerable: 101

by P. M. Carpenter

The commentariat, membership in which I take dubious pride, is too commonly fond of unleashing a removed, oh-so urbane attitude about skies falling all around us. We have seen this before; things have been worse; the clouds have been darker and weightier ere now; the wise remain calm -- just like us pros. Ours is an insouciance that impresses, I suppose. But, for those who don't already know this -- and the knowers tend to be the rightly outraged over climatic c

Vietnam Echoes Are Getting Louder and Louder

by Christian G. Appy

An "invisible enemy" strikes U.S. soldiers in a faraway land we claim to be saving; overwhelming American firepower kills thousands before many citizens realize their president used phony pretexts to justify military action; policy makers insist that while progress is steady we must be patient; anti-American guerrillas attack their own countrymen, whom they deem U.S. "puppets"; only a few nations send troops to support the United States' cause; talk of a "qua

Shouldn't We Be Talking About What Colleges Teach Rather than Just Who Gets into College?

by Thomas Reeves

The U.S. Supreme Court's verdict in the University of Michigan case, upholding Affirmative Action in admissions to institutions of higher education, has received extensive analysis, much of it critical. The most formidable critiques I have read were by Carol Iannone, Stanley Rothman, Shelby Steele, and by officials of the National Association of Scholars (NAS) in their formal statement. These commentaries call attention to the myth of the magic of diversity in the classroom, to the u

Truman's Diary in Perspective

by Alonzo Hamby

Perhaps no item in the recently released 1947 Diary of Harry S. Truman attracted as much attention-and condemnation-as three small pages on what was probably the most personally vexing issue of his years in the White House, Palestine. The diary itself, although exciting to archivists and historians, in truth contains little that is new to scholars. Even that three-page outburst about "the Jews" is largely duplicated in other of Truman's private writings. But to a larger publ

The Hazards of White House Tapes

by David Greenberg

For several years, political junkies have periodically feasted on the releases of White House recordings, eavesdropping gleefully on presidential decision-making, chicanery, and chitchat. The National Archives, which has 3,700 hours of tapes that Richard Nixon secretly made while president, has been making them available in installments since 1996 (Watergate-related tapes were opened before that, for use in criminal tr

Is President Bush Repeating McKinley's Mistake in the Philippines?

by Frank Gibney

"A splendid little war," the secretary of state called the brief, victorious action. "Benevolent assimilation" was the name of the White House policy that guided U.S. occupation forces. "It should be the earnest and paramount aim of the military administration," the president wrote, "to win the confidence, respect and affection of the inhabitants by assuring them in every possible way [the] full measure of individual rights and liberties which is the

The Lovers Spat Between Chirac and Bush

by C.E. Richard

During their meeting in the French lakeside town of Evian, Presidents George Bush and Jacques Chirac of France offered the begrudging little gestures of bonhomie that were expected of them. Nonetheless, with ugly anti-American protests in Paris and perfectly good French wine poured down the gutter in Peoria, this year we're finally at liberty to admit the hard, historical truth: Americans and French people can find each other really annoying.Bush and Chirac a

50 Years After Korea: Not Much Has Changed

by Ira Chernus

Renewed concerns about North Korea's nuclear weapons program are reviving memories of "the forgotten war," the war in Korea. But the real key to U.S. policy is the forgotten peace that began at the war's end, 50 years ago. The armistice of July 27, 1953, ushered in a new kind of peacetime: not a time of cooperation and harmony, not a time to change for the better, but only a time to contain threats and prevent changes that might make the world worse.This cons

Column: Hypocrisy's Doubleheader on Capitol Hill

by P.M. Carpenter

Those zany congressional conservatives are at it again; again, that is, at unbroken pace. For when it comes to laugh-out-loud hypocrisy you just can't keep a good conservative down, and the hilarity mounts. Add George W. to the mixture as the elected packhorses' ideological guide and, well, there you have it: a full-blown Mel Brooks production of a political farce. Here's the latest example of piled-higher-and-deeper Republican hypocrisy. And this is a bonus week. It's a doubleh

Report from Baghdad: 4 Scholars Reveal What They Found During a Visit in June

by Keith Watenpaugh, Edouard Méténier, Jens Hanssen, Hala Fattah

Following are excerpts from a report filed on July 15, 2003 by four scholars who visited Baghdad in June to survey the state of the city's cultural institutions. The report--Opening the Doors: Intellectual Life and Academic Conditions in Post-War Baghdad-- can be read in its entirety on H-Net. Located at the northern end of Baghdad’s historic core between the Tigris and the old Ministry of Defence complex, Bayt al-Hikm

Column: Implausible Denial

by P. M. Carpenter

As the Bush administration trots out wholly implausible deniability over its commander in chief's detachment from American intelligence findings, something far more troublesome inhabits the land: those millions of Americans who have settled into a state of denial about their recidivist president and his handlers. Nearly axiomatic is that anyone caught in a fix of his own making deserves a second chance, yet much of the public has given the Bush Two administration third, fourth, tenth,

Islam and the West

by Jeremy Black

The use of historical evidence to provide rapid support for policy advice is all too easy in a crisis. At the same time, it is valuable to offer a historical resonance to current problems. This has certainly been the case over the last two years. A flood of works has appeared on the history of terrorism, Afghanistan, Iraq, and relations between Islam and the West. Some of the work has been of high quality but much has been superficial. This is understandable. Commercial opportunity plays

Column: Is Bill Bennett A Hypocrite?

by William Thompson

The media game of "gotcha" seems to have moved its focus off of Bill Bennett and onto bigger (?) fish such as Martha Stewart and the New York Times editorial staff. Or perhaps the fact that the liberal press has now become so worthy a target there is press reluctance to heap condemnation on the weaknesses of this one particular conservative icon. As a person with political leanings somewhat akin to those of Mr. Bennett's, I should perhaps just let it rest and be

Christian Zionism Isn't New

by Daniel Pipes

Middle Easterners were widely puzzled in early 1994 when some leading American politicians, including Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), forwarded more assertive, tougher positions vis-à-vis the Palestinians than did the government of Israel. They were, for example, more reluctant than Jerusalem to let U.S. funds go to the PLO and they displayed more eagerness to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. One Arabic newspaper, Ash-Sharq al-Awsat

Does the U.S. Have a Special Relationship with Liberia?

by Michael Radu

Liberia is a mess. As usual we are being blamed for the mess. The reason Liberia is a failed state? It's the United States' neglect. That is the expressed opinion of Liberian president Charles Taylor, and there are many in the United States and elsewhere who share Taylor's premise that Washington is somehow responsible, at least morally, for Liberia's predicament, and hence somehow obliged to fix it, by sending troops there. We are being told that, since Liberia was established by

Historians Against the War: Pro

by David Montgomery

Earlier this month frontpagemag.com published an article by Greg Yardley criticizing Historians Against the War. This is Mr. Montgomery's response to that article.At the time the American Historical Association held its annual convention in January 2003 a worldwide outpouring of protests and demonstrations sought to dissuade the government of the United States from launching a war against Iraq. Historians from more than 40 u