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Lessons Learned (And Not Learned) from McCarthyism

by Ruth Rosen

McCARTHYISM. The very word conjures up the image of someone using smear tactics to question a person's patriotism and to silence dissent. Could such political persecution happen again in our country? That is the question some Americans pondered last week when the U.S. Senate unsealed 4,000 pages of transcripts from secret sessions held by Sen. Joseph McCarthy in 1953-54. He used these closed hearings to weed out witnesses who refused to be intimidated and as dress rehear

Judging George: A Mid-Term Assessment

by Fred Greenstein

In his last book, The Presidential Difference: Leadership Style from FDR to Clinton, Mr. Greenstein provided certain criteria by which presidents should be judged. He ended with Bill Clinton. At a conference at Princeton in April, Mr. Greenstein extended his analysis to George W. Bush. Mr. Greenstein's conclusions appear below. The professor's full lecture can be accessed by clicking here.Emotional In

Avoiding a Pearl Harbor in Korea

by Jonathan Dresner

Although it is a pitifully poor country, North Korea has nuclear weapons technology. As a result, the United States and China are trying to force North Korea to abandon plans to develop and export nuclear weapons by imposing economic sanctions and threatening military force, either of which North Korea has said it would view as an act of war. But a resumption of the Korean War (1950-1953) after a half-century of armistice would threaten millions of lives. It might be avoided

What Passes for Worldly Objectivity in Bent Space

by P. M. Carpenter

By all accounts Thomas Friedman has become the leading anti-ideology scribe of centrist reason, purportedly the brand of journalism most Americans favor. The New York Times columnist so firmly straddles the fence separating left and right he must have blisters on his butt. To be fair, though, he’s usually fair. A little boring maybe … but fair. And because he’s so centrist as well as gosh-darn fair, it could be said that Friedman is Middle America writ large. Yet on the continuing Ira

What Is It About Radical Islamism that Leads People to Commit Acts of Terror?

by John Calvert

To judge from the terminology employed by Islamist radicals such as Osama bin Laden, one would assume that the current terrorist campaign against the United States and its allies is part of a religious war with roots reaching back to the distant past. Bin Laden and his associates speak of America as the most recent incarnation of "Crusaderism" and conflate Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with the calumny of the Medina Jews in the time of the Prophet Muhamma

Now that We've Got Iraq, What Do We Do with It?

by Walter A. McDougal

A REASON TO GET UP IN THE MORNING After the collapse of the Soviet Union deprived us of our enemy (in Colin Powell's words), veteran defense officials and intellectuals confessed to a certain nostalgia for the Cold War. Back in the 1970s and 1980s the Soviet and related Communist threats world-wide gave them "a reason to get up in the morning." During the 1990s, by contrast, the coterie one might dub the neo-conservative "war party" were out of a job both

Our Latest Wars Are Killing a Lot More Americans than You Think

by Chalmers Johnson

Most young Americans who enlist in our all-volunteer armed forces -- roughly four out of five -- specifically choose non-combat jobs, becoming computer technicians, personnel managers, shipping clerks, truck mechanics, weather forecasters, intelligence analysts, cooks, or forklift drivers, among the many other duties that carry a low risk of contact with an enemy. They often enlist because they have failed to find similar work in the civilian economy and thus take refuge in the military's long-e

Is George W. a "Dry Drunk"?

by Katherine van Wormer

Dry drunk is a slang term used by members and supporters of Alcoholics Anonymous and substance abuse counselors to describe the recovering alcoholic who is no longer drinking, one who is dry, but whose thinking is clouded. Such an individual is said to be dry but not truly sober. Such an individual tends to go to extremes.

Why My Book About Spain Upset the Spanish

by Henry Kamen

Outraged Spanish conservatives have turned against an historian for daring to question the idea that bravery, patriotism and belief in a Christian god were the key values of the Conquistadores who created Spain's new world empire. The historian, Henry Kamen, has been accused of "rubbishing the history of Spain" and "destroying the foundations of the Spanish empire", in his book, Empire. How Spain became a world power (

Is George W. the Demagoguer in Chief?

by P. M. Carpenter

Anyone with a lick of common sense and a penchant for prophecy could easily call the 2004 presidential election without further ado: a Democrat, almost any Democrat, will mop up the floor with George W. Forget Iraq. Today's ill-reasoned hoopla over that wagged dog will be long forgotten tomorrow. And let us even grant that America's greatest foreign policy blunder - otherwise known as Operation Iraqi Freedom - doesn't blow up in our face till at least 2005. The economy, our

Why Iraq Is Not Japan

by John Dower

Who wants to be occupied? Shigeru Yoshida, the conservative politician who served four terms as prime minister of Japan in the wake of World War II, put the matter succinctly in a later reminiscence about living under Gen. Douglas MacArthur's ``GHQ'' (General Headquarters). Whenever he heard the dreaded acronym, Yoshida said, he immediately thought ``Go Home Quickly!''The Americans did not do anything of the sort, of course. The occupation of Japan began in August

Should We Be (Really) Worried About SARS?

by Ross Collins

Again a disease explodes out of nowhere -- a new flu that spreads easily, sickens people quickly and kills them sometimes. It also pays its call on a world that has no antidote.We once assumed that infectious diseases such as influenza could be controlled. The availability of modern antibiotics persuaded many of us that any real threat from a flu microbe was as quaint as wind-up phonographs and rumble seats. In the 1960s the surgeon general's office declared

Mr. Foner Vs. Mr. Horowitz

by Nathan Williams

"Just click into History News Network which regularly publishes scurrilous, if not libelous, attacks on historians including myself, often with no basis in fact whatsoever, and that's their freedom of speech, but I hope nobody here takes that stuff seriously."These were the charges leveled by Columbia history professor Eric Foner at the 2003 OAH convention, as reported by HNN on April 8

Should History Be Taught Backwards?

One of the unlikeliest subjects to catch fire in the world of bloggers is the desirability of teaching history backwards. Below are comments recently posted by three well-known bloggers, including HNN's Thomas Spencer.THINKING IT THROUGH (AKA: THOMAS SPENCER) 4-29-03Hey, people are talking about teaching history in the blogosphere -- and I was out of pocket to talk about

Iraq Needs a Democratic Strongman

by Daniel Pipes

Thousands of Iraqi Shi'ites chanted "No to America, No to Saddam, Yes to Islam" a few days ago, during pilgrimage rites at the holy city of Karbala. Increasing numbers of Iraqis appear to agree with these sentiments. They have ominous implications for the coalition forces. Gratitude for liberation usually has a short shelf life, and Iraq will be no exception. As a middle-aged factory manager put it, "Thank you, Americans. But now we don't need anybody to stay her

The Disturbing Case of Dino Cinel

by Sebastian Fichera

Published in 1982 to widespread acclaim, From Italy to San Francisco (Stanford University Press), a history of that city's Italian community, came to serve as the launch pad of a brilliant academic career for its author, Dino Cinel. It won him the Merle Curti Award in Social History for 1984 and just a few years later helped him secure a Distinguished Professor of Italian-American Studies at City University of New York. When the Agnelli Foundation sponsored a

What the Looting of the Iraqi National Museum Tells Us About Iraqi Society

by Daniel Pipes

Who's to blame for the destruction of Iraqi museums, libraries and archives, amounting to what the New York Times calls "one of the greatest cultural disasters in recent Middle Eastern history"? The Bush administration, say academic specialists on the Middle East. They proceed to compare American leaders to some of the worst mass-murderers in history. Hamid Dabashi of Columbia University: U.S. political leaders are "destroyers of civilizati

Is Noam Chomsky Anti-American?

by David Webster

Following is a comment made by Mr. Webster in the course of an exchange on H-Diplo in early April. It was in response to a comment by Russil Wvong, who questioned Noam Chomsky's use of quotations. While I am not a Chomskyan, I must confess that the notorious Professor Chomsky is among the contributors to an upcoming book I am editing on East Timor, and I feel compelled to say a word on this topic, even among people obviously more versed. Chomsky is of course not a diplomati

Coaches Shouldn't Teach History

by Diane Ravitch

Testimony Ms. Ravitch gave on April 10, 2003 in support of a bill by Sen. Lamar Alexander to promote the teaching of history. History education is one of the most important responsibilities of our schools. Unfortunately, for many years, the teaching of history had a low priority. In the 1970s and 1980s, history in many schools was replaced by a mishmash of ill-defined social studies courses that taught things like group decision-making, consumer education, and social science

The Petition Middle East Scholars Would Rather Forget

by Martin Kramer

Among the predictions about the war that didn't pan out, there is one that hasn't been subjected to post-war ridicule, but that very much deserves it. This is the December letter, signed by over 1,000 academics, predicting and warning against Israel's possible "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians in the "fog of war." The letter ended with this recommendation: "We urge our government to communicate clearly to