... There are other reasons why some in Japan would be wary of [novelist Haruki Murakami]. The writer ventures where many Japanese fear to tread: exploring the nation's notorious World War II misadventures in Asia, a taboo subject in Japan and a continuous thorn in relations with neighboring China and South Korea. Mr. Murakami's widely acclaimed "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle," published in the U.S. in 1997, contains long, gruesome interpretations of the past.

In his book "Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche," Mr. Murakami describes preparing to write "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle": "I did in-depth research into the so-called 1939 Nomonhan Incident, an aggressive incursion by Japanese forces into Mongolia. The more I delved into the records, the more aghast I became at the recklessness, the sheer lunacy of the Imperial Army's system of command. How had this pointless tragedy gone so wantonly overlooked in the course of...

Augusto Pinochet died on Sunday at the age of 91, more than 18 years after he agreed to a 1988 plebiscite that turned him out of power. The standard Pinochet narrative is to emphasize the loss of liberty during the 17 years he ruled the country as a military dictator. The real story is more complicated.

Though General Pinochet became a devil symbol of the international left, he was a far more complex figure and cannot be understood apart from the global Cold War conflict of which he and his country were a part. Pinochet's legacy is a paradox--a long string of them.

He took power in a coup in 1973, but ultimately he created an environment where democratic institutions would prevail. He is responsible for the death and torture that occurred on his watch, but had Salvador Allende succeeded in turning Chile into another Cuba, many more might have died.





Late in life it emerged that he had probably stashed millions in personal bank...

[kevin mattson is a professor of history at Ohio University and author, most recently, of Upton Sinclair and the Other American Century.]

In the run-up to the 2006 elections, the past became the present political weapon of choice. Everything in politics, it seems, has a historical analogy. Consider first a speech this past summer by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld before a gathering of the American Le- gion. It revolved around an analogy between the appeasement of fascism in the 1930s and the critics of the Iraq war. Both then and today, he said, appeasers hold a belief that “if only the growing threats . . . could be accommodated, then the carnage . . . could be avoided.” Or take a recent column by Slate Editor Jacob Weisberg that compared Ned Lamont’s victory over Joe Lieberman in Connect- icut’s Democratic senatorial primary to the 1972 choice of George McGovern, a “naïve and honorable anti-war idealist,” as the Democratic presidential candi- date. McGovern...

It’s hard to remember now, but the outcome of the 1991 Persian Gulf War stunned the world. Few people even at the Pentagon expected it to be as one-sided as it was. Before Operation Desert Storm, Iraq’s armed forces were widely seen as a formidable adversary, hardened by years of war against Iran and supplied with the best equipment Saddam Hussein’s oil riches could buy. Iraq had 900,000 soldiers—more than the U.S. Army—and they had had months to entrench themselves in Kuwait and southern Iraq. The Iraqis also had modern fighter planes, ballistic and cruise missiles, chemical stockpiles, and an elaborate air-defense network that would make Baghdad the most heavily defended city ever attacked from the air. Paeans to Iraqi combat prowess filled newspaper pages and television screens in the fall and winter of 1990.

And the U.S. armed forces? Weren’t they the bumblers who had been defeated outright by the Vietnamese and humiliated by the Cambodians, Iranians, and Lebanese in,...

What is the defining line between a civilized and uncivilized country? In my own experience in Turkey since Nov. 19, it is freedom of expression: I have been accused of treason in the press and suspended from my university for defending the common values of civilization and re-evaluating Turkey's history.

I am an academic, a university professor, studying politics, political philosophy and political economy. On Nov. 18, I spoke on a panel in the western coastal city of Izmir organized by the local branch of the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP).

I explained a definition I call the "common civilization paradigm": it requires private property, free exchange, limited and responsible accountable government, freedom of expression, religious freedom including minorities and non-believers, the absence of political crimes in law, political opposition, the rule of law and freedom of association, leading to horizontal instead of vertical leadership...

[Mr. Siegel is professor of finance at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.]

Ten years ago yesterday, Alan Greenspan made what was to become the most famous speech in his 18-year tenure as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Against a backdrop of a strong economy and soaring stock market, Mr. Greenspan said: "How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values? . . . We should not underestimate . . . the interactions of asset markets and the economy. Asset prices, particularly, must be an integral part of the development of monetary policy."

Stocks indeed were surging when Mr. Greenspan spoke at the annual dinner of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had crossed 5000 in November 1995 and 6000 in October 1996. On the day of Mr. Greenspan's speech, the Dow industrials stood at 6437, more than twice the level it reached only four years earlier. Many economists claimed that...

Who said this, and when?

Our civilization rests upon a technological base which requires enormous quantities of fossil fuels. What assurance do we then have that our energy needs will continue to be supplied by fossil fuels: The answer is -- in the long run -- none.

In the face of the basic fact that fossil fuel reserves are finite, the exact length of time these reserves will last is important in only one respect: the longer they last, the more time do we have, to invent ways of living off renewable or substitute energy sources and to adjust our economy to the vast changes which we can expect from such a shift.

Fossil fuels resemble capital in the bank. A prudent and responsible parent will use his capital sparingly in order to pass on to his children as much as possible of his inheritance. A selfish and irresponsible parent will squander it in riotous living and care not one whit how his offspring will fare.

For more than...

[Roger Matthews was the last resident director of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, living in Baghdad until 1990, and is currently professor of Near Eastern archaeology at ucl Institute of Archaeology. Michael Seymour is a specialist in the history and politics of archaeology in the Middle East. He recently completed a doctorate at UCL Institute of Archaeology, and is now Raymond and Beverley Sackler scholar in ancient Iranian studies at the British Museum for 2006–7.]

In April 2003, as American tanks entered the streets of Baghdad, local resentment against the regime of Saddam Hussein manifested itself in a wave of looting, asset-stripping and burning of government and official buildings across Iraq's capital city. Cultural facilities such as universities, libraries, art galleries and museums were not excluded from the destruction and uncontrolled appropriation that affected government ministries, official residences and elite palaces. The looting of the globally...

[Eric Foner is DeWitt Clinton professor of history at Columbia University.]

Ever since 1948, when Harvard professor Arthur Schlesinger Sr. asked 55 historians to rank U.S. presidents on a scale from "great" to "failure," such polls have been a favorite pastime for those of us who study the American past.

Changes in presidential rankings reflect shifts in how we view history. When the first poll was taken, the Reconstruction era that followed the Civil War was regarded as a time of corruption and misgovernment caused by granting black men the right to vote. As a result, President Andrew Johnson, a fervent white supremacist who opposed efforts to extend basic rights to former slaves, was rated "near great." Today, by contrast, scholars consider Reconstruction a flawed but noble attempt to build an interracial democracy from the ashes of slavery -- and Johnson a flat failure.

More often, however, the rankings display a...