Roundup: Historians' Take

John R. Miller: George Washington Set the Precedent for Civilian Control of the Military

[John R. Miller, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and a visiting scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, is working on a book on George Washington and the Newburgh conspiracy.] ...In early 1783, with Revolutionary War victory in sight but peace uncertain, Washington and the Continental Army bivouacked at Newburgh, N.Y. Troops were enraged by Congress’s failure to provide promised back pay and pensions. Rumors of mutiny

Robert W. Merry: The Myth of the One-Term Wonder

[Robert W. Merry, the publisher of Stratfor, is the author, most recently, of “A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent.”] No doubt President Obama was sincere when he recently told ABC’s Diane Sawyer that he’d “rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president.” The president seemed to be saying that he would make decisions with history in mind rather than voter sentiment, even if voter sentimen

Martin Kramer: The Chronologically-Challenged Stephen Walt

[Prof. Kramer, the author of Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle East Studies in America, was a full-time tenured academic at Tel Aviv University. He is now a senior fellow at the Adelson Institution of Strategic studies and a Senior Fellow at the Olin Institute at Harvard.] In the past, I've demolished Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's claim that Israel and its friends drove the United States to war with Iraq. I did it when they published their article, and did it again w

Julian Zelizer: The Historical Cost of Partisanship on National Security

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. His new book is"Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security: From World War II to the War on Terrorism," published by Basic Books. Zelizer writes widely about current events.] The White House has become increasingly frustrated with the continued Republican attacks on President Obama's national security policies. Since early in his administration, Republicans,

Thaddeus Russell: Undercover Boss' Creepy Politics

[Thaddeus Russell is the author of the forthcoming A Renegade History of the United States (Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2010). He teaches history and cultural studies at Occidental College and has taught at Columbia University, Barnard College, Eugene Lang College, and the New School for Social Research.] At first glance, CBS' fully hyped new reality show, Undercover Boss, could appear to be a fairy tale scripted by the Republican National Committee. The series follows corporat

Jon Pahl: Malls Versus Mecca?

[Jon Pahl is Professor of the History of Christianity in America at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, and author of Shopping Malls and Other Sacred Spaces and Empire of Sacrifice: The Religious Origins of American Violence (NYU Press).] President George W. Bush, to his credit, tried not to scapegoat Muslims for 9/11 and other acts of terrorism. "We are not at war with Islam," Bush repeatedly intoned. Many Americans haven't gotten the message. They still

Martin Gorsky: The Different Approaches of America and Europe to Health Care

[Martin Gorsky is Senior Lecturer in the History of Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.] ...History can help us understand the choices which led the US to such a different approach to [health care reform than] that of Europe. A useful concept in thinking about this is ‘path dependency’, the idea that decisions taken early on can significantly constrain possibilities for change later in time.With this in mind,we can look at why national health insuran

Henry Louis Gates Jr.: The Mystery of Yo-Yo Ma's Name

[Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is a literary critic, educator, scholar, writer, editor and public intellectual. He was the first African American to receive the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship. In 2002, Gates was selected to give the Jefferson Lecture, in recognition of his "distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities." The lecture resulted in his 2003 book, The Trials of Phillis Wheatley.] Yo-Yo Ma has always wondered about his name. "There'

William J. Astore: On Vietnam, Afghanistan and Bloody Irreversibility

[William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He taught cadets at the Air Force Academy, officers at the Naval Postgraduate School, and applauded thousands of troops as they crossed the stage to graduate from the Defense Language Institute. A TomDispatch regular, he currently teaches history at the Pennsylvania College of Technology. He may be reached at wastore@pct.edu.]Reading old articles about the Vietnam War is sobering precisely because they read like articles wri

Jonathan Zimmerman: When Athletes Praise God at the Super Bowl and Other Sports

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author, most recently, of “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory”] “God is great.” So said Drew Brees, the most valuable player in last Sunday’s Super Bowl, after leading the New Orleans Saints to an upset victory over the Indianapolis Colts. Such comments have become commonplace on American television, where athletes routinely thank God in postgame

Julian Zelizer: Obama Must Define Himself

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. His new book is "Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security: From World War II to the War on Terrorism," published by Basic Books. Zelizer writes widely about current events] In his first year in the White House, President Obama has proved to be an elusive figure. This is ironic given that his campaign to win the Democratic primary in 2007 and 2008

Leon Aron: Can Medvedev Emulate Gorbachev?

[Leon Aron, resident scholar and director of Russian studies at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author, most recently, of "Russia's Revolution: Essays 1989-2006."] The security of the United States continues to be tied to decisions in Moscow, as evidenced by President Obama's touting of the pending strategic arms-control agreement with Russia in his State of the Union address. And those decisions, in turn, will hinge on Russian domestic politics. The central ques

Victor Davis Hanson: U.S. Is Winning War on Terror

[Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.] There is a common — and understandable — perception in the postmodern age of nuclear proliferation that victory is an obsolete concept. Is it that too many nuclear players have provided too many eleventh-hour reprieves to the losing sides in c

Victor Davis Hanson: Our Top Anti-Terrorism Advisor Must Go

One of the stranger behaviors of the ever-stranger Obama administration is its sudden adoption of the "wounded fawn" posture. No opposition was more stridently critical of a sitting president than was the anti-Bush Left. Barack Obama, as candidate and president, could not start a speech without saying "Bush did it." And have we forgotten the 2006–08 canonization of Michael Moore, the silence about the Nazi slurs, the award-winning assassination docudramas, the Kn

Andreas Umland: Ukraine and the EU Need Each Other

[Andreas Umland has been published in The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Prospect Magazine, the Moscow Times, and elsewhere. He is general editor of the book series “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society” (www.ibidem-verlag.de/spps.html).] Zbigniew Brzezinski’s dictum that, without Ukraine, Russia is no longer an empire is well-known in Europe too. Yet, its topicality for European security seems insufficiently appreciated in Brussels. While the EU cannot directly in

Ira Berlin: The Changing Definition of African-American

[Ira Berlin teaches at the University of Maryland. His 1999 study of slavery in North America, Many Thousands Gone, received the Bancroft Prize.] Some years ago, I was interviewed on public radio about the meaning of the Emancipation Proclamation. I addressed the familiar themes of the origins of that great document: the changing nature of the Civil War, the Union army’s growing dependence on black labor, the intensifying opposition to slavery in the North and the interplay of milit

David M. Kennedy: What Would Wilson Do?

[David M. Kennedy, a professor of history at Stanford University, is working on a book about the historical determinants of the American national character.] ...[A]s the 20th century dawned, the United States was no longer so easy to ignore. It had grown to be the most populous country in the Western world, save Russia. It was the leading producer of wheat, coal, iron, steel, and electricity. It would soon command the world’s largest pool of investment capital. The Spanish-American

Jamie Glazov: Thank You, Glenn Beck, for Exposing Communism’s Evils

[Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in Russian, U.S. and Canadian foreign policy. He is the author of Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev’s Soviet Union and is the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of The Hate America Left. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitz’s Left Illusions. His new book is United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror. Email him at jglazov@rogers.com.]

Jonathan Tremblay: Howard Zinn and JD Salinger: The History of Passing Writers

[Jonathan Tremblay is a Historian and works as a Breaking News Editor for the History News Network] In the past centuries, one profession and group of people are assuredly remembered more than the rest: writers. Mostly because their names are affixed to a piece of literature, poetry, music, history or fiction, it is a name that will live on as long as succeeding generations deem the works “classic”. That being said, what of the man? Surely a writer is embodied with his work but the

David Silbey: The Philippine War is Not So Different from Afghanistan

[David Silbey is the author of "A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902" and associate professor of history at Alvernia University in Reading, Pa.] The war in Afghanistan feels foreign to Americans: a far distant land, a confusing and alien culture, and combat against a shadowy enemy. That feeling is mistaken. America has spent much of its history fighting wars like the one in Afghanistan. So much so, in fact, that Afghanistan would be familiar