Roundup: Historians' Take

Juan Cole: Did Obama Win the Iraq War?

[Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute] President Barack Hussein Obama was inaugurated a year ago, and this is a good time to review his major foreign policy success. It is, of course, important that he has repaired the reputation of the US in much of the world and replenished the stock of 'soft power' that has been so important a part of US success and leadership. His approval ratings in Western Europe and even in Saudi Arabia were in the 80s and 90s

Daniel Pipes: Thoughts on Tariq Ramadan

[Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum, is Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. This the latest update on Mr. Pipes's website on Tariq Ramadan.] Jan. 20, 2010 update: From today's Associated Press:Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has signed orders enabling the re-entry of professors Tariq Ramadan of Oxford University in England and Adam Habib of the University of Johannesburg in South Africa once they

Victor Davis Hanson: Our Philosopher-King Obama

[Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War."] In Plato’s ideal society, philosopher kings and elite Guardians shepherded the rabble to force them to do the “right” thing. To prevent the unwashed from doing anything stupid, the all-powerful, all-wise Guardians often had to tell a few “noble” lies

Victor Davis Hanson: What Scott Brown’s election portends for the Obama agenda

Dream up a gargantuan backlash against Barack Obama’s left-wing gospel, and you still could not invent the notion of a relatively unknown, conservative Scott Brown knocking off an Obama-endorsed, liberal, female attorney in liberal Massachusetts — in a race to fill the seat once held by Ted Kennedy.... Voters are sick and tired of a terrible year of big spending and big deficits — especially the sight of Obama and his congressional allies almost daily talking breezily about spending

Eric Foner: Obama the Professional

[Eric Foner, a member of The Nation's editorial board, is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, specializing in the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery and nineteenth-century America.] The first year may not be the best way to judge a president. After one year in office, Abraham Lincoln still insisted that slavery would not become a target of the Union war effort, Franklin D. Roosevelt had yet to address the need for social insurance in the wake of the Gr

Julian Zelizer: The Myth of Republican Discipline

Democrats continually wonder why their party seems to have so much trouble holding their coalition together. The fact is, any major political coalition is unwieldy and hard to keep intact. It’s a myth that Republicans have had an easier time remaining united. When in power, Republicans have always struggled to maintain control. During the 1950s, President Dwight Eisenhower engaged in fierce battles with Midwestern Republicans who were opposed to excessive foreign intervention and wh

Jonathan Trembley: Mongolia Revokes the Death Penalty: A Relevant History of Capital Punishment

[Jonathan Tremblay is a Historian and Breaking News Editor for the History News Network] Stating “The majority of the world’s countries have chosen to abolish the death penalty. We should follow this path”, Mongolian President Tsakhia Elbegdorj has refused to sign any further orders to execute the country’s inmates. He is in full constitutional right to impose a moratorium on the measure but it will be up to the parliament in Ulaan Bator to pass a complete ban on capital punishment

Scott Reynolds Nelson: Mad Men in the He-Cession

[Scott Reynolds Nelson is a professor of history at the College of William and Mary. Among his books are Steel Drivin' Man: John Henry, the Untold Story of an American Legend (Oxford University Press, 2006) and Crash: An Uncommon History of America's Financial Panics, forthcoming from Knopf in the spring of 2011.] ...Pundits have come to label the current economic downturn a "he-cession." In the summer issue of Foreign Policy, Reihan Salam, a fellow at the New America Foun

William J. Astore: A Very American Coup

[William J. Astore teaches History at the Pennsylvania College of Technology (wastore@pct.edu). A retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), he has also taught at the U.S. Air Force Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School. A TomDispatch regular, he is the author of Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism.] The wars in distant lands were always going to come home, but not this way. It’s September 2016, year 15 of America’s “Long War

Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse: Making Sense of the New CIA Battlefield in Afghanistan

[Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the Cold War and beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. He also edited The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), an alternative history of the mad Bush years. Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com and the winner of a 2009 Ridenhour Prize for

Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse: 666 to 1: The U.S. Military, al-Qaeda, and a War of Futility

[Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the Cold War and beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. He also edited The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), an alternative history of the mad Bush years. Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com and the winner of a 2009 Ridenhour Prize for

Nancy L. Cohen: 2010 as 1994? Relax, Democrats

[Nancy L. Cohen is a historian and the author of "The Reconstruction of American Liberalism, 1865-1914" and "The Social History of the United States: The 1990s."] Two Democratic senators and one governor announced their retirements earlier this month, and days later, the smart money has Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts Senate seat falling to the GOP for the first time in nearly 60 years. Suddenly, the Republicans are crowing and Democrats are trembling -- everyone say

Daniel Pipes: Why I Stand with Geert Wilders

[Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University] Who is the most important European alive today? I nominate the Dutch politician Geert Wilders. I do so because he is best placed to deal with the Islamic challenge facing the continent. He has the potential to emerge as a world-historical figure. That Islamic challenge consists of two components: on the one hand, an indigenous population’

Johann N. Neem: MLK built on American tradition of organization and protest

[Johann N. Neem is associate professor of history at Western Washington University in Bellingham. He is author of "Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts" (Harvard University Press, 2008).] In the 1950s and 1960s, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and thousands of other Americans from all backgrounds took to the streets to advocate equal treatment for all Americans. The civil-rights movement was organized from the grass root

Walter Russell Mead: The Death of the West

[Walter Russell Mead is Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. He blogs at The-American-Interest.com.] Between 1950 and 1989, the world was divided into clearly demarcated groups of countries. There was the “First World” of advanced industrial democracies also known as ‘the West’: western Europe; the British and European diaspora in North America, Australia and New

Julian Zelizer: Sports and Political Oversight Do Mix

[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.] When baseball slugger Mark McGwire admitted he had used steroids in his record-breaking 1998 season, he recalled refusing to talk about the subject in his 2005 testimony to C

Andrew J. Bacevich: Why Can't America Win Wars?

[Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His new book Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War is due out in the spring.] President Obama’s decision to escalate U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan earned him at most two muted cheers from Washington’s warrior-pundits. Sure, the president had acceded to Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s request for more troops. Already in its ninth year, Operation Enduring Freedom was therefor

Juan Cole: A New Middle East Cold War? Ahmadinejad slams Saudi Arabia over Yemen, Gaza

[Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute] While American security officials are focused laser-like on the 300 or so al-Qaeda members in rural Maarib province of Yemen, and worry about further strikes on the US planned by this small group, a regional food fight has broken out between Iran and Saudi Arabia about a different sort of local insurgency, the Huthis, who have so far not been seen by the US as an international terrorism threat. Yemen is on the face of it an u

Jonathan Zimmerman: Obama Should Go to Haiti

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. His most recent book is “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory.”] Thus far, President Obama has done all the right things in response to Tuesday’s catastrophic earthquake in Haiti. He hastily dispatched American ships, transport planes, and more than 2,000 troops to help distribute supplies, search for missing victims, and maintain order in the devastated Caribbean nation. At a press

Victor Davis Hanson: 2010: Our Year of Decision

Sometimes long-festering problems collide — and explode — in a single memorable year. We can go as far back as the fifth century B.C. to see this phenomenon — and we may see it again in 2010. In 480 B.C., a decade of Aegean tension culminated in the Persian invasion of Greece. Nothing seemed able to stop the onslaught of King Xerxes as he broke through the pass of Thermopylae — until the Greeks under Themistocles rallied at the sea battle of Salamis and saved the West.