Roundup: Historians' Take

Daniel Pipes: Some Common Sense in Egypt and Saudi Arabia

(Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University) Invited recently by the newly formed Pechter Middle East Polls to ask three questions of 1,000 representative Egyptians and 1,000 urban Saudis, the Middle East Forum focused on Iran and Israel, the countries that most polarize the region. The

Neve Gordon: Breaking Palestine's peaceful protest

(Neve Gordon is the chair of the Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and is the author of "Israel's Occupation") "Why," I have often been asked, "haven't the Palestinians established a peace movement like the Israeli Peace Now?" The question itself is problematic, being based on many erroneous assumptions, such as the notion that there is symmetry between the two sides and that Peace Now

Jonathan Zimmerman: New war on Christmas? Not so new after all

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author of “Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools.”] Once upon a time, in the good old days, Americans celebrated Christmas in their public schools. They sang hymns, hung stockings and decorated trees. And nobody complained. Then along came the big, bad American Civil Liberties Union and other left-leaning fellow travelers, who bludgeoned educational officials into restricting

Tom Engelhardt: In Nightmares Begin Responsibilities: Why War Will Take No Holiday in 2010

[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.] Excuse the gloom in the holiday season, but I feel like we’re all locked inside a malign version of the

Juan Cole: Top Ten Worst Things about the Bush Decade

(Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute) By spring of 2000, Texas governor George W. Bush was wrapping up the Republican nomination for president, and he went on to dominate the rest of the decade. If Dickens proclaimed of the 1790s revolutionary era in France that it was the best of times and the worst of times, the reactionary Bush era was just the worst of times. I declare it the decade of the American oligarchs. Just as the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet

Tanaka Sakai and Gavan McCormack: Japanese Bureaucrats Hide Decision to Move All US Marines out of Okinawa to Guam

[Tanaka Sakai is the creator, researcher, writer and editor of Tanaka News (www.tanakanews.com), a Japanese-language news service on Japan and the world. This is the sequel to an earlier article called “China-Japan Defense Cooperation and the Okinawa-based US Military Base.” Both of the original Japanese texts of December 10 and December 15, 2009 are available at his site. Gavan McCormack is emeritus professor at Australian National Universit

Victor Davis Hanson: Obama and the Malleability of History

President Obama has given a number of major speeches touching on world affairs since he announced his bid for the presidency. All have invoked historical examples — usually for moral purposes, but often at the expense of both literal and figurative truth.... The Cairo Speech 1) The following can be said of Obama’s Islamic mythography: a) Islam did not pave “the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment.” To the extent Islam was involved at all, it was Greek scholar

Antony Adolph: A Missile Shield by Any Other Name

No one wants to sit on a sofa that's uncomfortable for too long, so why would Eastern Europeans, let alone the world? The 'SOFA' in question (a Status of Forces Agreement, regulating military bases and personnel abroad) with the U.S. is as far from the Ikea-seating kind as possible, except metaphorically. Nevertheless, Poland was left standing in its regards until December 10, 2009 after the latest round of their military negotiations, the end of which was announced December 4. What will transpi

Gareth Porter: US-Iran Talks: The Road to Diplomatic Failure

[Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in US national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.] The talks between the G5 plus 1 and Iran are careening toward a premature breakdown. If they do fall apart, it will be due in large part to a serious diplomatic miscalculation by the Obama administ

Tom Engelhardt: William Astore, grinding down the US Army

Last week, the U.S. Army released its suicide figures for November.  Twelve soldiers on active duty were classified as “potential suicides” for the month, bringing the yearly suicide total to 147, 19 more than for all of 2008, and the

Robert Mackey: Secrets, Iran and a Healthy Skepticism

[Robert Mackey is a historian and retired US Army officer. He specialzes in American Civil War history, history of intelligence, and counter-terrorism.] Today, The Times (UK) posted a story about a "Secret Document [that] Exposes Iran's Nuclear Trigger" that detailed what is supposedly "a final key component" of a nuclear weapon. The article is located at "Secret Document Exposes Iran's Nuclear Trigger." Ok, I'm not a nuclear physicist. I'

Peter Hayes and Michael Hamel-Green: The Path Not Taken, The Way Still Open: Denuclearizing The Korean Peninsula And Northeast Asia

[Peter Hayes is Professor of International Relations, RMIT University, Melbourne; and Director, Nautilus Institute, San Francisco, email phayes@nautilus.org. Michael Hamel-Green is Dean of and Professor in the Faculty of Arts, Education and Human Development, Victoria University, Melbourne, email michael.hamel-green@vu.edu.au] IntroductionThe international community is increasingly aware that cooperative diplomacy is the most productive way to tackle the multiple, interconnect

Victor Davis Hanson: Are We to Be Led in War by a "Tiger" or a Kitten?

[Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services. He is also the Wayne & Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College, where he teaches each fall semester courses in military history and classical culture.] I agree with many he

Daniel Martin Varisco: More Than Just (a) War

[Daniel Martin Varisco is a professor of anthropology at New York's Hofstra University] As the season has arrived in which “Peace on Earth” fills the airwaves and resonates from church choirs, the recent choice of President Obama for the Nobel Peace Prize becomes ironic as well as iconic. The icon is obvious, as no president since John F. Kennedy has elicited such fanfare at his entry into office. As the chairman of the

Tom Engelhardt: The Nine Surges of Obama’s War: How to Escalate in Afghanistan

In his Afghan “surge” speech at West Point last week, President Obama offered Americans some specifics to back up his new “way forward in Afghanistan.”  He spoke of the “additional 30,000 U.S. troops” he was sending into that country over the next six months.  He brought up the “roughly $30 billion” it would cost us to get them there and support

John Milton Cooper: Obama's Wilsonian Moment

[John Milton Cooper, Jr., is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin. He is the author of Breaking the Heart of the World: Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations and The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, among other books. He was recently a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.] When President Obama accepts the Nobel Prize for Peace in Oslo on December 10, he will step into the shadow of th

Ralph Brauer: Sarah Palin Is No William Jennings Bryan

It seems like the press can just never get it right especially when it comes to history. In the wake of You-Know-Who's new book tour, several publications, including the venerable New York Times, which should know better (especially if they read their own archives), are referring to the woman who guarantees to give Tina Fey a healthy income for quite some time as a--get this--Populist. The Times even ventured to compare her to none other than William Jennings Bryan!Palin as Populi

Garry Wills: Afghanistan: The Betrayal

[Garry Wills is Professor of History Emeritus at Northwestern. His most recent book, What Jesus Meant, was published in 2006.] I did not think he would lose me so soon—sooner than Bill Clinton did. Like many people, I was deeply invested in the success of our first African-American president. I had written op-ed pieces and articles to support him in The New York Times and The New York Review of Books. My wife and I had maxed out in donations for him. Our children had been ardent for

David C. Engerman: Jihadology

[David C. Engerman is Associate Professor of History at Brandeis University and the author of Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America’s Soviet Experts.] In 1945, the United States faced a dire threat. The rising power of the Soviet Union and the spread of communism in Eastern Europe -- and, soon enough, worldwide -- represented a new enemy that imperiled postwar hopes for a peaceful and prosperous world. The United States was poorly equipped to comprehend, let alone respond to

Robert Dallek: U.S. history is littered with war blunders

[Presidential historian Robert Dallek's new book, The Lost Peace: Leadership in a Time of Horror and Hope, will be published next year.] As President Obama moves ahead with his expansion of the war in Afghanistan, history suggests that he has a better chance of being wrong than right. Judging from the experience of Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and George W. Bush, miscalculations about war and peace are all too common. Despit