Roundup: Historians' Take

Julian E. Zelizer: Obama should listen to Biden

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. His new book, "Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security -- From World War II to the War on Terrorism," will be published this fall by Basic Books. Zelizer writes widely about current events.] PRINCETON, New Jersey (CNN) -- Vice President Joseph Biden is emerging as an important voice within the White House on the war in Afghanistan.

Kimberly Quinney: On Globalization and Diplomatic History

[Kimber Quinney is a full-time Lecturer in the History Department at the California State University, San Marcos. She holds an MA in international relations from the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C., and a PhD in history from UC Santa Barbara.] As an adjunct faculty member at CSU San Marcos, I wear many hats in the classroom. The two I wear most often, however, are teaching U.S. foreign relations in the history department

Jonathan Tremblay: A Wal-Mart being built on a Civil War battleground?

[Jonathan Tremblay is a historian and is currently an intern for History News Network]The Wilderness battlefield near Richmond, Virginia was once contested by both the Union and Confederacy but today, it has become the site of a legal tug-of-war between Wal-Mart and conservationists. Several American historical societies including the National Trust for Historic Preservation, 6 outraged citizens and over 250 historians have joined a class-action suit against Wal-Mart, the retail g

Neve Gordon: On Palestinian Civil Disobedience

[Neve Gordon teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University and is the author ofIsrael’s Occupation.]A simple google search with the words “Palestinian violence” yields over 86,000pages, while a search with the words “Palestinian civil disobedience” generates only 47 pages. Sometime in 1846, Henry David Thoreau spent a night in jail because he refused to pay his taxes. This was his way of opposing the Mexican-American War as well as the institution of slavery. A few

Multiple Historians on: Saving the World, Without U.S. Consumers

If Americans don’t start buying a lot of stuff again, can the world economy be saved? What’s the global Plan B? These are fundamental questions at the summit of the Group of 20 industrialized and developing nations in Pittsburgh. In previous global downturns, Americans have come to the rescue, getting out their credit cards and buying up what the rest of the world produces. “Our spending is currently equal to the entire economies of China and India added together and then doubled,”

Andrew J. Enterline and Joseph Magagnoli: Counterinsurgency Wars do succeed

The United States and its NATO allies cultivated a democratic regime in postwar Afghanistan, and of this writing (August 27, 2009) are presently engaged in defending this regime against Taliban and Al-Quaeda insurgents. We reason that the American- led military effort in contemporary Afghanistan reflects a specific, but generalizable class of insurgencies in which a foreign power seeks to establish and defend the central authority in a political unit against an insurgency. This general class of

Jim Sleeper: Can Anything Change the Conversation? Maybe This Can.

Two events this month suggest a transition from one conversation about the American republic to another. The old conversation -- often little better than a shouting match or a dance of snarky repartees -- is petering out with the passing, at 89, of Irving Kristol, the"godfather" of neo-conservatism.A different conversation is renewing itself in a voice coming from the center of the old republic, thanks to Nicholas Thompson's gripping, stirring new book,

Max Boot: Historian Fred Kagan says we need 40,000 more troops in Afghanistan

[Mr. Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author, most recently, of"War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today" (Gotham, 2006).] The dynamic duo of Fred and Kim Kagan have just released a typically cogent and persuasive study of troop requirements in Afghanistan. The entire 46-slide PowerPoint presentation is well worth reading. In it t

Fred Siegel: Is Mayor Bloomberg a great problem solver?

[Mr. Siegel is a visiting professor at St. Francis College in Brooklyn and a contributing editor of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal.] New York City, hard hit by the collapse of some of Wall Street's most venerable firms, has a mayoral election scheduled for Nov. 3. With the city's fiscal woes certain to deepen in the next few years, there would seem to be a great deal to debate in advance of the vote. But neither the incumbent, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, nor his challenger, Com

Tom Engelhardt: A Military That Wants Its Way

[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.] Front and center in the debate over the Afghan War these days are General Stanley"Stan" McChrystal

Victor Davis Hanson: Barack Obama, College Administrator

If you are confused by the first nine months of the Obama administration, take solace that there is at least a pattern. The president, you see, thinks America is a university and that he is our campus president. Keep that in mind, and almost everything else makes sense. Obama went to Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard without much of a break, taught at the University of Chicago, and then surrounded himself with academics, first in his stint at community organizing and then when he we

Kim Phillips-Fein: Is the conservative movement dead?

[Kim Phillips-Fein, an assistant professor at the Gallatin School of New York University, is the author of Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement From the New Deal to Reagan (Norton).] Is the conservative movement dead? In November, when many of its leading intellectuals publicly abandoned the McCain-Palin ticket, deserting their comrades and going over to the other side, the movement suffered not only electoral defeat but ideological apostasy. During the transitio

David Greenberg: Everyone talks about the "paranoid style," but what did Hofstadter really mean by it?

[David Greenberg, a professor of history and media studies at Rutgers and author of three books of political history, has written the"History Lesson" column since 1998.] A few years ago, in this column, I proposed a moratorium on drive-by references to historian Richard Hofstadter's classic essay"

Ido Oren and Ty Solomon: Duelfer 5 Years Later ... WMD as a scare tactic

[About the authors: Ido Oren is associate professor of political science at the University of Florida and the author of Our Enemies and US: America’s Rivalries and the Making of Political Science. Ty Solomon is a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Florida. ] Five years ago today, Charles Duelfer, Head of the Iraq Survey Group, presented to Congress the final report of his 1200 member team, which concluded that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destructio

Victor Davis Hanson: No Rules in the Arena?

[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.] It was certainly uncouth of Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., to scream out "You lie" at his

Stephen Mihm: Why capitalism fails: The man who saw the meltdown coming had another troubling insight: it will happen again

[Stephen Mihm is a history professor at the University of Georgia and author of “A Nation of Counterfeiters.”] Since the global financial system started unraveling in dramatic fashion two years ago, distinguished economists have suffered a crisis of their own. Ivy League professors who had trumpeted the dawn of a new era of stability have scrambled to explain how, exactly, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression had ambushed their entire profession. Amid t

AndrewMc : A Pictoral History of Racism in the United States

[The following is part of a series] After the American Civil War, racial imagery came to be used as a tool of political and social oppression. Not that this wasn't the situation previously, but after the Civil War Africans had the legal right to vote. For racist whites this required new methods of intimidation, and imagery was as important as ever. Here we see an African American and an Irishman depicted as monkey-like, showing that in this early period the use of an ape to depict p

Juan Cole: Does Iran want to be a pariah?

Iran's hard-liners are pushing their country into a dangerous and perhaps crippling isolation that could, if Tehran continues on this path, eventually make it another North Korea. Having damaged their legitimacy at home with a stolen election, which is still being actively protested in the streets months later, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are thumbing their noses at the international community. The regime is adamant that it will make no concessions in regard to

Max Boot: Stingy on the Medal of Honor

[Mr. Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author, most recently, of "War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today" (Gotham, 2006).] There is no doubt that Sergeant First Class Jared Monti earned the Medal of Honor bestowed by President Obama on Thursday. But he wasn’t around to collect it because he died as a result of the heroic actions for which he was cited. That makes Sergeant Monti an extraordinary human being

Barry Rubin: How the West's Enemies Are Saving It

[Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan).] When people are very pessimistic, I say to them: Don’t worry our enemies will save us. By that I mean that t