Roundup: Historians' Take

Stephen Bainbridge: We practiced torture in World War II

[Mr. Bainbridge is a professor of law at UCLA.] As long-time readers know, I oppose the use of torture or other violations of the Geneva Convention in how the US treats war on terror detainees. But I also oppose historical inaccuracies. Balkinization blogger Scott Horton recently claimed that in World War II:Allied propaganda made clear that torture marked our adversaries, but not us. The Greatest

Andrew J. Bacevich: Farewell to the American Century

[Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. He is the author of The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.] In a recent column, the Washington Post's Richard Cohen wrote, "What Henry Luce called 'the American Century' is over." Cohen is right. All that remains is to drive a stake through the heart of Luce's pernicious creation, lest it come back to life. This promises to take some doing. When the

David Greenberg: Why Arlen Specter's defection should terrify the GOP

[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.] On Aug. 11, 1971, John Lindsay, the Republican mayor of New York City, radiating calm and charm after a 10-day camping trip in Colorado and Utah, stepped before a crowd in the ballroom of Gracie Mansion to announce that he was becoming a Democrat. After explaining where he believed his party had gone astr

Alan Brinkley : 100 Days of Disquietude

[Alan Brinkley is provost and Allan Nevins Professor of History at Columbia.] There is no very good reason to judge a new president by his first 100 days. Some of our greatest presidents accomplished little in their first months. Some of our least successful had impressive beginnings. But ever since the New Deal trumpeted the successes of its own first 100 days, it has been common to take note of what subsequent presidents have done in the same period. President Obama is aware of th

Juan Cole: Pakistan Crisis and Social Statistics

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.] Readers have written me asking what I think of the rash of almost apocalyptic pronouncements on the security situation in Pakistan issuing from the New York Times, The Telegraph, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in recent days.And

Paul Johnson: Obama Has to Be World Sheriff

[Paul Johnson is an eminent British historian and author.] Although the U.S. comes under criticism from all quarters, some facts need to be remembered: --Since 1945 America has voluntarily accepted leadership of the democratic West and therefore, ultimately, the responsibility for preserving peace in the world. --Since the end of WWII there has been no major war, no open conflict between great powers. --This is the longest such period of peace

Alan Brinkley: 100 Days of Disquietude

[Alan Brinkley is provost and Allan Nevins Professor of History at Columbia.] There is no very good reason to judge a new president by his first 100 days. Some of our greatest presidents accomplished little in their first months. Some of our least successful had impressive beginnings. But ever since the New Deal trumpeted the successes of its own first 100 days, it has been common to take note of what subsequent presidents have done in the same period. President Obama is aware of th

Howard Markel: Swine Flu ... Better to Over-Prepare than Under-Prepare

[Howard Markel is a physician and historian at the University of Michigan, where he directs the Center for the History of Medicine. He has written for the New England Journal of Medicine and New York Times, among other publications, and is the author of When Germs Travel, a 2004 history of epidemics in America published by Pantheon. He currently serves as as a consultant to the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The views he

Joseph Lane: Dick Cheney ... The Dark Prince of the Republican Party

[Joseph Lane is the Hawthorne Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Emory & Henry.] Based on his recent comments, former Vice President Dick Cheney is fast becoming one of the most important public figures of the post-Cold War history of the United States. It may be somewhat odd that a man who served as chief of staff to one president and was twice elected vice president without ever seeking (and while repeatedly professing no interest in seekin

Juan Cole: Obama's First Hundred Days in the Greater Middle East

The hundred day benchmark for journalists sizing up a new administration is probably inappropriate on foreign affairs, which are complicated and move slowly. Still, we can assess the changes in approach and tone between the Obama administration and its predecessor this winter and spring, to try to get a sense of where things are going.Obama has engaged in a number of acts of public diplomacy toward the Muslim world that were intended to change the image of the United States in

Stanley Kutler: Enough With This ‘100 Days’ Nonsense

[Mr. Kutler is the author of The Wars of Watergate.] Since Barack Obama’s inauguration on Jan. 20, the media have cast their reporting under the catchy title of “The First 100 Days.” CNN has designated April 29 as “Report Card Day” for the Obama administration. Even the traditionally staid New York Times has succumbed to the breezy—and terribly inappropriate—comparison to the beginning of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first term, in 1933. Congressional Republicans reportedly are

John M. Barry: Where Will the Swine Flu Go Next?

[John M. Barry, a visiting scholar at the Tulane/Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research, is the author of “The Great Influenza.”] ... Influenza pandemics have occurred as far back in history as we can look, but the four we know about in detail happened in 1889, 1918, 1957 and 1968. The mildest of these, the so-called Hong Kong flu in 1968, killed about 35,000 people in the United States and 700,000 worldwide. Ordinary seasonal influenza, in comparison, now kills 36,000 American

Tom Engelhardt: Killing Civilians

[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

Robert Dallek: Diplomacy isn't what we see

[Robert Dallek is a presidential historian who served as an adviser to the documentary WWII Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West, which premieres on PBS on May 6.] In the opening days of his presidency, Barack Obama has reached out to the Russian and Iranian governments to signal that his administration represents a new day in U.S. diplomacy — one in which America is more sensitive to the other country's concerns. This sort of openness is not entirely new in the histo

Henry Kissinger: Obama's Foreign Policy Challenge

The vast diplomatic agenda that the Obama administration has adopted will test its ability to harmonize national priorities such as relations with Iran and North Korea with global and multilateral concerns. President Obama has come into office at a moment of unique opportunity. The economic crisis absorbs the energies of all the major powers; whatever their differences, all need a respite from international confrontation. Overriding challenges such as energy, the environment and proliferation co

William Stueck: Torture and “the one percent doctrine”

[William Stueck is Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Georgia. He is currently writing a history of U.S.-Korean relations. He is the author of, among other works, Rethinking the Korean War (Princeton University P, 2002) and The Korean War: An International History (Princeton U, 1995).] This is end-of-the-semester crunch time, but the lead story in the New York Times this morning is sufficiently powerful and disturbing to get me away from a pile of student papers.

Julia Lovell: It's Just History ... Patriotic Education in the PRC

[Julia Lovell is a lecturer in Chinese history at London University, and her next book will be a new translation of the complete fiction of Lu Xun, to be published by Penguin Classics later this year. While giving talks at the Hong Kong literary festival and in Suzhou, she decided to take some time out for a bit of patriotic tourism, keeping in mind the approaching anniversary of last year's protests. She notes that the southwestern dialect of British English has a nice word for this kind of tou

Glenn Melancon: Who would Jesus torture?

[Glenn Melancon, Ph.D. is a Professor of History at Southeastern Oklahoma State University.] My oldest son will enter the US Army in June. In all likelihood he will go overseas with thousands of our brave men and women. If captured by the enemy, do I want him water boarded? Do I want his captors to strip him naked, to throw freezing water on him, to slap his face or to slam him repeatedly against a wall? When I think about torture, I’m reminded of the story told in

Daniel Pipes: The Limits of Terrorism

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his blog.] Does terrorism work, meaning, does it achieve its perpetrators' objectives?With terror attacks having become a routine and nearly daily occurrence, especially in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, the conventional wisdom holds that terrorism works very well. For example

Laura J. Mitchell: Elections in South Africa

[Laura J. Mitchell is an Associate Professor of African History at UC Irvine and the author of Belongings: Property, Family and Identity in Colonial South Africa.] Democracy in Africa: one man, one vote one time. This cutting joke is an all too cruel reality in many post-independence African nations. The cartoonish stereotype of charismatic strong-men, one-party rule, and uneven economic development directed by corrupt kleptocracies (with the tacit support of western donor nations)