Roundup: Historians' Take

Daniel Pipes: Israel's Strategic Incompetence in Gaza

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his blog.] Commentary on the Israel-Hamas war has tended toward partisan pleading, making the moral case for or against Israel. That's a crucial debate but not the only one; there's also a need for a cool strategic assessment; who is winning, who is losing?

Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes: The $10 trillion hangover ... Paying the price for eight years of Bush

[Linda J. Bilmes, a lecturer in public finance at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, is a former assistant secretary for administration, management, and budget in the U.S. Department of Commerce. Joseph E. Stiglitz is University Professor of Economics at Columbia University and winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics. Bilmes and Stiglitz are co-authors of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.] In the eight years since George W. Bush took office, n

Edward Luttwak: Israel can win

[Mr. Luttwak, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is the author of "Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace" (Belknap, 2002).] It seems that most of the West's news reporters and pundits agree with Islamists everywhere that an Israeli victory in Gaza is impossible. They decry Israel's defensive attack on Hamas, prophesying an inevitable strengthening of Islamism among Palestinians and a dark future for the Jewish state. How do

Ronald C. White Jr.: Lincoln's Memo to Obama

[Ronald C. White Jr. is the author of A. Lincoln: A Biography, published in January by Random House. His previous books include Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural (2002), and The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words (2005).] ... Lincoln’s moral integrity was the strong trunk from which all the branches of his life grew. His integrity had many roots, including his intimate knowledge of the Bible, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitutio

Jim Sleeper: Can There Be Politics in Tragedy? Or in Gaza?

I'm immersed in long-range writing and leave tomorrow for six months in Berlin, but the Gaza war provokes me to share a brilliant essay by Darry Li, a doctoral student in anthropology and Middle East Studies at Harvard and a student at Yale Law School who has worked in Gaza for Human Rights Watch, B'tselem (the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. The

Julian Zelizer: Can Obama and Congress share power?

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. He is the co-editor of "Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s" and is completing a book on the history of national-security politics since World War II, to be published by Basic Books. Zelizer writes widely on current events.] Executive power has been one of the defining characteristics of President George W. Bush's administration.

Larry Sabato: Inaugurations Past and Present ... How Will Obama Measure Up?

Rituals matter in any society, but in a democracy they are especially significant. Most authoritarian regimes are stable for long periods of time; the barrel of a gun ensures it. Democratic societies can change rapidly with public opinion, and a new administration is frequently the polar opposite of its predecessor. How best to balance the need for change with the assurance of continuity? Ceremony. Of all our national rites of passage, none has more significance than the inauguratio

Joseph Lane: Roland Burris and the U.S. Senate: A Replay of Marbury v. Madison?

[Joseph Lane is the Hawthorne Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Emory & Henry.] The “Is Roland Burris a Senator?” game has just taken a shocking turn toward the past. When turned away from the Senate chamber, the reasons given were that “his credentials were not in order” because his appointment by the Governor of Illinois had not be

Søren Schmidt: It is 3 Crises, Not One (Middle East)

[Søren Schmidt, Ph.D, Reasearcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen.] Analysis. The fighting in Gaza is closely linked to two other conflicts: Israel’s relationship with Syria and Iran’s role in the region. All three conflicts need to be solved in order to achieve peace. Israel’s attack on Hamas in Gaza has led to Syria breaking off the semi-official peace negotiations with Israel, the strengthening of Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s popular

Juan Cole: Neoconservatism dies in Gaza

The Gaza War of 2009 is a final and eloquent testimony to the complete failure of the neoconservative movement in United States foreign policy. For over a decade, the leading figures in this school of thought saw the violent overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the institution of a parliamentary regime in Iraq as the magic solution to all the problems in the Middle East. They envisioned, in the wake of the fall of Baghdad, the moderation of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the overthrow of the Baath Party in Sy

Daniel Pipes: Solving the "Palestinian Problem"

Israel's war against Hamas brings up the old quandary: What to do about the Palestinians? Western states, including Israel, need to set goals to figure out their policy toward the West Bank and Gaza.Let's first review what we know does not and cannot work:Israeli control. Neither side wishes to continue the situation that began in 1967, when the Israel Defense Forces took control of a population that is religiously, culturally, economically, and politically different

Jay Winik: Obama Will Find the White House Is a Lonely Place

[Mr. Winik, a historian, is the author of "April 1865" (HarperCollins, 2001) and "The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800" (Harper, 2007).] The day after Abraham Lincoln's election, he assembled a gaggle of reporters and boisterously declared, "Well boys, your troubles are now over; mine have only just begun." Little did he know just how prophetic his words would be. Between Election Day and his inauguration

Andrew Bacevich: Afghanistan ... What's Our Definition of Victory?

[Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University and the author of “The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.”] In Afghanistan today, the United States and its allies are using the wrong means to pursue the wrong mission. Sending more troops to the region, as incoming president Barack Obama and others have suggested we should, will only turn Operation Enduring Freedom into Operation Enduring Obligation. Afghanistan will be a sinkhol

Stephen Kenney: Immigration through the ages

[Stephen Kenney is director of the Commonwealth Museum at the Massachusetts Archives.] IN A RECENT CNN commentary Ruben Navarrette Jr. complained about the "hypocrisy" of American immigration policy. "We have two signs on the Mexican border: 'Keep Out' and 'Help Wanted.' " The dilemma is hardly new. Before the Constitution, even before the American Revolution, similar issues arose in colonial Massachusetts. Skills were needed but there were fears abo

Paul Krugman: Keynes was right and Friedman wrong about the Great Depression, then and now

... Let’s not mince words: This looks an awful lot like the beginning of a second Great Depression. So will we “act swiftly and boldly” enough to stop that from happening? We’ll soon find out. We weren’t supposed to find ourselves in this situation. For many years most economists believed that preventing another Great Depression would be easy. In 2003, Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago, in his presidential address to the American Economic Association, declared t

Neve Gordon: Israel's New War Ethic

[Neve Gordon teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University. Read about his new book, Israel's Occupation (due out this fall from the University of California Press), and more at israelsoccupation.info.] Watching Israeli public television (Channel 1) these days can be an unsettling experience, and lately I've abstained from the practice. But after being stuck for seventy-two hours with our two young children inside a Beer-Sheva apartment, the spouse and I decided to visit my mother, who

Jonathan Zimmerman: Obama should agree to a pay cut

In 2006, newly elected Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe voluntarily reduced his salary by 30 percent. That same year, Bolivia's new president, Evo Morales, halved his own annual wage. And just a few months ago, Irish President Mary McAleese announced she would accept a 10 percent pay cut. Are you listening, Barack Obama? Let's hope so. Like other world leaders, Obama has urged citizens to sacrifice during tough economic times. So it's time for him to put his own money

Lincoln Mitchell: Frozen Ice Balls and the Bush Legacy

[Lincoln Mitchell joined Columbia University in January of 2006 as the Arnold A. Saltzman Assistant Professor in the Practice of International Politics.] As the clock winds down on what may well be the worst presidency in American history, the Bush administration spin has taken one more surreal twist as Vice President Dick Cheney's aggressively unapologetic stance regarding the administrations policies and actions over the last eight years is tempered by President Bush and those aro

Tom Engelhardt: The Ponzi Scheme Presidency

[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 American Age of Denial. He also edited The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Ver

Stanley Kutler: Blagojevich vs. the Senate

[Stanley Kutler is the author of “The Wars of Watergate” and other writings.]Understanding the Constitution sometimes is like interpreting the Talmud.  Two scholarly readings bring forth three opinions. Article I, Section 5, of the Constitution is rather straightforward: “Each House shall be the judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualification of its own Members. ...”  The rest of the sentence involves quorums and adjournment definitions, while other parts of the sec