Roundup: Historians' Take

Juan Cole: Top 10 Reasons Obama Should Resist Military Plans for American Bases in Iraq

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.] I present below the top 10 reasons for which President-Elect Obama should stick to his guns and withdraw US troops from Iraq despite any resistance he may get from the US officer corps and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.In fact,

Timothy Garton Ash: On an auspicious anniversary, here are four keys to China's peaceful rise

[Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist.] As we mark the 30th anniversary of Deng Xiaoping's launching the country's world-changing economic reforms, I want to address the $65 quadrillion question of China's peaceful rise. Some reactions I've had to columns I recently wrote from China indicate a large potential for misunderstanding, especially among Chinese readers, so let me make the argument plain. Start at a possible bad end. When

Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith: Will War Crimes Be Outed?

[Jeremy Brecher is a historian whose books include Strike!, Globalization from Below, and, co-edited with Brendan Smith and Jill Cutler, In the Name of Democracy: American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond (Metropolitan/Holt). He has received five regional Emmy Awards for his documentary film work. He is a co-founder of WarCrimesWatch.org.. Brendan Smith is a legal analyst whose books i

John Steele Gordon: Pyramid Schemes Are as American as Apple Pie

[Mr. Gordon is the author of "An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power" (HarperCollins, 2004).] By his own admission, Bernard Madoff has catapulted himself into the major leagues of Wall Street fraud. That is no small accomplishment, given some of the more famous frauds of the past. But a $50 billion Ponzi scheme is no small thing. To be sure, the number of still unanswered questions is huge. How could a Ponzi scheme last as long as thi

Tom Engelhardt: On Reading in an Age of Depression

[Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project (Metropolitan Books), runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of, among other works, a novel fittingly entitled The Last Days of Publishing.] Worlds shudder and collapse all the time. There's no news in that. Just ask the Assyrians, the last emperor of the Han Dynasty, the

Robert Skidelsky: Why Keynes is the man of the year

[Robert Skidelsky is the author most recently of “John Maynard Keynes: 1883-1946: Economist, Philosopher, Statesman.”] ... Keynes’s prescriptions were guided by his conception of money, which plays a disturbing role in his economics. Most economists have seen money simply as a means of payment, an improvement on barter. Keynes emphasized its role as a “store of value.” Why, he asked, should anyone outside a lunatic asylum wish to “hold” money? The answer he gave was that “holding” m

Jonathan Zimmerman: Why blacks backed Prop 8

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University.] Here's a news flash: According to recent reports, seven of 10 African American voters in California supported the state's ban on same-sex marriage. Surprised? You shouldn't be. By now, everyone should know that most black Americans are culturally conservative. But many white liberals don't want to know. Consider their reaction to the Nov. 4 vote on Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in Calif

Juan Cole: Bush's legacy in Iraq

' RAY SUAREZ: Professor Cole, let me start with you. Over the weekend, President Bush said, "Our plan is working. Today, violence is down dramatically; Al Qaeda is driven from its safe havens. Sunnis, Shia and Kurds are sitting together to peacefully plot the future of the country." Is he right? JUAN COLE, University of Michigan: Well, I wish he were right. It would be so wonderful for the Iraqis if he were right. But virtually none of that is true. Baghdad ha

Paul Ortiz: Senator Obama and the Future of American Politics

[Paul Ortiz is an associate professor in history and director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida.] Sen. Barack Obama ran an amazing, historic campaign. So amazing, in fact, that initial attempts to calmly analyze his victory have generally fallen short. Some media and academic experts talk as if Barack Obama came out of nowhere. There have been claims that his triumph is without historical precedent, and that the tactics and strategies his camp

Ira Chernus: The First Hundred Days or the Last Hundred Days?

[Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Having written extensively on Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and George W. Bush, he is now writing a book tentatively titled"Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Origins of the National Insecurity State." He can be contacted at chernus@colorado.edu.]

Paul Krugman: What to Do

... "We have magneto trouble," said John Maynard Keynes at the start of the Great Depression: most of the economic engine was in good shape, but a crucial component, the financial system, wasn't working. He also said this: "We have involved ourselves in a colossal muddle, having blundered in the control of a delicate machine, the working of which we do not understand." Both statements are as true now as they were then. How did this second great colossal muddle ar

Michael Kazin: The Sit-Down Strike Returns! Now What?

There's something inevitable, as well as heartening, about the workers' occupation of Republic Windows and Doors that began on Dec. 5 and ended today in victory. After all the talk about the nation being ensnared in "the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression," laid-off employees at the small Chicago firm seized upon a tactic not widely used in the United States since Franklin Roosevelt was in the White House. During the late 1930s, thousands of workers -- in dozens of fac

Juan Cole: Does Obama understand his biggest foreign-policy challenge?

The president-elect wants to work with the Pakistani government to "stamp out" terror. It's not nearly that simple. ### A consensus is emerging among intelligence analysts and pundits that Pakistan may be President-elect Barack Obama's greatest policy challenge. A base for terrorist groups, the country has a fragile new civilian government and a long history of military coups. The dramatic attack on Mumbai by members of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e Tayiba, the

Mark Naison: Creating Opportunity Out of Tragedy- Occupying Abandoned Commercial Space Will be the Next Phase of the Civil Rights Movement

[Mark Naison is Professor of African American Studies and History, Fordham University.] Whether or not auto bailout legislation passes,, the US economy is about to experience an abandonment cycle, comparable to what took place in the South Bronx in the 1970's and in rustbelt cities throughout the 1980's.. Beginning in January,, the US retail sector,, which is desperately trying to get rid of inventory during the holiday season, will suffer a wave of closings, bankruptcies and forecl

John Milton Cooper, Jr.: We should follow Woodrow Wilson's plan for a quick transition to a new government

[John Milton Cooper Jr., a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, is writing a biography of Woodrow Wilson.] THE three-month “interregnum” between Barack Obama’s election and George W. Bush’s last day in office makes one long for a parliamentary system, where the defeated prime minister leaves and his successor takes over at once. As the country faces the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, you might think that it’s too bad it can’t happen here — but on

John R. Schindler: Mumbai 2008/Sarajevo 1914

[John R. Schindler is professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, RI. ] A bold terrorist attack on a peaceful city strikes fear, then horror among bystanders, then an entire nation. Gunmen barely out of their teens, sent on a clandestine one-way mission against a hated foe, create a bloody international incident with huge implications. Two neighboring states, long at loggerheads over issues of borders and identity, lurch towards war as a nervous

Ron Radosh: Our Hemisphere’s Mugabe?

[Ronald Radosh, who taught history at the City University of New York, is an Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute.] A while ago, I wrote a blog about the danger Daniel Ortega posed to the people of Nicaragua, and I commented that unlike the 1980’s, few people are aware of what is happening in that nation. Now, a Senior Fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, Kevin-Casas -Zamora, has written a brilliant and important article about Ortega and the sad nati

Nelson Lichtenstein and Christopher Phelps: Chicago factory sit-in fits nation's mood

[Nelson Lichtenstein teaches history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he directs the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy. He is the author of "Walter Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit." Christopher Phelps teaches at Ohio State University at Mansfield and is writing a history of strikes in American social thought.] The factory occupation by 200 workers at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago, Illinois, recalls one of the most sto

John Fabian Witt: When Americans were unlawful combatants

[John Fabian Witt is a professor of legal history at Columbia University and the author of Patriots and Cosmopolitans: Hidden Histories of American Law.] On an island under military occupation at the edge of an empire, the armed forces of a global superpower detain hundreds and sometimes even thousands of allegedly unlawful combatants. The powerful nation consigns the detainees to a legal limbo, subjecting them to treatment that critics around the world decry as inhumane, unenlighte

Daniel Pipes: Still Asleep After Mumbai

[Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.] Victims caught in terrorist atrocities perpetrated for Islam typically experience fear, torture, horror, and murder, with sirens screaming, snipers positioning, and carnage in the streets. That was the case recently in Bombay (now called Mumbai), where some 195 people were murdered a