Roundup: Historians' Take

Timothy Garton Ash: If Obama really wants to lead us to a free world, he should abolish the G8

Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist. His personal website is www.timothygartonash.com. The west is dead, long live the west.

Victor Davis Hanson: An Honest Obama Campaign

NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.Given what we know now, I think Obama’s summer-2008 campaign speeches should have sounded something like this:

Daniel Martin Varisco: Is This the Last Dance for Ali?

Daniel Martin Varisco is professor of anthropology at Hofstra University.

Daniel Pipes: Fin de Régime in Syria?

Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford UniversityThe revolt in Syria offers great opportunities, humanitarian and geo-political. Western states should quickly and robustly seize the moment to dispatch strongman Bashar al-Assad and his accomplices. Many benefits will follow when they reach their appointed dustbin of history.

Andrew Meyer: Obama, Israel, and the Jews

Andrew Meyer is associate professor of history at CUNY Brooklyn College.

Jonathan Tremblay: From Black September to September 11 - The Legal Murder of Murderers

(Jonathan Tremblay is a historian and Breaking News Editor for the Breaking News Network)As you may have heard…, a United States Navy Seals taskforce found and shot dead Osama bin Laden in a compound on the outskirts of Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. Public Enemy No.1 has eluded international authorities since the late nineties when he was accused of masterminding the bombing of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 223 people.

Juan Cole: What Lies Behind Netanyahu’s Bluster on ’1967 Borders’

Juan Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan.

Benny Morris: Battle-Hungry Brits

Benny Morris is a professor of history in the Middle East Studies Department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Petra Marquardt-Bigman: Obama, Netanyahu and the 1967 border

Petra Marquardt-Bigman is a German/Israeli citizen with a PhD in contemporary history. The furious reaction that ensued last week after President Barack Obama first articulated his vision of a future Israeli-Palestinian border "based on the 1967 lines" seemed like a case of much ado about nothing when Obama repeated and explained the very same i

Walter Russell Mead: Obama Throws Palestine Under The Bus As World Hails His Courage

Walter Russell Mead is the Henry Kissinger senior fellow for US foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. He also writes a blog for the American Interest.

Joanna Bourke: Why is Rape So Difficult for Some to Understand?

Joanna Bourke is professor of history at Birkbeck College and the author of Rape: Sex, Violence, History.

Julian E. Zelizer: N.Y. Race for House Seat a Preview of 2012?

Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Jimmy Carter," published by Times Books, and editor of a book assessing former President George W. Bush's administration, published by Princeton University Press. Next week voters in New York's 26th Congressional District will go to the ballot box to replace Rep. Christopher Lee, who resigned after a scandal involving a photo of himself shirtless that he sent to a woman he met online.

Neal Gabler: America the Stony-Hearted

Neal Gabler is at work on a biography of Edward M. Kennedy.

Yascha Mounk: Why America Has Won Its War of Words with France

Yascha Mounk is a PhD Candidate at Harvard University with research interests in political theory, intellectual history and comparative politics. The founding editor of The Utopian, he has written about European and US politics for the International Herald Tribune, the Boston Globe and Unità, among other newspapers and magazines.

Ron Radosh: President Obama’s Speech to the State Department Means New Dangers for Israel

Ronald Radosh is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at The Hudson Institute, and a Prof. Emeritus of History at the City University of New York. He is the author or co-author of 14 books.

Juan Cole: Obama and the Dilemmas of U.S. Middle East Policy

Juan Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan.

Tom Engelhardt: Bored to Death in Afghanistan (and Washington)

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The End of Victory Culture, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book is The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s (Haymarket Books).

Jonathan Zimmerman: End of the World May 21?! Don't Panic – But Don't Ridicule Project Caravan, Either

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author most recently of “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory.”Hey, check out all those crazies who think the world is about to end!

Timothy Garton Ash: Obama can now define the third great project of Euro-Atlantic partnership

Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist. His personal website is www.timothygartonash.com. In the next seven days, the Obama-who-got-Osama is due to give two major foreign policy speeches. The first, to be delivered tomorrow in Washington, is about the Middle East.

Juan Cole: The Arab Spring Comes to Israel

Juan R.I. Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan.Contrary to the line taken by the Israeli leadership, the Palestinian protests on May 15, Nakba Day, were not an Iranian or Syrian plot but rather the grassroots protests of a dispossessed and displaced people that refuses to accept its fate as flotsam of the earth, deprived of their identity and dignity by the great Israeli Expulsion of 1948.