Roundup: Talking About History

The state of America after Bush - seven authors reflect

Tobias Wolff Celebrated novelist and memoirist. His latest short story collection, Our Story Begins, was published in August. Won the 1985 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for The Barracks Thief (1984) Last week I was roused from sleep by a strange dream - that my bearded, hairy-backed, happily married older brother Geoffrey, now 70 and up to his eyeballs in grandchildren, had decided to get a sex change. My mentioning this to anyone who knows him has unfailingly produced

Andre Vornic: Japan struggles with WWII legacy

[Andre Vornic is a BBC reporter.] After Japan's air force chief was sacked over an essay in which he appeared to question his country's accepted role as an aggressor in World War II, the BBC's Andre Vornic reports from Tokyo on Japanese attitudes to the war. Japan expressed remorse for its wartime actions in 1995, and followed with another apology a decade later. But the entry that won General Toshio Tamogami an essay competition described Japan as a vict

Saad Eskander: The Pentagon's illegal confiscation of Iraqi archives

[Saad Eskander, Iraq National Library and Archives] What has prompted me to write this paper is the continuing refusal of the U.S. to pay serious attention to Iraqi calls for the repatriation of the Iraqi records illegally seized by its military and intelligence agencies. Most recently, the Pentagon has issued an announcement, calling upon U.S. universities, research centers and scholars to submit research proposals to its Minerva Research Initiative[1] (MRI). Under the

Martin Bell: Winning hearts and minds in Vietnam

In my 46 years of experience in journalism, I have often found that the most remarkable material surfaces by accident. So it is with the Saigon Songs, recordings made in the Vietnam War, which have never been broadcast before. They are among the most moving mementoes of war I have ever heard. Their edge is sharpened, it seems to me, by a special relevance to the wars of today. The Saigon Songs date from the Americans' hearts and minds campaign,

Barry Isaacson: Jonestown ... A cache of letters hidden in the basement brings to life a house, a family and the tragedy that would change everything

“Dear Folks,” the letter begins, “I think of you when I hear a Beethoven symphony or the words of a childhood hero repeated and more beautiful as I approach my forties. The strength and principles you planted into me at an early age, though inconsistent with the larger culture I grew up in, is now flowering in fertile soil. I see your faces in my mind and remember the courage both of you demonstrated during the McCarthy period when you were alone. How fortunate that Gail and David can grow up in

Julian Zelizer: Jimmy Carter's Big Management Mistake

[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" (Harvard University Press) and is completing a book on the history of national security politics since World War II. Zelizer is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post, Politico, and the Washington Independent. ] In business and government, executives benefit from nurturing s

Bill Cash: A salute to a great Victorian radical

[Bill Cash is Conservative MP for Stone.] Today, 150 years ago, John Bright launched in Birmingham Town Hall his historic campaign for parliamentary reform and the vote for working men. The Liberal MP wrote to his wife that “The Times reporter called this morning to ask when I thought the meeting would be over that he might arrange for their special engine! Other men, I mean our public men, must be very little if I am so great.” The meeting ran late but The Times's special train sti

Jim White: If Agincourt history must be rewritten, how about changing Hastings and Crusades too?

[Jim White is a columnist with the Daily Telegraph.] Well, it is an alternative to DIY. In the northern French town of Agincourt on Saturday and Sunday a collection of French historians spent the weekend rewriting history. Not anything recent, mind. No, their challenge was to assault 593 years of received wisdom about the conflict for which the town has long been renowned. All that history about the Battle of Agincourt we have long grown up on - the stirr

Ben Macintyre: Was Pope Pius a moral coward or a saint?

[Ben Macintyre is a columnist writing for The Times newspaper.] The streets of Paris ask an insistent moral question, now more than half a century old but as pertinent as ever. On many street corners, small plaques commemorate those who faced up to Nazism: “Here died so-and-so, résistant de guerre.” When I lived in Paris, I often pondered the question posed by these small memorials: what would I have done? Would I have done anything? Some Frenchmen and women actively c

Leah (Kimmerly) Caprice: The Lost Generation of the 17th Chinese Communist Party Politburo

[Leah (Kimmerly) Caprice is a Research Analyst at Defense Group Inc.'s Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis.] China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which lasted roughly from 1966 to 1976, was a period of immense turmoil in Chinese society during which millions were killed or persecuted. A majority of the 11 new officials appointed to China's elite 25-member 17th Communist Party Politburo in 2007 are part of the Cultural Revolution generation—those who came of age d

Richard Bernstein: The moral dilemma of turning Maoist propaganda into camp décor

Among the vintage French liquor and movie advertisements, the British Empire posters, and the American publicity art on display at an annual show in New York last week, you could see a rarity from China that, to me at least, summoned up one of the moral paradoxes of our time. The print, from 1960, shows a line of workers and peasants marching under a giant red banner. Underneath is a caption that brought a kind of chill: "Oppose Rightist Tendencies," it reads. "Arouse

Lamont Colucci: Today, the Bush doctrine may not be popular – but it will endure

[From a speech by Dr Lamont Colucci, a former foreign service officer at the US State Department, to The Henry Jackson Society on Monday.] Before George W Bush, the titanic battle in American foreign policy was between so-called realists and liberals. But the Bush doctrine does not fit definitively into either category. I believe it should be categorised as a "crusading realism" that deals with the moral bankruptcy of realism and the moral cowardice of libera

Raymond Ibrahim: The Hammer ... Saving the West at Tours in 732

[Raymond Ibrahim is the editor of the Al-Qaeda Reader, translations of religious texts and propaganda.] Precisely 100 years of Islamic conquests after Muhammad's death (632), the Muslims, starting from Arabia, found themselves in Gaul, modern day France, confronting a hitherto little known people — the Christian Franks. There, on October 11th, 732, one of the most decisive battles between Christendom and Islam took place, demarcating the extent of the latter’s conquests, and ensurin

Mark Tooley: Death of a Presidential Grandson

[Mark Tooley directs the United Methodist committee at the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C.] Woodrow Wilson's last surviving grandchild died earlier this month, having served for 27 years as the liberal Dean of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Following, or leading, the trajectory of the Episcopal Church towards left-wing activism, Francis Sayre Jr. turned the Gothic and still uncompleted edifice into a rallying point for anti-war activists during th

Joseph Levine: History Matters ... Why we must acknowledge the claims of the Palestinians

[Joseph Levine is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He has been active in groups devoted to Palestinian Rights and a just resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 1982.] I have often been involved in arguments about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that focus on its history. Usually, the defender of current Israeli behavior urges the importance of appreciating all that Israel has been through and why it exists in the first place. I re

Slavenka Drakulic: Jörg Haider's Legacy

[Slavenka Drakulic, a Nation contributing editor, is an author from Croatia. Her latest book published in the United States is They Would Never Hurt a Fly: War Criminals on Trial in The Hague (Penguin).] The Austrian right-wing politician Jörg Haider died in a Hollywood-style crash October 11. Driving alone, he lost control while passing another car and went off the road near his beloved town of Klagenfurt. Yes, he was traveling 140 kilometers per hour--twice the legal limit--but al

Alexander Rose: Three Presidents and The Rifle

[Born in the United States, Alexander Rose was raised in Australia and Britain. A military historian and former journalist, he is the author of Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring, and his writing has appeared in the New York Observer, the Washington Post, Studies in Intelligence, and many other publications. His website is www.alexrose.com. His latest book is American Rifle: A Biography (FSB, 2008).] Three of our presiden

Efraim Karsh: 1948, Israel, and the Palestinians

[Efraim Karsh is head of Mediterranean Studies at King’s College, University of London, and the author most recently of Islamic Imperialism: A History (Yale). Mr. Karsh gratefully acknowledges the generosity of Roger and Susan Hertog in supporting the research on which the present article is based.] Sixty years after its establishment by an internationally recognized act of self-determination, Israel remains the only state in the world that is subjected to a constant outpouring of t

Timothy Garton Ash: Forget 'memory laws'

[Timothy Garton Ash, a contributing editor to the Los Angeles Times Opinion pages, is a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and professor of European studies at Oxford University.] Among the ways in which freedom is being chipped away in Europe, one of the less obvious is the legislation of memory. More and more countries have laws saying you must remember and describe this or that historical event in a certain way. The wrong way depends on where you are. In

Bill Hobby: Before saving the nation's banks, Jesse Jones bailed out Houston

[Hobby, a Democrat, was lieutenant governor of Texas from 1973-91.] As the world struggles to come to grips with the global financial crisis, it might be instructive to look back at how Jesse Jones and other Houston leaders dealt with an earlier banking calamity. The Chronicle's Loren Steffy recently published an interview with Jones biographer Steven Fenberg describing how Jones, chairman of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, saved the nation's banking system. (A Housto