Roundup: Talking About History

John Solomon: A Wimp George H.W. Bush Wasn’t

[Solomon is executive editor of the Center For Public Integrity.] He’s 86 now, his eyebrows silver and his legs weakened by Parkinsonism, a vascular disorder akin to Parkinson’s disease. But as George Herbert Walker Bush approaches his twilight years, he is beginning to get his due. President Obama last month awarded him the Medal of Freedom. On March 21, Bush will be feted—by Bill Clinton, no less—at a major Kennedy Center event in Washington honoring his contribution

Alice Hoffman: Remembering Labor's Martyred Heroes

[Alice Hoffman is a novelist of more than 25 books, most recently "The Red Garden." In October, Scribners will publish her novel "The Dovekeepers." Her grandfather, Chaim Klurfeld, was a member of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union.] The Triangle fire, a garment factory blaze that killed 146 people 100 years ago this week, was the worst workplace disaster in New York City until the fall of the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001. Yet despite the fire's pl

A. AL-Mulhim: What if the Arabs had recognized Israel in 1948?

[The writer is a commodore (ret.) in the Royal Saudi Navy. He is based in Alkhobar, Saudi Arabia, and can be contacted at almulhimnavy@hotmail.com.] I have been exposed to Palestinians since I was in first grade in Al- Hassa, Saudi Arabia. They were the most dedicated and intelligent among all my instructors, from elementary to high school. When I was attending New York-based SUNY Maritime college (1975-1979), I read a lot of books abou

Carl Gershman: Where Do the Middle East Revolts Fit in the History of Democratization?

[Carl Gershman is President of the National Endowment for Democracy.] Alexis de Tocqueville once wrote that all the great events of the past 700 years—from the Crusades and English wars that decimated the nobles, to the discovery of firearms and the art of printing, to the rise of Protestantism and the discovery of America—had the ineluctable effect of advancing the principle of equality. Political scientist Samuel Huntington went further and identified several historical waves of d

Charles Duelfer: Remembering America's Secret War Against Qaddafi

[Charles Duelfer worked in politico-military affairs at the State Department and was the special advisor to the director of central intelligence for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. He is the author of Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq.] As the world debates how best to stop the slaughter in Libya, it's worth remembering that the United States has successfully countered Muammar al-Qaddafi's military before. Qaddafi has a track record of misadventures extend

Harold Holzer: Five Myths About Abraham Lincoln

[Harold Holzer, the senior vice president for external relations at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was co-chairman of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and is author of "Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861."] No American hero, with the possible exception of George "I Cannot Tell a Lie" Washington, has been more encrusted with myth than Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln did boast virtues that required little embelli

Douglas Farah: Muammar al-Qaddafi ... Harvard for Tyrants

[Douglas Farah, a former Washington Post correspondent who covered Libya's activities in West Africa, is a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center in Alexandria, Virginia.] Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi is well known now for the abuses he has inflicted on his own people during more than four decades of brutal rule in Libya, but few remember the vast campaign of carnage and terrorism he orchestrated across West Africa and Europe when he was at the height of his po

Benny Morris: Armenia and the Turks in the Time of Lawrence

[Benny Morris is a professor of history in the Middle East Studies Department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.] While Colonel T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") sympathized with Armenian aspirations for sovereignty and, indeed, in a map he drew up after the Great War of a desirable Middle Eastern share-out of the Ottoman Empire he provided for an independent Armenia (in Cilicia), he was also party to the prevalent anti-Armenian prejudices of his day.

Bernhard Zand: What the Arab World's Past Can Tell Us About Its Future

[Bernhard Zand is Gulf and Middle East Correspondent at DER SPIEGEL.] It's hard to think of a more peaceful place in the Middle East than the calm and orderly port town of Sohar in Oman, where hibiscus bushes bloom year-round and residents relax over water pipes and tea. All of this was true until Sunday, Feb. 27, when 2,000 men staged a protest at a large roundabout. The police shot and killed at least one protester. He and his fellow protesters had demanded higher wages and compla

Paul Kengor: Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” at 65

[Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values. His books include “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism” and the newly released “Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.”] It was 65 years ago, March 5, 1946, when Winston Churchill delivered his “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Missouri. It was a speech that rocked the world and changed history.

John Dramani Mahama: The Bridge Between Ghana and Black America

[John Dramani Mahama, vice president of Ghana, is writing a nonfiction book about Africa.] At the stroke of midnight on March 6, 1957, as the new day began, so, too, began a new nation. It was the moment at which the Union Jack was replaced with a flag of red, gold and green with a distinctive black star at is center. The British-ruled Gold Coast was now a self-ruled country, Ghana -- the first sub-Saharan nation to claim its independence from colonialism. It was a hist

Scott McConnell: History of the Camp David Accords Reveals That Even a Sympathetic President Could Not Stand Up for the Palestinians

[Scott McConnell holds a PhD in history from Columbia University.] In the midst of the Egyptian revolution, a concerned Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet that the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace was “the cornerstone of peace and stability, not only between the two countries, but in the entire Middle East as well” –a pronouncement that soon made its way to the front page of the New York Times. While the peoples of Lebanon, Iraq, Gaza and the West Bank might well wonder how much peace a

Ryan Cole and Amity Shlaes: Reassessing Warren G. Harding

[Ryan Cole served as speechwriter in the administration of George W. Bush. Amity Shlaes, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is author of a forthcoming biography of Calvin Coolidge.] Change isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. That’s what most of us have come to realize in recent years, whether the change proposed came from Pres. Barack Obama or the Tea Party movement. Still, most haven’t quite reached the point where we oppose change and fight for stability.

James W. Russell: The Origins Of New Left Notes

[James W. Russell is professor of sociology at Connecticut State University.] In the summer of 1965, Jeff Shero, the newly elected Vice President of SDS, joined the national office staff in Chicago. He had a special project in mind: to build up the sporadically published SDS Bulletin into a regular monthly source of news for members. That summer, membership was climbing rapidly, in large part because of the SDS-organized April 17 March on Washington, the first national march against

David E. Hoffman: Why Gorbachev?

[David E. Hoffman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and a contributing editor to Foreign Policy.] On Mikhail Gorbachev’s 80th birthday, he is deservedly being praised for glasnost, perestroika and the end of the Cold War. All have earned their place in the history books. But here’s a question: why did it happen that Gorbachev, and not someone else, was selected on a night in March, 1985 to be the new Soviet leader?... Gorbachev was hardly a radical in his earlier years

Jonathan D. Sarna: What the Civil War Meant for American Jews

[Jonathan D. Sarna is the Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University and chief historian of the National Museum of American Jewish History. He is the co-editor, with Adam Mendelsohn, of “Jews and the Civil War: A Reader” (NYU Press, 2010).] The 150th anniversary of the Civil War is upon us. April 12 is the anniversary of the firing on Fort Sumter, the war’s opening shot. From then, through the sesquicentennial anniversary on April 9, 2

Saroj Giri: End of ‘1989’?

[Saroj Giri is a lecturer in Political Science, University of Delhi, Delhi. He writes on contemporary social and political issues and is an activist.] The people of Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and Libya have spoken truth to power with fantastic spirit and solidarity (not to forget struggles in Madison and elsewhere). Beyond particular demands, a general rebelliousness and a loosening of the hardened status quo has swept through the Arab political regimes and social life in genera

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Gorbachev at 80

[Katrina vanden Heuvel is the editor of The Nation.] The end of the 20th century witnessed an apparently irreversible wave of democratization in several parts of the world. But until the recent dramatic events in Egypt, democratization seemed to have waned - even given way to a new wave of authoritarianism around the world. Except in the promotional plans of professional democratizers, the "romance" disappeared from the news and commentary pages of most American newspapers

Melissa Harris-Perry: American History Lessons

[Melissa Harris-Perry, an associate professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton University, is completing her latest book, Sister Citizen: A Text for Colored Girls Who've Considered Politics When Being Strong Isn't Enough. She is a contributor to MSNBC.] We are in the final hours of February 2011. These are the last moments of this year’s Black History Month. February is always my busiest month for travel and public lectures as I join dozens of other professors w

David Kaiser: Echoes from the Fifties

[David Kaiser is a Professor in the Strategy and Policy Department of the Naval War College.] The first volume of Robert Caro's massive biography of LBJ came out in the early 1980s, covering his career until the outbreak of the Second World War. Despite some irritating aspects--as I recall, it took the better part of 200 pages for LBJ to be born, and Caro as always tended to romanticize some of his characters--it was clearly an historical masterpiece, based mainly on remarkable i