Roundup: Talking About History

Alex Massie: Everybody Hates Tony Blair

[Alex Massie, a former Washington correspondent for the Scotsman, writes for the Spectator and blogs at www.spectator.co.uk/alexmassie.] During a visit to Kosovo this summer, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife Cherie met with a remarkable group of children. The young Kosovar boys had each been born soon after NATO's bombing campaign successfully drove Serbian forces from the province in 1999. More significantly,

Daniel Henninger: If Saddam Had Stayed

[Daniel Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page.] From the vantage point of history, Barack Obama's prime-time speech announcing the Iraq war's end is less important than the speech he gave eight years ago as a state senator in Illinois. This was the October 2002 "dumb war" speech to an anti-Iraq war rally in Chicago's Federal Plaza. Back then, Mr. Obama had a more complex view of the stakes in Iraq than he does now. Today, the

Richard N. Haass: The Gulf war at 20; its lessons today

[Richard N. Haass, a former director of policy planning at the US State Department, is president of the Council on Foreign Relations and author of “War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars.”] It was 20 years ago this month that Saddam Hussein, then the unchallenged ruler of Iraq, invaded Kuwait. What ensued was the first great international crisis of the post-Cold War era, one that, in less than a year, led to the liberation of Kuwait, along with the restoration of

Neal Ascherson: Solidarity ... The strike that shook the Kremlin

[Neal Ascherson is a journalist and writer.] Thirty years ago, ordinary people challenged an armed dictatorship, and won. On 31 August 1980, the strikers in the Lenin Shipyard at Gdansk forced the Communist authorities in Poland to sign an agreement. It promised them – among many other lesser things – a free and independent trade union, the liberation of political prisoners, plural and uncensored media and the right to strike. Within days, other strike com

Peter Berkowitz: The Death of Conservatism Was Greatly Exaggerated

[Mr. Berkowitz is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.] Last August left little doubt that a conservative revival was underway. Constituents packed town-hall meetings across the country to confront Democratic House members and senators ill-prepared to explain why, in the teeth of a historic economic downturn and nearly 10% employment, President Obama and his party were pressing ahead with costly health-care legislation instead of reining in spending, cutting

Susie Mesure: Never has so little history been known by so few...

[Susie Mesure is a journalist.] If there was ever a date on which to reproach ourselves, it is Tuesday week: 7 September will mark 70 years since the Luftwaffe first switched its attention from bombing our airfields to the streets of London. It stands out among the many Battle of Britain landmarks being remembered this year, because it left ordinary citizens with nowhere to escape from the German bombs that began falling on the capital, night after relentless night, for the next nin

Walter Rodgers: Price of August Naps: History's Rudest Awakenings

[Walter Rodgers, a former senior international correspondent for CNN, writes a biweekly column.] The world sometimes falls asleep in August. And when it wakes in September it sorely rues the nap. Some of the most consequential events in modern Western history happened in August. Yet many people still think “not much happens” this month. It’s understandable. Most of Washington, including Congress, is on vacation in August. So is nearly all of Europe. It’s tempting for th

Victor Davis Hanson: The Guns of August

[Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.] Historian Barbara Tuchman characterized the events leading up to World War I as The Guns of August. While there is no statistical evidence that wars break out any more often in late summer than in other seasons, the world was torn apart at that time of year twice during the 20th

Bruce Craig: Teaching American History Grants: A Call for Action

[Bruce Craig was executive director of the National Coalition for History when the TAH was created. He now teaches American history at the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada.] Recently, a number of AHA members and others have expressed concern and dismay over the future of the Teaching American History (TAH) grants, a program begun virtually single-handedly by Senator Robert C. Byrd in 2003. True, he was the program’s devoted supporter who brooked no opposition in growing th

James K. Glassman: The Failure of the Liberal Economic Experiment?

[James K. Glassman, former undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, is executive director of the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas and host of the weekly program Ideas in Action on public television.] The plunge in the U.S. economy in 2008 and 2009 became an irresistible opportunity to pronounce the failure of the form of capitalism that emerged at the end of the 20th century. “One had expected competition and abundance for everyone, but instead one got scar

Caroline Alexander: The Shock of War

[Caroline Alexander’s latest book is The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer’s Iliad and the Trojan War.] In September 1914, at the very outset of the great war, a dreadful rumor arose. It was said that at the Battle of the Marne, east of Paris, soldiers on the front line had been discovered standing at their posts in all the dutiful military postures—but not alive. “Every normal attitude of life was imitated by these dead men,” according to the patriotic serial The Ti

Peter Rachleff: 25 Years on, Still P-9 Proud

[Peter Rachleff is a professor of history at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. In 1985-1987, he served as chairperson of the Twin Cities Local P-9 Support Committee, and in 1993 South End Press published his book on the strike, Hard-Pressed in the Heartland: The Hormel Strike and the Future of the Labor Movement. He can be reached at rachleff@macalester.edu.] From the late summer of 1985 into the early spring of 1986, the smal

Gary Bruce: When the Stasi Came for the Doctor

[Gary Bruce is Associate Professor of History at the University of Waterloo. His newest book is The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi. The book is based on previously classified documents and interviews with former secret police officers and ordinary citizens and is the first comprehensive history of East Germany’s secret police, the Stasi, at the grassroots level. In the excerpt below Bruce looks at how the Stasi impacted one ordinary man’s life.] Dr. Werner Hoffman studied me

Doug Bandow: Remembering the Unbelievable

[Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is the author of Beyond Good Intentions: A Biblical View of Politics (Crossway).] JERUSALEM -- Love it or hate it, Israel is unique. A young nation created amidst conflict and sustained under siege, it retains an ethic forged in the famed "exodus" from Europe after World War II. While Israel exhibits a superficial commonality with Europe -- Tel Aviv has the rela

Bret Stephens: The Twenty Years' War

[Mr. Stephens writes the Journal's "Global View" column on foreign affairs.] Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990. Two decades later, on Aug. 18, 2010, the U.S. withdrew its last combat brigade from Iraq. Throughout those years U.S. military operations went under a variety of names—including Desert Storm, the Gulf War, Operations Northern and Southern Watch, Operation Iraqi Freedom, the War in Iraq—but over time they will be seen as part of an unbroken thread.

Fouad Ajami: The Guns of August, 1990

[Mr. Ajami is professor of Middle East Studies at The Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies and an adjunct senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.] He struck in early August, 20 years ago, at a time when the Cold War had just ended, and the world was replete with claims that wars of conquest had become a thing of the past. This was Saddam Hussein's summer, and his conquest of Kuwait, the rich principality next door. He ca

Seema Jilani: Crown Jewels or Spoils of War?

[Seema Jilani is a physician who specializes in Pediatrics, and concentrates on International Health Care. She has worked in Israel, Palestine, Sudan, Lebanon, Egypt and the Balkans. She has been a freelance journalist for Pacifica Radio for eight years. Her radio documentary, Israel and Palestine: The Human Cost of The Occupation, was nominated for The Peabody Award. Dr. Jilani's work has been published in The Guardian, The Independent, Newsweek, The Washington Post and McClatchy Newspapers.]

Mark Tooley: Was the American Revolution Just?

[Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C. and author of Taking Back the United Methodist Church.] Americans of all stripes recently celebrated our country's 234th birthday. But it is fashionable by some on the Religious Left to discredit the American Revolution as primarily the selfish reaction against reasonable taxation. In their eyes, the original Tea Partiers of 1773 are as offensive and today's Tea Party rebels against big governme

John Keown: America's Unjust Revolution: A Rejoinder to Mark Tooley

[John Keown is Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Christian Ethics at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics of Georgetown University.] Mark Tooley has kindly replied to my paper which argued that America's War for Independence was unjust. His reply, much of which is taken up with a broadly accurate summary of my paper, makes some interesting points. It fails, however, to dent my argument. Tooley begins and ends by targeting the"Religious Left" for trying to reinterpret the traditional"

Martin Shaw: The Holocaust, Genocide Studies, and Politics

[Martin Shaw is a historical sociologist of war and global politics, and professor of international relations and politics at the University of Sussex. His books include War and Genocide: Organised Killing in Modern Society (Polity, 2003); The New Western Way of War: Risk-Transfer War and its Crisis in Iraq (Polity, 2005); and What is Genocide? (Polity, 2007).] What are, and should be, the relationships between academic research and politics? This core question of historiography and