Roundup: Talking About History

Arthur Herman: The 35-Year War on the CIA

[Arthur Herman is the author, most recently, of Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age, which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for 2009. His article “The Gitmo Myth and the Torture Canard” appeared in COMMENTARY’s June issue.] When your own outfit is trying to put you in jail, it’s time to go.” Those are the words of Robert Baer, once a CIA operative in the Middle East, describing the days in 1995 when he found himself under investigation by

Oleg Kalugin: How the Soviets Invaded Afghanistan

[Oleg Kalugin served as member of the KGB for more than 30 years, rising to the rank of general. His memoir, Spymaster, is excerpted by arrangement with Basic Books, 2009.] I was the head of the KGB's foreign counterintelligence branch when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on Dec. 24, 1979. The fateful order to send our military into such difficult terrain was by no means a foregone conclusion. Before Soviet leaders made the final call, we wrung our hands, considered our options

Owen Matthews and Anna Nemtsova: How to Avoid the Soviet Mistakes in Afghanistan

[Owen Matthews and Anna Nemtsova are Russian correspondents for Newsweek.] Talk to Russian veterans of Afghanistan and it's hard not to think that they're rooting for the U.S. to lose. For these proud men, seeing NATO succeed at a job they botched would deepen the humiliation of defeat. Easier to affirm that if the Soviets couldn't win there, no one can. "We did not succeed and you will not either," says Gen. Victor Yermakov, who commanded Soviet forces in Afghanistan from

Senate Foreign Relations Committee: How Osama bin Laden Escaped

[This article is an excerpt of the report "Tora Bora Revisited," prepared by members of the majority staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Sen. John Kerry, and published here with permission.] On Oct. 7, 2001, U.S. aircraft began bombing the training bases and strongholds of al Qaeda and the ruling Taliban across Afghanistan. The leaders who sent murderers to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon less than a month earlier and the rogue govern

Abbas Milani: The Great Satan Myth (Iran/Mossadegh)

The Iranian regime has never found itself more vulnerable. And, with this vulnerability, it has never leaned more heavily on its own narrative of history. This narrative, of course, has a central antagonist, a character conjured as the “Great Satan.” As this Koranic moniker implies, the Islamic Republic ascribes supernatural qualities to its adversary: From far away in Washington, D.C., the Great Satan has the power to send hordes of stooges to shout in the streets and the remarkable ability to

John McAdams: Another "Unspeakably Awful" Book About the JFK Assassination

James Douglass treads a familiar path in JFK and the Unspeakable. It is yet another book that claims John Kennedy was killed because he had decided to withdraw from Vietnam. Kennedy’s “rejection of Cold War politics was considered treasonous by forces in his own government,” according to Douglass, and supposedly made JFK’s violent removal an urgent necessity.[1] What makes Douglass’s volume unique is that his argument is dressed up in verbiage unfamiliar to JFK assassinati

Scott Lemieux: Presidential Reputation

[Scott Lemieux is an assistant professor of Political Science at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY] In light of my recent Andrew Jackson bashing, Matt is right to note that his status as the most odious and overrated allegedly progressive president in history is far from clear-cut. And Matt doesn't even bring up the fact that Wilson made what was almost indisputably the 20th century's worst Supreme Court appointment, a guy who dissented in the Scottsboro Boys case ("hey,

Ruth Schechter: A historical perspective on gender issues in China

[Ruth was Director of Communications for eleven years at Stanford University and is currently a freelance writer] China has 32 million more men under the age of 20 than women. This imbalance is higher in rural areas and leads to questions of marriage, progeny and social stability. By perusing through China’s vast collection of legal archives, researchers have been able to glean insights into widespread historical practices that set the groundwork for social behaviors today. “The

Yŏng-ho Ch'oe: Korean Prisoners-of-War in Hawaii During World War II and the Case of US Navy Abduction of Three Korean Fishermen

[Yŏng-ho Ch'oe is professor emeritus of history at University of Hawaii at Manoa. He has written extensively on pre-modern and modern Korea history and co-edited"Sources of Korean Tradition" and"Sourcebook of Korean Civilization.] Although there has been much attention given to the  Japanese-Americans who were detained in the infamous detention centers of Hawaii and throughout the Western United States during World War II, virtually nothing is known about the Korean prisoners-of-

Andrew McGowan: How December 25 Became Christmas

[Warden and President of Trinity College at the University of Melbourne, Australia, Andrew McGowan’s work on early Christianity includes God in Early Christian Thought (Brill, 2009) and Ascetic Eucharists: Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals (Oxford, 1999).] On December 25, Christians around the world will gather to celebrate Jesus’ birth. Joyful carols, special liturgies, brightly wrapped gifts, festive foods—these all characterize the feast today, at least in the northe

Paul R. Gregory and Kate Zhou

[Paul Gregory is the Cullen Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of Houston and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Kate Zhou is Professor of Chinese Political Economy and Comparative Politics at the University of Hawaii. She is the author of How the Farmers Changed China (Westview, 1996) and China’s Long March to Freedom, Grassroots Modernization (Transaction, 2009).] On a dark November night in 1978, 18 Chinese peasants from Xiaogang

Salem News Editorial: History was forever changed 68 years ago

It was the most profound sneak attack in the history of man. At exactly 7:55 a.m., on Dec. 7, 1941 the United States was suddenly plunged into a great conflict that would become World War II. The Imperial Japanese Navy struck at Pearl Harbor. And struck hard. The United States' Pacific Fleet was ravaged. The Japanese sank four battleships, three cruisers and three destroyers. Destroyed were 188 American aircraft. Wounded were 1,282 service personnel. The American death total numbere

Peter Hankoff: Remembering Pearl Harbor

[Peter Hankoff is an award-winning director/writer/producer whose work has taken him all over the world and all over the cable networks. His programs for Unsolved History (Discovery Channel) have taken him inside Hitler's Bunker and Area 51.] I don't have a story about where I was or what I was doing on December 7, 1941, but I remember Pearl Harbor"even though I wasn't even born yet. I heard the stories growing up. My dad remembered. He was in a bowling alley in F

James Bradley: Diplomacy That Will Live in Infamy

[James Bradley is the author of “Flags of Our Fathers” and “The Imperial Cruise.”] SIXTY-EIGHT years ago tomorrow, Japan attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor. In the brutal Pacific war that would follow, millions of soldiers and civilians were killed. My father — one of the famous flag raisers on Iwo Jima — was among the young men who went off to the Pacific to fight for his country. So the war naturally fascinated me. But I always wondered, why did we fight in the Pacif

J. Sri Raman: Bhopal Reminder for Nuclear India

[A freelance journalist and a peace activist in India, J. Sri Raman is the author of "Flashpoint" (Common Courage Press, USA). He is a regular contributor to Truthout.] As India prepares to roll out the red carpet to multinational corporations cashing in on the country's nuclear deals with the US and others, a painful reminder has come about what collaborations of this kind can mean: the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal gas-leak tragedy on December 3, 2009. On t

Suketu Mehta: A Cloud Still Hangs Over Bhopal

[Suketu Mehta, a journalism professor at New York University, is the author of “Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found.”] IN the Mumbai kindergarten my son went to, the children never had to clean up after themselves; that was the servants’ job. So I really liked the school my son attended when we moved back to Brooklyn, where the teachers made the children tidy up at the end of the day. “Cleanup time, cleanup time!” my 6-year-old sang, joyfully gathering his scraps. It’s a wonderful A

Tony Horwitz: The 9/11 of 1859

[Tony Horwitz is the author of “Confederates in the Attic” and “A Voyage Long and Strange.” He is working on a book about John Brown’s raid.] ONE hundred and fifty years ago today, the most successful terrorist in American history was hanged at the edge of this Shenandoah Valley town. Before climbing atop his coffin for the wagon ride to the gallows, he handed a note to one of his jailers: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged

David S. Reynolds: It's time for the nation to grant John Brown a posthumous pardon

[David S. Reynolds, a professor at the CUNY Graduate Center, is the author of “John Brown, Abolitionist” and “Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson.”] IT’S important for Americans to recognize our national heroes, even those who have been despised by history. Take John Brown. Today is the 150th anniversary of Brown’s hanging — the grim punishment for his raid weeks earlier on Harpers Ferry, Va. With a small band of abolitionists, Brown had seized the federal arsen

Stephanie Guilloud: From Seattle to Detroit: Ten Lessons for Movement Building on the Tenth Anniversary of the WTO Shutdown

[Stephanie Guilloud graduated from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, in 1999. She was hired that week by history professor and organizer Dan Leahy to organize a conference called Trade, Labor, and the Environment: Analyzing the World Trade Organization. She co-founded the Direct Action Network with other organizers from California, Oregon and Washington.] For five days in 1999, 80,000 people from Seattle and from all over the country stopped the World Trade Organiz

John Sweeney: Russian textbooks attempt to rewrite history

[John Sweeney reports Stalin’s Return: This World, BBC Two, Wednesday, December 2, 7pm.] Now you see him, now you don’t. Stalin was a past master at the art of airbrushing. In one classic set of photographs, there Stalin is with his secret police chief, Nikolai Yezhov — and in the next photo, there Yezhov isn’t (he was executed in 1940, with his boss’s approval). And now, in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the airbrushing of history seems to be all the rage again. If you look