Skip navigation.

SHAFR Opinion

The McChrystal Affair: Pity the Poor Historian

by Michael Hunt

Crossposted from Michael Hunt’s Washington and the World blog.
There is good reason to pity the poor historian, who has been tested especially severely during the recent McChrystal-Obama imbroglio as the eruption of historical parallels and lessons have ranged from the wrong-headed to the off-kilter.
Henry Kissinger is a good example of the wrong-headed. This policy heavyweight, [...]

LGBT Equality and The Limits of Human Rights

by Laura Belmonte

Last October, a bill was introduced in the Ugandan parliament that would make homosexuality punishable by life imprisonment or even death.  The bill also calls for the extradition of Ugandans who engage in homosexual sex in other countries and for criminal penalties for individuals, media, or non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that support lesbian, gay, bisexual, and [...]

Thinking about Remembering

by Molly Wood

I grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and even though I have not lived there for many years, I still visit regularly. I often think that my decision to become a historian stems in part from the stories of my family history told to me by grandparents and other relatives. I learned from my grandmother, for [...]

Germany to Greece: Drop Dead

by William Glenn Gray

Germans have chosen to work; Greeks have chosen leisure. For this reason, Germans are furious with Greece for accumulating an unsustainable debt burden and thereby undermining the solidity of the European currency. But the self-righteous anger in Berlin may itself call into question the political basis of the Euro.

Diplomats Among Warriors

by John Prados

In Afghanistan at the moment (February 2010), U.S. Marines, allied troops, and Afghan government soldiers are embarked on an offensive at a town called Marja in Helmand province. American commander-in-chief General Stanley A. McChrystal here makes the first expression of the strategy that underlies the appeal for reinforcements that led to the Obama administration “surge” [...]

Is Wartime a Time to End Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?

by Mary Dudziak

As the Obama Administration moves (slowly) toward repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, one argument in opposition is that the nation is at war, and significant changes in the military should not take place during wartime. One response to that point is that all hands are needed during heightened military deployments, and it harms American [...]

Beware Presidents’ Use of History

by John Prados

We are told that history plays as tragedy and repeats as farce. But perhaps that is changing. In the summer of 2007 President George W. Bush invoked the Vietnam analogy to justify an equally or more tragic war in Iraq. And in the West Point speech announcing his new strategy for Afghanistan, President Barack Obama [...]

« View Older Posts

Posts Tagged ‘Cuba’

Weekly Digest — 10-27-09

by Nick Ducote
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

The apprehension last week of Sudbury native Tarek Mehanna is the fifth terrorism-related arrest in the United States in as many months, putting homegrown radicalism back on the radar screen. [more]
Described in legal parlance as “non self governing” or an “unincorporated territory,” Guam remains engulfed in a post-colonial identity crisis. Civil rights activists Hope Cristobal [...]

Plaintains and Fried Rice, Dollars and Yuan: Latin America, the PRC, and the United States

by Bob Buzzanco
Sunday, April 19th, 2009

The ghost in the room, Cuba, was the most important topic when President Barack Obama, in his opening remarks at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, offered a “new beginning” with Havana.  The specifics at this point are not huge: family travel, remittances, perhaps Cuban membership in the OAS, but Obama has [...]

Weekly Digest — 4/12/09

by Jared Regan
Sunday, April 12th, 2009

Historical thinking about current foreign relations:
Fighting joblessness and poverty in Afghanistan. Caution with Castro regime. Getting to zero: Safe without the bomb? Iranian activity in Latin America. Pirates and the CIA.