Previews

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, the editors of the Journal of American History invited scholars with expertise on anti-Americanism, terrorism, the Middle East, fundamentalist religious movements, and foreign relations to write deliberative essays that put those events in historical perspective. They are presented in this special issue, "History and September 11."

Michael H. Hunt questions the historical analyses that undergird the "war on terrorism" sparked by the horrors of September 11. He warns against justifications for U.S. policy that rest on simple and self-congratulatory binaries—the battle of modernity and tradition or the defense of civilization against barbarism. Americans bring to the crisis a nationalism that is universalist, ahistorical, and inclined to simplify other cultures. An alternative, he suggests, is to recognize the hostility created by a half century of U.S. intervention in the Middle East and the yearning for domestic renovation that fuels Islamic politics.

The "great game" of imperial rivalry in the Middle East and Southwest Asia has fundamentally changed since September 11, 2001, Bruce R. Kuniholm contends. The zero-sum contest between great powers has been superseded by a clash of values that cuts across traditional boundaries and cultures. Relating the war on terrorism to earlier U.S. presidential doctrines concerning the region, Kuniholm calls for a broader definition of international interests and a shared, transnational vision of how to protect them. President George W. Bush should, he argues, make clear the elements of cooperation, underscore the costs of violating the new rules of the game, and address the political and economic realities that create support for terrorism in the region.

Contrary to government proclamations, the U.S. "war on terrorism" did not begin on September 11, 2001. Instead, says Melani McAlister, we need to situate that conflict in a thirty-year-long history of American encounters with terrorism that included both policy making and popular culture. McAlister traces U.S. media and cultural responses to Israeli antiterrorist activities of the 1970s and the Iran hostage crisis of 1979–1980, placing them in the context of reactions to the U.S. defeat in Vietnam. Linking popular culture, news accounts, and public understandings of events with policy making, McAlister explores the way narratives of public and political events are created.

As the United States was launching its effort to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan in late 2001, the Bush administration and the U.S. media focused on the need to rescue Afghan women and children from oppression. Emily S. Rosenberg draws on recent scholarship on gender and international relations to examine the competing "social imaginaries" animating such wartime calls for rescue. One imaginary takes shape within a tradition of male-coded nationalism and claims of Western superiority. Another arises in transnational networks working in culturally diverse ways to challenge the subordination of women. Although the two imaginaries may at times blur together, they coexist uneasily and point toward different futures.

The 2001 campaign against Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces constituted the second U.S. war in Afghanistan. John Prados asks what we can learn from the first: the Central Intelligence Agency's efforts to fund and equip an Islamic fundamentalist and tribal insurgency against a Communist government and occupying Russian forces in the 1980s. Distilling the declassified record and recent research, Prados explores the geopolitical concerns, ethnic divisions, methods of clandestine operation, and alliances with local leaders that shaped the conflict. The lessons are chastening—nations lose heart, allies become enemies, and weapons are turned against those who supplied them. He asks us to recall those lessons as the United States plans to expand its counterterror campaigns.

What causes anti-Americanism and the terrorism sometimes associated with it? How can they be minimized? Nur Bilge Criss finds the history of U.S.-Turkish relations since the 1950s instructive. The two countries have long been allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and Turkey has a secular, democratic government. But U.S. affronts to Turkish sovereignty led military and civilian officials as well as leftist radicals to resist American influence. As Turkish politics polarized, some opponents turned to terrorism. To manage the gift and burden of power well and to enhance U.S. and global security, Criss argues, the United States should rein in the urge to unilateralism.

How will we remember what happened on September 11, 2001? Many historians of American foreign policy, . . .