9/11 is history--but how is it being taught to students in history courses? George Bush and other conservatives maintain that the attacks were acts of evil; liberals, while they condemn the attacks, see them as having a social and political context that we need to understand. These differences are reflected in the debate over the textbooks written in the past three years.
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Warriors for Zion--in California
Jon Wiener: Accusations by right-wing Zionists of anti-Semitism at the University of California, Irvine, are suspect at best.
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City of Fear
Jon Wiener: A new book explores the historical ties between African-American and Japanese-American communities in Los Angeles.
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J. Edgar Hoover, Author
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Jon Wiener: A new book reveals the FBI Director's distinctive relationship with his publisher.
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Judging Thomas
Jon Wiener: A close look at Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas reveals a deeply conservative and increasingly bitter man.
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Letters
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Al Franken's Rising Fortunes
Progressives, Liberals, & The American Left
Jon Wiener: It's early in the game, but his bid to unseat Minnesota Republican Senator Norm Coleman is gaining strength.
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President Rudy
Jon Wiener: How much worse a president would Rudy Giuliani be than George W. Bush? Author Kevin Baker counts the ways.
Finn and Ravitch are right about some of the texts. America: Pathways to the Present, by Andrew Cayton et al., says in its 2005 edition that the "prime suspect" in the attacks was Osama bin Laden, but he is described only as "a wealthy Saudi dissident." "Saudi dissident" is hardly the right term--a student might get the impression he was fighting for Saudi women's rights. The book goes on to say that bin Laden had been granted sanctuary by the Taliban in Afghanistan, but the Taliban are described only as a "group" that "sought to set up their version of a pure Islamic state, banning such things as television and music." From the perspective of an American tenth grader, this is typical of tyrants everywhere--starting with their own parents, punishing them for bad grades. As an explanation of the "who" and "why" of 9/11, the discussion in Pathways might best be termed "incoherent."
Several other leading texts do much better. The American Republic, by Joyce Appleby et al., has a section on 9/11 in its 2005 edition, written by Alan Brinkley of the Columbia University history department, that provides a wonderfully clear and thorough explanation of the "who" and "why" of 9/11, starting with bin Laden's role in the resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. "Bin Laden's experience in Afghanistan convinced him that superpowers could be beaten. He also believed that Western ideas had contaminated Muslim society. He was outraged when Saudi Arabia allowed American troops on Saudi soil after Iraq invaded Kuwait." He therefore began a series of attacks seeking to drive Americans out of the Middle East. 9/11 was the most spectacular in this series of attacks.
A different approach can be found in The American Promise, by James Roark et al., an introductory college text that is the most widely adopted textbook in the market. It is assigned in dozens of high schools, public and private, including public schools in Atlanta, Newark and Chicago. A section written by Susan Hartmann, who teaches history at Ohio State, identifies bin Laden's goals and then explains the "why" of his finding supporters: "High levels of poverty ignored by undemocratic and corrupt governments provided bin Laden a pool of disaffected young Muslims who saw the United States as the evil source of their misery and the supporter of Israel's oppression of Palestinian Muslims." A companion volume of historical documents, edited by Michael Johnson, includes the famous President's Daily Brief from August 6, 2001: "bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US"; the text of Bush's address on September 20, 2001: "they hate us...[because] they hate our freedoms"; and an Al Qaeda training manual posted on the Justice Department website.
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