The Unsung Hero Who Coined the Term “Genocide”
By Michael Ignatieff

If the history of the western moral imagination is the story of an enduring and unending revolt against human cruelty, there are few more consequential figures than Raphael Lemkin—and few whose achievements have been more ignored by the general public. It was he who coined the word “genocide.” He was also its victim. Forty-nine members of Lemkin’s family, including his mother and father, were rounded up in eastern Poland and gassed in Treblinka in 1943. Lemkin escaped to America, and in wartime Washington gave a name to Hitler’s crimes in his monumental study of the jurisprudence of Nazi occupation, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, published in 1944.

…

Lemkin belongs historically to a select list of humanitarians such as Henri Dunant, who founded the Red Cross in 1863, and Eglantyne Jebb, who created Save the Children after World War I—or going farther back, to John Howard, the eighteenth-century sheriff of Bedfordshire who single-handedly awoke Europeans to the cruelty of their prison systems. These were all people who by their own solitary efforts, with an obsessional devotion to a private cause, changed the moral climate of their times.

Continued…

Those Who Don’t Investigate the Past Are Doomed to Repeat It
By Stephen M. Walt

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to spend a day and a half on board the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt as it conducted exercises off the coast of Florida in preparation for an extended deployment. It was a fascinating experience, and one of the activities that impressed me most was watching night landings by the ship’s F-18 squadron. An especially interesting part, at least for me, was observing the debriefing each pilot had to undergo after every flight, in which members of the crew went over each landing and explained what the pilot had done correctly and what needed to be improved. The purpose of these sessions was clear: To maintain a high level of performance, you had to learn from any mistakes you made so you could do better in the future.

Continued…

Iphigenia in Forest Hills
By Janet Malcolm

In “Democracy in America,” Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of American journalists as persons of “low social status, [whose] education is only sketchy, and [whose] thoughts are often vulgarly expressed.” He went on to note that “the hallmark of the American journalist is a direct and coarse attack, without any subtleties, on the passions of his readers; he disregards principles to seize on people, following them into their private lives and laying bare their weaknesses and their vices.” Over the years, the social status and the education level of journalists have risen, and some journalists write extremely well. But the profession retains its transgressiveness. Human frailty continues to be the currency in which it trades. Malice remains its animating impulse.

Continued…

Sixty Years Later, the Bay of Pigs Remains a Cautionary Tale
By Max Hastings

Some years are so crowded with memorable anniversaries that it seems like the world once faced one damn sensation after another. So it is now, the 60th anniversary of 1961. That spring, French generals in Algeria attempted to overthrow President Charles de Gaulle through a military coup, including a planned Foreign Legion parachute drop on Paris. That summer, the ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev defected to the West. On April 12, it will be six decades since the launch into orbit of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, first human being in space.

Continued…

The Rise and Fall of Andrew Mellon
By Matt Stoller

Andrew Mellon had a quiet demeanor, rail-thin bearing, and beautifully manicured hands. His habit of taking long vacations, his age, his manners, and his soft-spoken shyness might have been mistaken for weakness and frailty in someone else. Mellon may have been born rich, but he was not soft. He was a hard man, a banker, an emperor of money, an owner of several companies later included in the Fortune 500. He would help lead the restoration of rule by private financiers.

President Warren G. Harding formally appointed Mellon under the pretense that a plutocrat like Mellon was so rich he couldn’t be bought. The real reason was that a Mellon Bank had lent $1.5 million to Harding’s campaign in 1920. Mellon had become bored with being a mere tycoon. As one of his enemies put it, “Mellon needed a change, and the Grand Old Party needed the cash.”

Continued…