Some of the journalists who wrote about the rise of Adolph Hitler in the 1930s probably ended up wishing they'd kept quiet. A series of editorials in the Christian Science Monitor, for example, consistently warned against taking the Nazis too seriously.

One from 1930 ridiculed the notion that Hitler posed a threat to "the entire European order" and suggested there was a "comic side" to the dictator's "frenetic fantasies." Another, written a year later, argued that it was "clearly misleading to view the growing electoral power of Herr Hitler as an impending catastrophe in international affairs."

By reading these and other editorials that now seem hopelessly naive or just plain wrong, users of ProQuest Historical Newspapers can gain a richer understanding of the historical context in which Hitler came to power and ultimately provoked a second world war.

If the problem in the 1930s was that a few influential American newspapers underestimated the threat from the German dictator, the problem in the early years of the 21st century appears to have been that all the influential American newspapers overestimated the threat from the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein. Hundreds of articles about Iraqi WMD flooded the pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other major newspapers.

By evoking fears of a nuclear-armed Iraq, front-page stories like the one written by Michael Gordon and Judith Miller on September 8, 2002, ("U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-bomb Parts") helped raise popular support for U.S. action in Iraq. Reading them now provides a window into the fears that dominated the post-9/11 world.

Editorials -- unsurprisingly, given that editorialists are expected to express strong opinions -- were frequently even more alarmist. Read the following op-ed piece by Richard Perle, one of the Iraq war's most vocal supporters.

Writing just a few weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks, Perle argued that the United States should use force to remove Saddam Hussein from power. The factual basis of much of Perle's argument has subsequently been undermined: there were no WMD, there was no hijacking training camp, there was no Prague meeting between the 9/11 ringleader and an Iraqi intelligence official, and there was only short-lived "dancing in the streets."

Perhaps lost in the editorial's factual inaccuracies is a radical philosophical claim: that "just war" theory is dead. Perle argues that in a world of nuclear weapons, rogue states, and international terrorists, initiating military actions only after an attack -- the most clear cut justification for war in conventional "just war" theory -- is a luxury no responsible government can afford.

Do a search for the phrase "just war" and limit your search to general and editorial articles written between September 11, 2001, and December 31, 2001. Read through the four results.

Using ideas triggered by these articles and the piece by Richard Perle, write a 500-word essay explaining your views on the relevance and usefulness of "just war" theory in a post-9/11 world.