Affirming the Consequent
Charles Krauthammer: “So unpopular that Truman left office disparaged and highly out of favor. History has revised that verdict. I have little doubt that Bush will be the subject of a similar reconsideration.”
I assume this Truman argument is comforting to all unpopular presidents, but it’s really got some pretty obvious problems.
That said, I’ve always maintained that there’s a healthy chance Krauthammer is right. This, though, says less about Bush than it does about “the verdict of history.” As Gene Healy observes in his excellent book, The Cult of the Presidency, “history” has a tendency to assess presidents pretty much exclusively on the basis of whether or not interesting wars happened during their president. Given that the Iraq War, disaster though it was, clearly isn’t going to result in an American “defeat” and surrender and so forth, Bush will probably fit the pattern. He’ll never rank up there with really successful war presidents like Lincoln or Roosevelt but he meets a “dramatic wars happened and America wasn’t conquered” baseline that’s required for a positive evaluation over the long run. That’s a nonsensical way of looking at things, but it’s the way “history” works — prudent stewardship of the county à la Bill Clinton gets you nowhere.
72 Responses to “Affirming the Consequent”
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September 19th, 2008 at 5:07 am
Matt,
You might be right when looking back 100 years from now, but for the next 50 years, most regular Joe Publics who were alive during his reign will mainly remember the piss-poor overall mood of the country. I don’t think most people consider this to have been a very happy eight years of our history.
September 19th, 2008 at 5:09 am
History celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive; it knows the names of kings’ bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat.
This is the way of human folly.
– Henry Fabre
September 19th, 2008 at 5:17 am
Say what you will about George Bush — he may be a stupid whore but he is the gift that keeps on giving.
On the way out the door –and with an approval rating somewhere in the 20s — and he still manages to transfer $2 Trillion to his rich buddies.
And the only thing Democratic leaders can do is duck the discussion with shifty eyes and embarrassed silence.
September 19th, 2008 at 5:26 am
Historians are in the business of cranking out new interpretations of the past; it’s what they do.
So, yeah, there will be some historians who will undertake the “Bush was a good president” project. It’ be like climbing Mt. Everest – a challenge.
But really Krauthammer, if he were smart, would be more concerned with his own status in history than with Bush’s. The role of his ilk is going to be a far more vigorous topic of serious discussion.
September 19th, 2008 at 5:30 am
So unpopular that Truman left office disparaged and highly out of favor. History has revised that verdict.
I don’t know what they teach in history class these days, but in my book Truman is still guilty of crimes against humanity.
September 19th, 2008 at 5:47 am
“There’s a healthy chance Krauthammer is right.” Has he ever been?
Also, a group of volunteers just launched a site that puts volunteers who want to travel to swing states in touch with financial sponsors and swing state host families, and allows the sponsor to track the progress and on-the-ground numbers of the volunteer they’ve sponsored.
It’s sort of a political hybrid of Craigs List and Team-in-Training and a pretty cool concept – check it out here: http://ObamaTravel.org/
September 19th, 2008 at 5:57 am
I’m not buying the assumption here that the Iraq war will ever be considered a particularly interesting war. We’ve been involved in loads of interventionist wars over the past century-and-a-bit, and nearly all of them have been forgotten by the broad brush of history, save Vietnam. We should ask LBJ how that one worked out for his image.
The presidents who get remembered as great were usually either founding fathers or were otherwise involved in some particularly important historical turning point (Lincoln, FDR). McKinley? Not so much.
In all likelihood, the Iraq war will go the way of our imperialist venture in the Philippines–it will be conveniently forgotten, earning maybe a paragraph or two in high school textbooks (or maybe just a mention in a photo caption, which was the only reference to the take-over of Philippines in my high school text). It just doesn’t fit with the overall story of America: The Benevolent Superpower that we like to tell the kiddies.
September 19th, 2008 at 9:32 am
Cause historians have fallen all over themselves over McKinley. Stir in Bush’s idiocy, his support of torture, faking the reasons for the war, mountains of debt, corruption undreamed of to the Gilded Age, and exposing a spy for political advantage and you’ve got the makings wonderful Revisionist possibilities.
Bush sure is Mr. Misundersood, he is.
September 19th, 2008 at 9:41 am
Maybe in 30 years, we will consider Krauthammer to have been a worthwhile columnist.
September 19th, 2008 at 9:42 am
The Krauthammer piece is sheer nonsense. He says:
It’s true that there have been no major terrorist attacks in the last seven years. But there were no such attacks in the seven years before that, either, and a Democrat was in the White House for most of that time. The fact is, such attacks are exceedingly rare, no matter who is in charge.
September 19th, 2008 at 9:46 am
As I have noted before, I think this all depends on his successor. If Bush is followed by a President who reverses his worst policies, restores America’s moral standing in the world, sets the economy on a firmer standing, and most of all doesn’t start any foolish wars, then Bush will likely be viewed as a below-average but ultimately inconsequential President, somewhat along the lines of Herbert Hoover.
But if Bush is followed by a President who doubles down on many of his worst policies, doesn’t improve America’s moral standing, doesn’t place the economy on firmer standing, and most of all starts more foolish wars, then Bush may be viewed as the guy who started the nation on the path to disaster even if someone else presided over the worst of it, along the lines of a Franklin Pierce.
In short, I think the historical question will be whether Bush did any truly lasting damage, and that is a matter in the hands of his successor.
September 19th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Even Riger Simon and O’Reilly are off the Bush bus:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/09/18/oreilly-end-bush-legacy/
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/13579.html
September 19th, 2008 at 9:49 am
That’s nonsense. Presidents who start wars may get more attention and more lines written about them than those who don’t, but that’s not equivalent to being “vindicated,” which is what Krauthammer is claiming will happen. Also, it’s not “history” that you’re talking about, but popular mythology, which is shaped by political hacks and the journalists who repeat what they say because it’s easier than actually reading what professional historians produce. That’s the process that gave us Ronald Reagan as a great president.
September 19th, 2008 at 9:50 am
Krauthammer’s line is very much in keeping with how Bush thinks of himself. There was a very good article in Vanity Fair a year ago by David Halberstam totally debunking this idea. Here’s the synopsis of the piece:
In the twilight of his presidency, George W. Bush and his inner circle have been feeding the press with historical parallels: he is Harry Truman—unpopular, besieged, yet ultimately to be vindicated—while Iraq under Saddam was Europe held by Hitler. To a serious student of the past, that’s preposterous. Writing just before his untimely death, David Halberstam asserts that Bush’s “history,” like his war, is based on wishful thinking, arrogance, and a total disdain for the facts.
September 19th, 2008 at 9:50 am
I dunno. It seems to me that in the past half century, presidents are more likely to be evaluated based on economic performance. You can tell a story about Reagan on that issue, but Bush? It’ll be a real test of the Republicans commitment to the echo chamber.
September 19th, 2008 at 9:53 am
What’s the deal with the conservatives’ Truman fetish? The Krauthammers of the late ’40s and early ’50s HATED Truman precisely because of the Marshall Plan, NATO, the Berlin Airlift, Bretton Woods, “losing” China, war in Korea, recognizing Israel, and so on. They thought him soft, weak, corrupt, feckless, pro-Communist, anti-American (recall McCarthyism and their pillorying of Dean Acheson), and willing to sell out America. The fact that his decisions ultimately brought down the Soviet Union figure not at all. Krauthammer types in and out of Congress also demanded that he be impeached after he fired MacArthur.
September 19th, 2008 at 9:56 am
1) Why does Matthew bother refuting Krauthammer — we KNOW from experience that Neocons and Bush supporters can making up 10 lies while we are refuting one. It’s a losing game.
2) Plus it continually DISTRACTS the voters from the real issues.
3) I Repeat: The Reason Democrats lose elections is that they piss off the voters with snark about trival matters –like this –while ducking out of addressing the real issues.
4) Wouldn’t a more relevant topic might have been Senator Chris Dodd’s statement this morning that
the United States could be
“days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system”.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/19/AR2008091900205.html
5) And isn’t it pathetic that the Democratic Congress is letting itself be rolled into tossing almost $2 TRILLION in our taxes to bail out the Billionaire Financiers of the Republican Party?
6) I TOLD YOU this was going to happen back in Dec 2006 — when the Yield Curve inversion showed a recession would hit starting in late 2007. And I TOLD YOU that if the Democrats didn’t hang that around the Republicans’ neck, it would be hung around ours.
7) But by all means lets engage in obscure ..er Talmudic dispute over trival matters.
The one thing that Democratic leaders and Republican leaders evidently agree upon is that the voters can be told how badly they’re being fucked on behalf of wealthy interests.
And obviously that message has been sent down to even lowly bloggers.
September 19th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Truman tried to seize the steel industry.
We’re nationalizing the financial sector.
Accident or homage?
September 19th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Correction: That the voters can NOT be told how badly they’re being fucked
September 19th, 2008 at 9:59 am
Krauthhamer has long been the uber-moron mouthpiece for the neocon/PNAC/AIPAC crowd.
September 19th, 2008 at 10:02 am
History won’t be able to capture the daily excruciating surface awfulness of the Bush presidency, but it will be a lot better at showing how the deep awfulness was even worse.
September 19th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Bush will end up worse than Lyndon Johnson. Disastorous foreign war, with none of Johnson’s domestic achievements. Compare civil rights and Medicare to huge government debt and Katrina.
September 19th, 2008 at 10:07 am
Ha ha ha . The Bipartisan Reality Distortion Field that’s being thrown over the huge bailout announced today is now warping the space continuum and sending us back in Time.
My post number 3 above was issued around 10 am and should have been number 18 or so in this list. Instead, it’s stuck at the beginning with a timestamp of 5:17 am — hours before Matthew even posted on the subject.
September 19th, 2008 at 10:08 am
To Don Williams:
I share your views on the financial “bailout” and what it reveals about our political system. My overall view of our politics is this:
The elites don’t give a rat’s ass whether women have abortions, gays get married, somebody lights up a joint, etc. etc., because their power doesn’t depend in the slightest on the outcomes of these squabbles. But that’s why a political system dominated by such nonsense suits their interests.
It’s no accident that the beginning of the “culture wars” era coincided with the Democratic Party’s abandonment of its blue collar/New Deal traditions, as it morphed into another elitist party, replete with many of the same campaign contributors that have long bankrolled the GOP.
What remains is a phony 2 party system that obsesses over matters of identity, sex, and religion, as these issues by their nature stir strong emotions that blind people to the underlying similarity between the “2 parties” and their common masters. In the meantime, differences on issues of importance to the elites are mere lip service.
And to give the elites their due, they’ve done a masterful job. The sheeple get the endless culture wars bickering while the elites pile up the power and money. Still, some of us are wise to the game that’s being played even if the camp followers on a lot of “right” and “left” blogs are clueless.
September 19th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Forget Clinton. The guy who got shafted by this tendency is Ike. Hell of a president, the Cold War tensions make our Orange Alerts look like peanuts.
September 19th, 2008 at 10:18 am
Almost $2 Trillion –on top of the $10 Trillion debt –$5 Trillion of which was run up on George W Bush’s watch.
Somewhere in Central Asia, Bin Laden is laughing his ass off. And probably giving a high 5 to a Chinese official.
September 19th, 2008 at 10:19 am
Truman was transformed into this Twain-esque folk hero because of his humble background, his personal honesty, and his insistence upon accountability. None of that applies to Bush. The only real pre-presidential similarity that holds is that Truman, like Bush, was a failure at nearly everything he tried until he got into politics. Even here the analogy breaks down somewhat: Truman distinguished himself in WW1, while Bush got preferential treatment during Vietnam, then shirked the cushy detail he had been assigned.
The explanation about presidents in wartime is probably wrong: it’s been 40 years since LBJ left office, and while his reputation, too, is being rehabbed, none of his extra credit is due to the Vietnam War (Michael Lind notwithstanding.
September 19th, 2008 at 10:21 am
Not sure I buy that “history” has a tendency to assess presidents pretty much exclusively on the basis of whether or not interesting wars happened during their president.
What interesting wars happened during the administrations of:
George Washington
Thomas Jefferson
Andrew Jackson
Theodore Roosevelt
Dwight Eisenhower
All of whom history has judged quite favorably.
September 19th, 2008 at 10:28 am
The notion that this is “the way ‘history’ works” is simply obnoxious. History, like any field, is not governed by reductive axioms derived from anecdotal evidence and professional cynicism. In this case, the supposition that the Bush presidency will not be repudiated by future historians amounts to the worst kind of speculation. One need only point to the history of the Roman Empire (or, rather, how historians regard that long period): conquerors are revered, but not universally; “good emperors” reigned over long periods of relative piece, and are remembered fondly; self-aggrandizing warmongers are often credited with weakening the empire and contributing to the conditions that led to its collapse; meanwhile, the short reigns of learned administrators (like Julian) continue to receive literary plaudits into the present day.
September 19th, 2008 at 10:36 am
1) I don’t see any reason why anyone –including the President himself –would give a hairy rat’s ass what judgment future historians make.
2) Most historians are time-serving paper shufflers who can’t reach a conclusion anyway. That’s why they’re historians.
3) 1800 YEARS AGO the Roman Historian Cassius Dio pointed out that most of history — and historical records — are government sanctioned lies anyway. Based on my work in the Intelligence Community and 4 SCI clearances, I can tell you ole Cassius hit the nail on the fucking head.
The REAL story of the Bush Administration went into the burn bag years ago.
September 19th, 2008 at 10:42 am
I would actually nominate Ike as one of the leading counterexamples to Matt’s thesis. From that I have seen, the emerging consensus is that Ike was a Top 10 President.
And an even better counterexample is Jefferson, who usually gets Top 5 status. His presidency is probably best known for the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis & Clark Expedition, and otherwise he is famous more for his philosophical contributions than any warrior attributes.
And come to think of it, another guy who usually makes the Top 5 is Teddy Roosevelt, whose presidency is best known for things like conservationism, trust-busting, and the Panama Canal. Of course he did have a personal warrior image, but as President he was actually known for his attempts at deterrence (e.g., the Great White Fleet).
And for that matter, George Washington is of course best known for his Commander-in-chief role during the Revolutionary War, but as President he is best known for overseeing a smooth transition under the new Constitution, and again a policy of actually avoiding wars (e.g., the Jay Treaty, and his Farewell Address counseling against entanglement in European wars).
So the more I think of it, the more the basic thesis sounds like bunk to me.
September 19th, 2008 at 10:43 am
Just as the REAL Story of the Roman Republic’s collapse went into the fire 2040 years ago. Just ask any historian what their primary sources for that period are — and why almost none exist.
Given that the Founders modeled our Republic on the Roman Republic, that may present a problem. One we don’t see until it’s too late.
September 19th, 2008 at 10:44 am
And I see Doogs beat me to the same point.
September 19th, 2008 at 10:47 am
I don’t unnderstand why more people aren’t aware of the comically precise parallels between Bush II and McKinley.
September 19th, 2008 at 10:55 am
I think DTM’s point is well taken, J.K.Polk is not a President high is public recollection, but he did conquer a neighbouring country and force it to surrender one-third of its sovereign territory.
Madison is not remembered for the War of 1812, but for the Constitution.
Roosevelt and Reagan are remembered affectionately primarily as great communicators, not as “war” Presidents.
I think Bush will probably be in his father’s shadow – the elder won a war without invading Iraq, the younger scuffed his chances by invading Iraq.
He will also be remembered for the Meltdown of 2008.
September 19th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Bush will be fighting an uphill battle since history will never forget that Iraq was a war he started that he didn’t have to. Even if the long term end result is good, history will not be kind.
James K Polk had a very successful presidency in terms of finally fulfilling America’s dream of manifest destiny. He negotiated for US control over what is now Washington and Oregon and settled the border along the Rio Grande with Mexico, creating the final contours of what is now the lower forty eight. But the Mexican border dispute was settled with a war that history has largely decided was not necessary, so no great presidency there. Bush will be in the same boat.
September 19th, 2008 at 11:05 am
1) Henry Ford also hit the nail on the head when he said “History is bunk” . But Ivy League History and Classics Departments have dined out for centuries on the idea that they are supplying the wisdom of the ages.
2) A useful propaganda device for politicians. James Madison (Princeton) and the other Founders used the classics to support their grubby conspiracy here in Philly to protect the wealth of the rich. And today, McCain’s description of the Vietnam War and the Reagan Era doesn’t match what I remember.
3) One of the Founders who was well-schooled in the classics saw through James Madison’s bullshit. Benjamin Rush noted:
“What trash may we not suppose has been handed down to us from antiquity, when we detect such errors and prejudices in the history of events of which we have been eyewitnesses and in which we have been actors ?… I suspect the well-concerted plans of battles recorded by Livy to have been picked up in the barbers’ shops of Rome or from deserters from the Rome armies.”
4) So what judgment of Bush will future historians reach? Whatever judgment their wealthy patrons want.
September 19th, 2008 at 11:05 am
You’re pretty open minded, Matt. My reaction was: and I thought conservatives were supposed to be AGAINST illegal drugs….
September 19th, 2008 at 11:07 am
@13 and @31 are precisely right. Any student of, you know, real history, knows that the war=great thing is not a standard assessment in the field. Truman is not lauded for dropping a bomb or the Korean War. He’s lauded for creating awesome alliances and avoiding broader flareups.
The idea of war=great is a neocon construction. Like their entire ideology, it’s for dabblers and dilettantes, wholly unserious people in search of the serious.
September 19th, 2008 at 11:22 am
The naive approach to History is that we study the past to learn something useful. If we can’t, then it’s just a hobby, something amusing for the practitioner but boring and meaningless to the outsider. My view is that it’s a combo of Rorschach Test and a “cornucopia of evidence”: there’s so much there that one sees what one wants to see. The useful lessons of history doesn’t get much beyond the Don’t Touch the Hot Stove variety. Politicians share that view and simply use Historians as another kind of PR man to dredge up blandishments or bogeymen at need. It’s useful to the Republicans to have a thug like Krauthammer make gassy noises about Bush and his place in History because their next thug will need a cover story. Krauthammer’s just starting early.
September 19th, 2008 at 11:25 am
I think think he’ll wind up being seen as a mediocre bumbler. Well-intended, but with enough snafu’s and not enough lasting achievements to move him anywhere near the upper echelon.
It would take the (not impossible) full-sale collapse of the financial system to drop him into the Buchanan / Hoover / Carter bracket.
On the other hand, I think as we get further along, history will look more and more fondly on Bill Clinton, and he’ll eventually achieve an Eisenhower-level rating.
September 19th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Now observe the logic of guys like Krauthammer:
(1) Truman was unpopular at the end of his term.
(2) History regards Truman as a good president.
(3) Bush Minor is unpopular at the end of his term.
Ergo, History will regard Bush Minor as a good president. Q. E. D.
Aristotle wept.
[Socrates was mortal. Socrates was a man. Sarah Palin is mortal. Ergo, Sarah Palin is a man.]
September 19th, 2008 at 11:43 am
the problem with this nonsense isn’t whether chuckie the k is right or not. it’s his tacit implication that it’s “history” that gets to do the judging and not us. that we are somehow out of our element and presumptuous if we dare to judge. history will know more than mere us.
um, what a load of horseshit. certainly history will judge, but i get to judge too. i’m here, now, watching this crap happen and it affects me and mine. i don’t need this wanker’s permission to make my own judgments about things that happen in my own life.
September 19th, 2008 at 11:50 am
First off with the Truman analogy. Truman became unpopular in large part because of the disastrous Korean War and the fact that the American economy had hit a recession by the time he left office. No one ever mentions Korea as being one of Truman’s great triumphs nor for that matter do any historians praise Truman for his economic leadership.
Irag doesn’t look like quite the disaster it did two years ago but nor does it appear to have really done anything tangible for America. Best case scenario, it’s on par with the Spanish-American War. When was the last time you had a spirited conversation in a bar with a regular guy about the greatness of William McKinley? And bear in mind, there is still a strong possibility Iraq will spiral into civil war soon after we leave. After all, it took Yugoslavia roughly a decade after Tito’s death before it fell apart.
The current financial crisis will make Bush look even worse. Assuming the crisis blows over, future generations probably won’t care as much about it was we do but it means Bush will still be lumped in with such illustrious presidents as Van Buren, Grant and Cleveland.
September 19th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
It really depends on how the war turns out and how the next guy handles it. Paradoxically, Bush will be remembered better (or less badly) if the next guy really screws things up because he’ll be overshadowed, while if things turn out well, he’ll be seen as the guy who bit off more than he could chew and passed it along for someone else to swallow.
His chances to be remembered as anything better than a mediocre president as far as foreign policy died with the unnecessary invasion of Iraq (and regardless of how things turn out, history will judge it to have been unnecessary).
September 19th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Actually, I disagree with the simple equation “George W. Bush = Lyndon B. Johnson”.
Maybe its because I am reading “At Canaan’s Edge” by Taylor Branch, but when I think of Johnson, besides Vietnam I also think of Medicare, Civil Rights, and the Great Society.
Bush tried to privatize Social Security and got stopped. He has no domestic accomplishments worth talking about, exept for negative ones – torture, Guantanamo, wiretapping, and general erosion of civil right.
September 19th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
George W. Bush = Republican Lyndon Johnson.
September 19th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Whether torturing an individual will be seen as a virtue in the future estimation of a president and not capturing the perpetrators in the worst attack in U.S. soil a hindrance is irrelevant at this time. The column is rank speculation and raises the issue as to why write it. Obviosuly the president is unpopular for myriad of reasons and the future will view this as…. WHO CARES? And that, my friend is the problem with the column: hiding in the future a refusal to address present.
September 19th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
The Big Con Krauthammer is running here is the idea that there might be some standards –moral, social, history or performance — to which George W would feel bound to meet.
September 19th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Matt: A shame that you didn’t quote Krauty’s other comments in this column.
(1) “Transforming a virulently aggressive enemy state in the heart of the Middle East into a strategic ally in the war on terror” is “now likely”. If, of course, you assume that (A) there isn’t still an excellent chance that the country will fly apart like a Catherine wheel (given that the Sunnis still hate the Shiites and the two branches of the Shiites still hate each other) and (B) that a government with close ties to Iran (withness all those very friendly greetings to Ahmadinajad) will be a significant “strategic ally in the war on terror.”
(2) Torture — excuse me, “interrogation of high-value terrorists such as Khalid Sheik Mohammed” — has “yielded more valuable intelligence than any other source. In talking about these measures, the president mentioned neither this testimony as to their efficacy nor the campaign of vilification against him that they occasioned. More equanimity still [from Bush during his interview by Krauthammer].” Wonderful!
September 19th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Let me add that Truman got his wild unpopularity for the Korean War the old-fashioned way: he earned it. Boy, did he earn it. He and Dean Acheson started the war unnecessarily in the first place by publically informing Kim Il Sung that they wouldn’t defend South Korea if it WAS invaded (and then hastily changed their minds after Kim took their word for it), and he and MacArthur unnecessarily prolonged it by two years by charging right up to China’s border because of their absolute confidence that China wouldn’t, er, object (whereas we could probably have bitten off a sizable chunk of southern North Korea without China feeling provoked to counterattack). Combine this with his stated absolute confidence that Russia would “never” get the A-bomb, and Truman looks much, much less like a god in foreign policy (even though his early responses to the Cold War make infinitely more sense than Bush’s response to the terror challenge).
September 19th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
I’m not sure why we give a rat’s patootie what Krauthammer claims to believe, but …
Economic achievements or disasters tend not to be well-remembered because casual readers don’t care. (Non-economic historians also generally suck at analyzing these issues). Old economic controversies don’t give themselves to exciting narratives. Lots of people remember the Youngstown decision from the Supreme Court, but does anybody remember the pros and cons of Truman nationalizing steel?
On the other hand, Hurricane Katrina gives itself well to a straightforward narrative. And it’s not every president who gets to preside over the destruction of a major city.
September 19th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
If the buzzard Krauthammer is executed along with all the other anti-American zionists Kristol, Perle, Wolfowitz, Pod I and II, ad nauseum – no historian 50-100 years from now save Pod III and Golda Jacoby will have anything good to say about W. These scrofula make the Rosenbergs and their ilk look like harmless gadflys. A full-on campaign to expose these traitors to the American public for their crimes ought to take place after Obama takes office.
September 19th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Re Bruce Moomaw
I think that Mr. Moomaw is not entirely accurate in describing the approach to the Chinese border as a joint strategy of Truman and MacArthur. What happened was that Truman was so impressed with the success of MacArthurs’ Inchon strategy, which he had approved over the objections of all his military advisers and all the joint chiefs of staff, that he was mesmerized by MacArthurs’ apparent military infallibility and accepted the latters’ advice that the Chinese would not intervene if UN troops approached the Chinese border. His sense of MacArthurs’ infallibility evaporated when his advice proved erroneous, and exasperated with MacArthurs’ pleas to widen to war into Manchuria, finally fired him. As Truman recounts, he showed MacArthurs’ correspondence to General Marshall who informed him that, “you should have fired that son of a bitch 6 months ago.”
Re Guscat
Based on the current situation in South Korea, I hardly think that it is fair to call the Korean War a disaster. Somehow I doubt that Iraq will look so good 50 years on.
September 19th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
I wouldn’t trust Krauthammer if he said it was raining outside.
And W will be remembered as the first US President brought up on war crimes charges. It will probably take a decade or so, but it will happen.
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