From: niepornt@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (David Marc Nieporent)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,alt.rush-limbaugh,alt.politics.bush
Subject: Re: Democrat Wars? (was Re: Democrat == Loony Left???)
Date: 7 Jan 93 05:49:06 GMT
Distribution: usa, world
Organization: Princeton University
Originator: news@nimaster

In article <C01007.9Dt@unix.portal.com> mykes@shell.portal.com (mike myke schwartz) writes:
>Loren I. Petrich (lip@s1.gov) wrote:
>:In <ATAYLOR.92Dec16141149@gauss.nmsu.edu> ataylor@nmsu.edu (Nosy) writes:
>:>In article <liqce2INNctd@spim.mti.sgi.com> mpolen@suntory.mti.sgi.com (Mike Polen) writes:

>: ><   LBJ's hawkishness is also not a liberal or conservative issue.  I hadn't
>: ><   noticed that all wars were started and fought by Republicans.  

>: >	Oh, really? Let's look at the record:

>: >	DEMOCRAT President Wilson ran for re-election in 1916
>: >	on the platform, "He Kept Us Out Of War"; subsequently,	
>: >	the U.S. entered WWI.
 
>: >	DEMOCRAT President F.D. Roosevelt did everything possible
>: >	to get us involved in WWII.

>: >	DEMOCRAT President Truman declared that Korea was not
>: >	"in the US sphere of interest", then sent US troops
>: >	there after the North Korean invasion. 
 
>: >	DEMOCRAT President Johnson campaigned for President
>: >	in 1964 on the platform, "I will never send American
>: >	boys to fight on the Asian mainland". Almost immediately
>: >	after taking the oath of office, he dispatched thousands
>: >	of troops to South Viet Nam (located on the Asian mainland).
 
How about REPUBLICAN President McKinley, who did everything possible to
get us into a war with Spain?  Or REPUBLICAN President Lincoln, who,
despite claiming that he wasn't going to attack slavery in the south,
fought the worst war in US history?

Yes, I know Lincoln didn't cause the Civil War.  But it's no sillier
than blaming FDR for WW2.   There wasn't any way we could *not* get
involved in WW2, later if not sooner.

>: 	The charge of "Democrat Wars" is a staple of Republican
>: demagoguery, for those not in the know.

>So we get to hear the liberal demagoguery?

>: 	If the Democrats are to be somehow held to blame, then does
>: that mean that we should have stayed out of _all_ these wars? Even if
>: it meant letting the Germans win WWI, the Germans and the Japanese win
>: WWII, the North Koreans win the Korean War, and the North Vietnamese
>: win the Vietnam War?

>If the Germans and Japanese lost World War II, why are they the #2 and #3
>world powers today?  If the North Koreans lost the Korean war, why do
>they still have half the country?  If the North Vietnamese lost the vietnam
>war, why do they control the entire nation?  If the Germans lost WWI, how
>were they in position two decades later to conquer and control most of
>Europe?

I don't see the connection.  Because we didn't do to them what Rome did
to Carthage?  The fact that you lose a war doesn't mean that you can't
fight and/or win another war later.

>The Republican Demagoguery is that a strong American military posture
>allows us to take out a Hitler or Saddaam before it escalates to a World
>War (for what it's worth, the Gulf War WAS WWIII, IMO).

Wait, I thought it was that if we gave them lots of arms and money,
they'd be really nice people, and come into the "family of nations."

Or was it "America First!"?

>: 	Just about every Republican since WWII has considered these
>: wars to be worthy causes, indeed very noble ones. Just consider Nixon
>: on continuing the Vietnam War before he decided on the "declare
>: victory and quit" solution of "Vietnamization". And consider what
>: Reagan thought of the war. He didn't say how awful it was of the
>: Democrats to get us involved in it. He called it a "noble cause", as
>: if that was somehow irrelevant.

>Some of us believe that FDR and Truman blew it by giving away the store
>at the end of WWII making situations like Vietnam and Korea inevitable.
>General Patton was inseensed at the end of WWII that we did not finish
>the war by defeating the communists in the USSR while we were all geared
>up to do it.  Similarly, Schwarzkopf suggested we solve the Iraq situation
>by going to Bahgdad...

Well, Schwarzkopf didn't say what we were going to do once we got to
Baghdad, did he?  And Patton didn't bother to check on how much effort
it would have taken to defeat the communists in the USSR, and see
whether the US public was ready to stand for it, now did he?

>: 	The only seriously anti-war Republican I've ever heard of in
>: recent years was Pat Buchanan about the Gulf War, which he insisted
>: was really about protecting Israel more than anything else. He charged
>: that only Israel's "Amen Corner" supported it in Congress and that
>: soldiers with names like Murphy, McAllister, Gonzalez, and Leroy Brown
>: [non-Jewish names] will be doing the fighting. Interestingly, Isaac
>: Asimov in his autobiography _In Memory Yet Green_ recalled that some
>: of those he worked with in the Philadelphia Navy Yard in WWII seemed
>: to think that WWII had been fought to "save the Jews" and that our
>: involvement was somehow contrived by FDR and his Jewish friends.

>As I wrote in an earlier article tonight, Barry Goldwater, who ran against
>LBJ in 1964, wanted to Nuke north vietnam and get the damn war over in a
>hurry so we could have some peace...

Right.  After all, the Soviets wouldn't have responded to us nuking
North Vietnam.

>: Something like:

>: 	Roosevelt & Co. decode some messages describing Japanese plans
>: for attacking Pearl Harbor. They decide to let them do it just to
>: outrage the public enough to support them.

>Iran-contra pales in comparison, doesn't it? :)

Now prove this happened.  Anyway, not necessarily.  Iran-Contra is
against the law; I doubt that this was.

-- 
David M. Nieporent   | Is it too early to start making predictions for 1993?
niepornt@phoenix.    | Probably, but that never stopped me before.
   princeton.edu     | ALE: Baltimore ALW: Chicago NLE: Montreal NLW: Atlanta
Baltimore Orioles 93 | AL MVP: Cal Ripken  AL Cy Young: Mike Mussina
Newsgroups: alt.acvivism,talk.politics.misc