The Neutralist and WWII

Of all the wars of the 20th Century, only the Second World War saw American territory attacked. If Robert B. Stinnett's Day of Deceit is correct it need not have happened. Stinnett is okay with deception and felt it necessary to foist a lie on the American people. My widowed aunt disagrees.

Anyway, it is the Neutralist policy to view a president who could avoid a war as superior to one who got us into one. Stinnett gains credibility because he is not a Roosevelt hater, but partisan. There may be no absolute proof, but this is certainly evidence that FDR sought war.

If the Third Reich was so evil that defeating it was a moral imperative, there would have been smarter policies from an American standpoint, such as continuing the support of Britain and adding support of the Soviet Union (a question of dubious morality) shy of goading Hitler into war with us. Same with Japan.

Was Hitler the evil that made everything else moral? He was certainly a dark force, but the analogy I would make would be that both Hitler and Stalin were cyanide and everyone else was arsenic.

Gary Brecher states the points better here. The neutralist appropriates this column as our official viewpoint.

So what is it I am not getting here?

Okay, we are going to send 21,500 men to Iraq to..... win the war? Stabilize the situation? That is not going to bring us up to any special number of troops. So what is the point?

Also, we are sending another carrier group and a patriot missle battery. These should not be all that much help in defeating/containing guerillas. Also the theater is to be commanded by an admiral.

I know there is something I am not getting here.

Senator McCain still does not get it

From Antiwar.Com blog:

This morning on CNN Late Edition Wolf Blitzer asked American Enterprise Institute spokeswoman Danielle Pletka about the comparison between Iraq and Vietnam.

Pletka said:

“Senator McCain speaking at the American Enterprise Institute on Friday said This isn’t Vietnam. In Vietnam, when we left, they didn’t follow us. These guys are gonna follow us. We remember what happened when we left Afghanistan. Let’s not forget what the consequences are of leaving Iraq prematurely.”

Could someone please tell the Senator, they can only follow us because our system of immigration and border control is broken. 911 was an immigration policy failure more than anything.

The member from Arizona has been stalwart in not wanting to fix the problem.

New Links

Antiwar. com and the Antiwar.com blog are being added to our links. Antiwar.com is the premier site for anti intervention news in the country.

A New Link

I have decided to link to Michael J Totten's Middle East Journal. I doubt Mr. Toten will be all that excited about this. He was, after all, interviewed by uber warblogger Hugh Hewitt in friendly style.

So why the link. I read Mr. Totten's posts about Beirut and Hezbollah and they buttress the Neutralist's position that our involvement in the labyrinthe that is the Middle East is a ridiculous waste of time.

He appears to be a brave and insane lad doing what he is doing. I wish him great luck and long life.

The Faux Conservative War Policy

Mr. Quin Hillyer over at The American Spectator has written:

"Support President Bush's expected call for a troop "surge" in Iraq. It is impossible to be a true conservative and, at the same time, to accept defeat in a military endeavor in a key strategic area of the world. Forget the arguments about whether we were wise to topple Saddam or not in the first place. (We were right, by the way.) The fact is that we are there now, and if we don't secure the peace, we will have lost, and the loss will have horrific repercussions for stability in the Middle East and for American standing in the world. Every other option on the table (other than a troop surge) is, in effect, a strategy for managing a defeat, rather than for securing a victorious peace. Those other strategies are therefore unacceptable. Utterly unacceptable. And cowardly to boot."

Mr. Hillyer is very good at forgetting and he wants you to be as well. He forgets that the war was not sold to topple Saddam (that is what he wants you to forget the arguments about), but on WMDs. He does want you to remember, we are there now and we have to win or you are no conservative and you are a coward.

So we have to have the surge. The surge, and if it does not work? Well, that he does not address.

The big problem with the article is that Mr. Hillyer has no idea of what a conservative is when it comes to war and foreign policy. The only true conservative policy is the defense of hearth and home. Saddam was Iraq's problem not ours and the WMD scare was a scam. Is Mr. Hillyer so ignorant that he has never heard of the real conservative policy. John Quincy Adams said: "America is the friend of liberty everywhere but the guarantor only of our own."

I am in most things libertarian and when not libertarian, reactionary. In foreign and military affairs, I am conservative. JQA is still my Secretary of State.

I searched for a bio of Quin and found some. It does not say if he has any military experience. I don't know if he is a reservist and will be called up to participate in the surge. If he is not, then he should weigh his words before he throws around "cowardly," as he is all for others putting themselves in danger.

Hat tip to Clark Stooksbury