The American Spectator

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Remedial History

7.18.08 @ 12:01AM

HISTORICALLY CHALLENGED
Re: Philip Klein's Forgetting the Forgotten War:

Some weeks ago, I named and described him as "Obama the Exempt." That nickname gets more apt every day. Mr. Klein has just expanded it to include exemption from respecting the facts of History.

Who's surprised? Raise your hand.
-- A. C. Santore

In the Korean War, the party out of power (Republicans then) did exactly what the out-party (Democrats) attempted to do during the Iraq War: use the general unpopularity of war, any war, to get itself into power, never mind what was at stake. The Korean War and the U.S. aim to build South Korea into a free, prosperous nation were a spectacular success, right next door to a miserable hellhole that was the alternative to U.S. (UN) victory. The scripts and rhetoric then are the same as now; only the party spouting them is flipped around.
-- Ty Knoy
Ann Arbor, Michigan

Mr. Klein demonstrates the incredible lightness of historical being that is Barack Obama, as manifest in a completely vacuous foreign policy speech.

At the Tehran conference of the Big 3 during WWII, Roosevelt included a statement, forced on Churchill and Stalin that glowingly promised Iranian autonomy after the War. His advance man, General Patrick J. Hurley, produced a White Paper enthusiastically detailing how Iran could be supported as a democracy in the Middle East, with American support and guarantees of independence. Truman actually used the statement of Iranian autonomy from the Tehran Conference to insist on Russian troop withdrawal from Iran after the war, the only area occupied by Russian troops from which they withdrew in the aftermath of the war. This allowed Iran to elect Mossadeq as Prime Minister. He was overthrown in 1953 in the famous coup engineered by the CIA at the behest of the British, whose oil interests had been nationalized by Mossadeq. The Shah assumed power, reluctantly, as an American surrogate, leading ultimately, with a little help from Jimmy Carter, to today's situation of an Iranian Islamic Republic characterized by totalitarian extreme religious ideology and confrontation with the West, terror support, and nuclear weapon development.

Roosevelt had planned to use Iran as a model for American support of Democracy around the world in the aftermath of WWII, a prospect that "realists" circumvented as described above, in the new Cold War. General Hurley's white paper had vigorously supported this approach to independence, autonomy, and democracy around the world as a counterbalance to totalitarian systems or prior colonialism. The sainted Dean Acheson, along with Rostow, responded to Hurley's paper, calling it "Messianic global baloney." They were completely wrong in that assessment of Hurley's paper, and had Hurley's (after Roosevelt) recommendations been followed, the situation that we confront today in Iran most likely never would have occurred. Nevertheless, Acheson's description applies very well to Obama's supposed vision of a new direction in American foreign policy.

That policy appears to be an extension of Obama's approach in Chicago, and consists of throwing money at kleptocratic regimes, just as Obama threw money at kleptocratic "real estate" functionaries in Chicago (Rezko) to provide improved housing to his constituents (except that the point was to line the pockets of cronies, never mind his constituents lived in filth in hardly habitable housing and saw no benefit whatsoever from the taxpayer money Obama threw at the problem). The same result is likely to ensue around the World with Obama's approach, one that has been tried with disastrous results for years in developing countries. His praise for the UN is laughable. NATO is a shell. The World Bank is irretrievably corrupt and does more harm than good, along with the IMF. The institutions and approaches that Obama would use have failed or are failing everywhere. The $50 billion he would spend annually within 20 years will equal what Johnson arranged to spend on poverty to end it, and the result will be at best the same, more likely far worse.

An entirely new set of institutions, such as an Organization of Democracies, with adjunct institutions promoting global security and economic development through strong military alliances and universal free trade with strong and stable currencies, along with the enlightened rule of law, is needed to supplant the UN, the World Bank, the IMF, NATO, etc., etc. Obama's approach reflects the failed policies of the past. If his is a Messianic vision for the future of the world, the world is better off in its current nightmare. He clearly has no clue regarding the type of global institutions needed at this juncture in history. He will lead the nation and the world to the conditions that fomented the global wars of the last century, and he has no capacity to win, or interest in winning any such wars. He has neither the experience, decency, common sense, let alone any grasp of international affairs, or the tenacity of a Truman, who was a vigorous cold warrior, a parsimonious Senator who decried waste in the war machine, much as John McCain does now, was a Cyrus for Israel (Obama would cashier Israel in a heartbeat if he thought it were politically advantageous), and had a profound love of country and democracy. Obama has none of these characteristics. His is simply a tired socialist-internationalist refrain that reflects failed ideology, and refuses to recognize the abject failure of that ideology world-wide, coupled with a remarkable indifference to and toleration of terrorism and corruption.
-- Kent Lyon
College Station, Texas

Mr. Klein makes many accurate observations -- in his response to Obama's adulation of Truman as a model for foreign policy -- concerning Truman's tenure as President and his creation of the blood bath that was Korea.

I would add that Mr. Truman had no qualms with dropping the "Big One," twice, on Japan even though they had already been all but bombed into submission (see the McNamara documentary, "The Fog of War"). Truman, in fact, was perhaps impatient (see David McCullough's Pulitzer prize winning biography), for the completion and development of "the bomb" so that he could put an end to the war in the Pacific. An act that the likes of Barry Obama would, in all probability, shamefully apologize for today.

Germany had already surrendered "unconditionally" and it was not until after the dropping of "the bombs" that Japan was willing to do the same. It may have been nothing more than this one condition of "unconditionality" that was the biggest factor in destroying tens of thousands of Japanese lives. What say you, Big O.
-- Jim Jackson

Obama definitely follows Truman's dictum of "The Buck Stops Here" religiously. In Obama's case the buck stops with the people he tosses under the bus.

As for the inconvenience of recalling the Korean War and Truman, Obama has a ready stock response: "That is not the Truman I knew."
-- Wolf Terner
Fair Lawn, New Jersey

GENTLEMANLY DISCOURSE
Re: Quin Hillyer's Who's Number Two?:

Letter to the Editor

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