Posted on 09/14/2006 4:41:47 AM PDT by Molly Pitcher
I knew that Jay Rockefeller was a U.S. senator from West Virginia, but before now I had no idea what a seer the man is.
Not only can Rockefeller peer into the future and confidently tell us how it turns out, but he can turn the clock back to the past, specifically March of 2003, and, like a projectionist putting on an alternate reel, show us the better future that might have been.
If only the United States and its allies had not invaded Iraq, Swami Rockefeller explains, the world would be a better place today - even if Saddam Hussein were still in power.
How's he figure that? Well, Saddam "wasn't going to attack us. He would've been isolated there. He would have been in control of that country but we wouldn't have depleted our resources. ..." It's all right there, in the senator's crystal ball.
But two can play at this purely speculative game. Let's turn the clock back to 1936 and ask what would have happened if the West, instead of appeasing Hitler when he started his campaign of aggression by seizing the Rhineland, had stood up to him.
Suppose an Allied expeditionary force had crossed the Rhine early on and deposed Der Feuhrer in a blitzkrieg of its own ... but then found itself bogged down in a guerrilla war, having to fend off suicide bombings, improvised explosive devices, and attacks on the freely elected government that had replaced the brownshirts. Who knows what would have happened?
But surely this much is certain: Some isolationist senator with Rockefeller's gift for second-guessing would have risen to explain how much safer the world would have been if only we had let Hitler stay in power, obnoxious little irritant that he might be. After all, "he wasn't going to attack us. He would've been isolated there. He would have been in control of that country but we wouldn't have depleted our resources. ..."
But as it happens, the free world did appease Herr Hitler. Again and again, until it was almost too late. And we all know the result: the most disastrous war in the history of the world.
Back in the present, the president of the United States continues to speak out for his strategy in this war on terror, or whatever History in its wisdom/hindsight, will call it.
Was the president's address from the Oval Office this week political? He was accorded the airtime on the major networks because it wasn't supposed to be political-and in the narrow, partisan sense, it may not have been.
PB
But it was certainly a political speech in the broader sense, laying out the president's grand strategy in this contentious conflict. In particular, his address to the nation emphasized his faith in freedom as the best defense against a fanatical enemy, one as devoted to violence and tyranny over others as the fascist movements of the last century.
Reasonable men may agree or disagree with the president's policy, but fair-minded Americans will recognize his sincerity. For there is no reason other than honest belief for this president to pursue a course that has imperiled his popularity and divided the country.
George W. Bush could have laid back, temporized just as his immediate predecessors did, and allowed Saddam Hussein to remain in power in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. He could have treated terrorism, even on a 9/11 scale, as a matter of law enforcement rather than war. Instead, he has moved boldly against a great and growing threat.
The presidency of George W. Bush could turn out as tragically as Lyndon Johnson's or Woodrow Wilson's, other presidential idealists. Much depends on the patience and perseverance of the American people. Or he may yet prove as far-sighted as Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan in understanding the threat to the free world in their time.
But this president's continuing to plead his case, and his refusal to swerve from its basic justification, even in difficult times and as the leader of an increasingly divided nation, testifies to his honest convictions. One need not share those convictions to recognize that the man has some. And will fight for them.
Pretty good article, except I have a hard time thinking of Lyndon Johnson as an "idealist."
Paul Greenberg, the one sane Arkansas voice!!!!!!!
Bold response is something that todays Democrats know little about. Cut and Run, Surrender, appease, Isolate, these are the attitudes and words of todays Democrat party.
HA! So true...I can see it a little, tho...let's say...he used practical, i.e. bullying, in his case, tactics to advance his ideals??
considering this 'RED' state elects the likes of Rockefeller and Byrd, I have no problem believing the stereotyping of WV as being populated by cousin and sibling fornicators.(and that coming from someone who's neighbors elected Hitlery and 'Putzhead' Schumer)
That pretty much summarizes the platform of the Democrat Party in the 1930's.
BTW, there is some interesting information some of the Third Reich's secret weapons programs at Luft '46 including plans for the development of a suborbital rocket bomber called "Silverbird" (aka Amerika Bomber). Development of the liquid fueled rocket motors for this aircraft started in the 1930's.
Some of my lines go back to upstate New York Dutch, and Nantucket Is. Quakers...cousin marrying cousin exists in both lines: "Yankee" to the core
Families were interested in preserving property and status, plus there was the common problem of availability....
sorry, but I just had to insert a little reality and history here...
A excerpt of a phone conversation with LBJ and Joe Haggar of Haggar slacks:
LBJ: Now the pockets, when you sit down, everything falls out, your money, your knife, everything, so I need at least another inch in the pockets. And another thing - the crotch, down where your nuts hang - is always a little too tight, so when you make them up, give me an inch that I can let out there, uh because they cut me, it's just like riding a wire fence. These are almost, these are the best I've had anywhere in the United States,
JH: Fine
LBJ: But, uh when I gain a little weight they cut me under there. So, leave me , you never do have much of margin there. See if you can't leave me an inch from where the zipper (burps) ends, round, under my, back to my bunghole, so I can let it out there if I need to.
JH: Right
LBJ: Now be sure you have the best zippers in them. These are good that I have. If you get those to me I would sure be grateful
JH: Fine, Now where would you like them sent please?
LBJ: White House.
HA HA!
OK.
I believe that falls in the category of "too much information."
Yes maybe but it is REAL and you can read it ALL here or listen to the tape....I saw it on Public TV around 10 years ago.
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/prestapes/lbj_haggar.html
Oh, I believed it was real...it's just so...well....ICKY!
the world would be a better place today - even if Saddam Hussein were still in power.How's he figure that? Well, Saddam "wasn't going to attack us. He would've been isolated there. He would have been in control of that country but we wouldn't have depleted our resources. ..." It's all right there, in the senator's crystal ball.
"The world" is a bigger place than just US (U.S.). "We" might have seen no further attacks on our interests (or the "insurgents" might have just flooded into Afghanistan and Israel). How many more Iraqis would Saddam and his sons have raped, tortured, abused, and murdered? Maybe we should ask CNN since they knew of such horrors but kept quiet about them to maintain their Baghdad bureau under Saddam. I sincerly hope that CNN executives are put on trial in Iraq after Saddam for their accomplice to his crimes.
George W. Bush could have laid back, temporized just as his immediate predecessors did, and allowed Saddam Hussein to remain in power in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. He could have treated terrorism, even on a 9/11 scale, as a matter of law enforcement rather than war. Instead, he has moved boldly against a great and growing threat.
CASE IN POINT:
An Interview With Bill Clinton (long) (The Atlantic Monthly - March 2003)
The '91 authority gave them [the current Bush Administration] authority to take military action. But they can't do it now because we're under these '98 restrictions on the inspections, which had been accepted. We need to be trying to deal with the substance, the product, which is the chemical and biological weapons and the nuclear program. But the process [is] needed to further international cooperation and do it within the context of trying to build the UN. Because if you just do the first without the second, the price would be truly extraordinary.Now, on the occupation thing, I have a slightly different take. [From the Atlantic cover "The Fifty-first State," which he is pointing at.] My view is that we ought to be there but it really ought to be as internationalized as possible. Just like we did in Kosovo. Including the Russians and OPFOR [opposing force] and whatever. Let everybody do it. Probably they ought to guarantee the oil contracts. But, I've reached the... and, maybe, I know that.... It's a funny thing when you're not in office anymore. You don't do the security briefings. You have to understand. It requires a little humility. In some ways your vision is clearer, because you see the big things clearer. But in other ways your vision is cloudier, because you may miss the exigencies of the moment. So whenever I offer a judgment I try to show some humility, because I know that some things I see more clearly than I did when I was in, but some things I'm quite sure I don't see as clearly.
But I'm pretty sure this is the right thing to do. Press ahead with this thing, try to.... We knew when we did the bombing in '98 that we hit all the known or suspected sites based on the intelligence we had, from all the people that were doing that work there. We knew at the time that we had set his program back a couple years. But sooner or later in the millennium the new Administration, whether it was Gore's or Bush's, would have to take this matter up again.
the world would be a better place today - even if Saddam Hussein were still in power.
How's he figure that? Well, Saddam "wasn't going to attack us. He would've been isolated there. He would have been in control of that country but we wouldn't have depleted our resources. ..." It's all right there, in the senator's crystal ball.
He wasn't isolated....remember "oil for food", paying suicide bombers in Israel, and the no-fly zones?
Let's turn the clock back FURTHER to 1915. Let's say that the US followed George Washington's advice and stayed clear of 'entangling foreign alliances,' and stayed the hell out of WWI. What would have happened?
The lines would have stalemated and a cease-fire would eventually have been reached. Neither Germany nor France could sustain much more in the way of casualties, so the war simply peters out with new national boundaries drawn. The stalemate means the disastrous Treaty of Versailles never happens, and no Weimar Republic ever exists. Germany's economy doesn't tank, and so the National Socialist party never comes to power on a platform of German strength and national pride.
World War II doesn't ever happen, at least not in Europe. There is every possibility that the US, allied with all of Europe (and possibly Japan), fights against the Soviet Union. More importantly, the Holocaust never happens. No Holocaust means no state of Israel, which means no 'Palestinian' problem, and no Arab-Israeli problem.
I'm currently writing the outline for an alternate history novel based on just such a scenario.
Hindsight - sometimes 80/200
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