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We have not yet reached a Harry Truman v Douglas MacArthur moment in Washington — the extraordinary day in April 1951 when the US President fired his top general for disagreeing with him on his Korean War policy. Yet this much is now clear: a potential battle now looms between Barack Obama and his top generals over Afghanistan that could define, even destroy, his presidency. After only nine months as Commander-in-Chief, President Obama has reached a critical point in determining whether to order a surge of additional troops into Afghanistan. It is a strategy that is being demanded by General...

How Will We Judge the Korean War in a Century? [...] What I am arguing is will this be the consensus twenty years from today (or forty years after this article was written). I mean, yes, most ordinary South Koreans enjoys such material prosperity that probably only a select few and I mean a very select few in North Korea could only begin to dream about. I am saying that had the Korean War run its course without intervention from the United States (or equivalently had Harry S. Truman not settled on a policy, the Truman Doctrine, where not winning...

U.S. naivete not only wrongly interfered with the natural development of East Asia, but in particular with respect to Korea, the greatest tragedy was that by the U.S. interfering in what was basically a civil war, the peninsula saw all the carnage and destructionthat would've played out anyways had the U.S. not interfered, but the wardid nothing to unify the nation ("Containment"). Moreover, the perverse state that North Korea finds herself to be in is a direct result of the natural order of things being prevented from occurring. Other Sinic nations experienced similar bouts of reconciliation, but with the fruits...

Today marks the 64th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb by the United States on Japan, August 6, 1945. The decision by President Harry Truman to drop the bomb has been roundly criticized by revisionist historians and others on the Left. Some have even gone so far as to call Truman a "war criminal" for doing so. They could not be more wrong. The United States had already suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties at the hands of Japan, in a war Japan started. The Japanese had shown in battle after battle their willingness to fight to...

The trouble with many of the past ratings of America's presidents is that the "consensus" has been arrived at by academics who act alike, do alike, and think alike. In the view of many, they are suspect of viewing history exclusively through the prism of Ivy League faculty lounge discourse. Alvin Stephen Felzenberg (Ph.D.) — who has taken a fresh and comprehensive look at the nation's chief executives in his book The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn't): Rethinking the Presidential Rating Game — does not challenge the credentials of the conventional historians. Rather, as he explains in...

Bill covers the WW2 nuke bombing of Japan. Video at the link...

"Here's what I think of the atom bombs. I think if you dropped an atom bomb fifteen miles offshore and you said, "The next one's coming and hitting you," then I would think it's okay. To drop it on a city, and kill a hundred thousand people. Yeah. I think that's criminal."

A follow-up to Wednesday night’s Kinsleyan gaffe: He’s sorry, he’s just not sure why he’s sorry. The closest we get to an explanation is that the decision to drop the bomb was “complicated,” but of course that’s why Cliff May brought it up — to draw a parallel with the decision to waterboard terrorists. The moral calculus about how far to go in roughing up jihadis to save how many lives is difficult, as was the calculus about how many lives would be saved in the long run by incinerating Japanese kids in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war....

Although historians have debated the issue for decades, Jon Stewart has no question about this controversial matter: former President Harry S. Truman is a war criminal for dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945.

It comes at about the 5:50 mark. Cliff May asks Stewart whether Truman's use of the atomic bomb was a war crime, Stewart ruminates and then responds with an unequivocal "yes." He's certainly not the only American who would take that view, but it's a useful reminder that the most vocal and popular criticism of the Bush administration's war on terror policies comes from people who, if they were being as honest as Stewart, would also judge Lincoln (suspension of habeas), FDR (internment), and Truman (use of nuclear weapons) as war criminals or tyrants or worse. Stewart repeats the charge...

Via Goldfarb, the key exchange comes at around 5:50. Hundreds of thousands of lives saved by averting a U.S. invasion of the Japanese home islands, and all this tool can do is point a finger and mumble “yes” in response to whether Truman’s a war criminal or not. Behold the face of mindless anti-torture absolutism. Like what you see?

In August 1951, with a little more than a year left to Harry S. Truman's presidency, historian Henry Steele Commager published an essay in Look magazine with this prediction: "By all normal standards, [Truman's] Administration has been one of almost . . . unparalleled success . . . the verdict of history will not be the same as the verdict of contemporary critics." At the time, Truman's popularity hovered in the low 20s and most Americans considered his presidency a failure. Look's editors even published a note declaring "doubts" about "whether history will accord Harry S. Truman as generous a...

Poe: "They are leftists, dedicated to overthrowing our Constitutional system," and "they will go to any length to conceal their radicalism from the public." Understanding the Alinsky Method of "Community Organizing" Written by Bob Dill Sep 24, 2008 at 12:00 AM Meet the Real Obama and Cult of Alinsky " The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1:9 KJV) It is becoming readily apparent that the "change" being proposed vaguely by Sen. Barack Obama is...

After his breathtaking victory against Thomas Dewey in the 1948 election, President Truman dove headfirst into his second term. Unfortunately, he would find this term quite different from the first, which was filled, for the most part, with great successes but increasing unpopularity among the American people. The Rise of Communism The vast majority of Truman's second term would consist of the very beginning of that pseudo-conflict which would remain present in America's consciousness for nearly four more decades - the Cold War. It didn't take long after the end of World War II for America to realize that the...

<p>CNN's Election Center 2008 hosts an Election Tracker that allows you to view their company's most up to the minute predictions. As of early morning Election Day, CNN had Obama winning at 51%, McCain with 44% and leaving 5% of voters ready to cast their ballot claiming to be 'unsure'. CNN also allows you to predict the election yourself by giving you the CNN ELECTORAL MAP CALCULATOR. In this function you predict the outcome by selecting states you think either candidate will win. This could be something fun to do with family, friend or co-workers.</p>

ContentType:Spot Development; ContentElement:FullStory; Breaking:True; By MIKE GLOVER and DAVID ESPO Associated Press Writers DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Despite John McCain's prediction of an upset, Barack Obama reached for a landslide Friday, invading his rival's home state with TV ads and building a lead in early voting in key battlegrounds as the presidential race headed into a hectic final weekend. McCain charged that Obama, bidding to become the first black president, "began his campaign in the liberal left lane of politics and has never left it. He's more liberal than a senator who calls himself a socialist," he added in...

HOW MCCAIN COULD PULL OFF A FINAL WEEK UPSET What does McCain have to do to pull off a similar shift this time? 1. Use the stock market crash to highlight the tax issue. With the Dow Jones dropping each day by hundreds of points, this election is being held against a backdrop of economic fear unlike any since the Depression. Almost every reputable economist agrees that it would be catastrophic to add to the economy's woes by raising the capital gains tax. But Obama is on record as favoring an increase from 15% to 20% and suggested during the...

WV4Hillary Presidential Member = >1000 Posts Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 1,453 Poster Rank: #87 (Oct. 26, 2008): Dewey v Truman: Holy Crap, Read This!! (Really) Replace: Truman = McCain Dewey = Obama Republican Controlled Congress = Democrat Controlled Congress Republican = Democrat and vice versa Given Truman's sinking popularity and the seemingly fatal three-split in the Democratic Party, Dewey appeared unbeatable. Top Republicans believed that all their candidate had to do to win was to avoid major mistakes; in keeping with this advice, Dewey carefully avoided risks. He spoke in platitudes, avoided controversial issues, and was vague on what...

For the past sixty years, whenever a presidential candidate is down in the polls days before Election Day, Harry Truman's victory in 1948 inevitable comes up. Of all the comebacks, Truman's still ranks as the most startling, down to the premature headline published by the staunch Republican media mogul Robert McCormick's Chicago Tribune the day after the election: "Dewey Defeats Truman!" A month before the election, Thomas Dewey, the Republican governor of New York, had a double digit lead over Truman. Most pollsters simply stopped polling, believing that voters made their minds up well before Election Day. Of the 50...

Five weeks and one vice-presidential debate after joining the Republican ticket, Sarah Palin is not going away. As she proved Thursday night in St. Louis, for those who hoped to make her Dan Quayle, she is not obliging. Already she is rewriting the conventional wisdom that says running mates can only hurt, not help a ticket. Her appeal recalls that of Harry Truman, another vice-presidential selection whom opponents discounted at their peril. Not long to politics, Palin's story is relatively short. She was a two-term city council member and then two-term mayor of small town Wasilla, Alaska. In 2006, she...