Posted on 06/22/2006 7:29:19 AM PDT by Cincinnatus
With apologies to Harry Turtledove, consider if you will this alternate history scenario:
Franklin D. Roosevelt, out of great consideration for his wife's uncle Teddy and never being one to avoid political expediency when the opportunity presents itself, joins the Republican Party and is elected President of the United States in 1936, soundly whupping one term wonder Alfred E. Smith who is widely perceived to have brought on the Great Depression by his misguided policies of international neutrality, hard liquor and First Saturday novenas.
With the return of Prohibition, the nation's productivity soars and the Depression is soon over. FDR sweeps to re-election victory in 1940. His opponent, Sen. Joseph P. Kennedy of Massachusetts, having carried no states, concedes defeat in a rather nasty farewell press conference at which his second wife Gloria bursts into tears just as the newsreel cameras zoom in for a closeup.
Then, on December 7, 1941, a date that will live in infamy, the United States of America is suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
The war then proceeds as you have seen it on the History Channel.
In 1944 FDR narrowly defeats Sen. Harry S. Truman and is sworn in the following January for an unprecedented third term. A routine Senate resolution congratulating the President sparks a mini-filibuster, much to the chagrin of Vice President Robert A. Taft.
SENATOR KENNEDY:
Lies, lies, lies! That's all we have gotten from this administration! It's been over three years, three long, bloody years since we suffered a surprise attack on our naval forces in Hawaii, and believe me I support the troops, and what has President Roosevelt done about it?Hirohito is still at large!
His armed forces wander the Pacific with impunity! He grows stronger every day! We are no closer to catching him than we were on December 6, 1941!
So what does this president do?
Does he make any effort to go after our sworn enemy?
NOOOO!
Instead he decides to invade FRANCE! Our oldest ALLY, Mr. President! A country that has NEVER done us any harm! A country against whom we have no complaint, and yet here we are, slaughtering innocent women and children and civilians. For what? Where is the honor? Where is the glory?
No, this president is just engaged in some sick, sick, sick super-macho effort to make up for what happened in 1917-18.
It appears to me that the Roosevelt family is engaging is some sort of personal feud, trying to even up the score with our long-dead glorious president, that great Democrat Woodrow Wilson who led our nation to victory after the country soundly rejected Mr. Bull Moose Roosevelt, a man who though a little wacky at least wore the uniform of his country on a battlefield.
Does this chicken-hawk President, who spent the last war in a cushy, privileged government job, think leaving thousands of bodies on Omaha Beach makes him some kind of San Juan Hill hero?
SICK, Mr. President. SICK! SICK! SICK!
I ask you, Mr. President, did we find Hirohito under a rock in Normandy? Was he hiding in a church in Ste. Mere Eglise? Was he in Paris? Was he at The Bulge?
OOPS! We can't talk about The Bulge, can we Mr. President? Your Secretary of War certainly bungled that one, didn't he? And by the way, why hasn't he been removed?
Why can't this administration ever, ever admit its mistakes?
How many lives, Mr. President? How many of our boys are going to be killed fighting the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Sure, we all admit this Hitler character may not be the nicest guy in the world, but what did he ever do to us?
Why are we fighting this war? I say, let the people of Europe sort out their own differences. If they prefer dictatorship to democracy, and it's pretty clear that they do, what business is that of ours?
And, oh! Where are these so-called super-weapons that General Marshall warned us about? I haven't seen any. NOR HAS ANYBODY ELSE!
They never existed, did they?
No jet planes, no jumbo-bombs.
Was this just another LIE to drag us into an endless war in Europe, a bottomless quagmire, while across the Pacific the Emperor is laughing in his japants?
Mr. President, I DEMAND that we pull our troops out of Europe NOW!
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