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To: GreenLanternCorps

Yes, you do.

FDR was the American leader who saved the world.
Had America actually listened to the Republican Isolationists of the time and implemented their policies against rearmament, and against the draft, etc., America would have lost the Second World War.

On the biggest of the big issues, the greatest and most dangerous war in human history, FDR was THE leader who saved the world. It was indirect, but nevertheless he saved Britain. Indirectly, he saved Russia. Directly, he had the atomic bomb built. Directly, he drove forward the military preparations that had the US ready for war.

And when the time came to decide where, and when, and how, and who, once again he was dead on.

FDR was a great President.
Had there been no war, he would have been simply a left-winger. And had there been no war, George Washington would have been simply a tobacco farmer.
But there was a war, and he saved the world.
Let's not lose the forest for the trees here.

Dislike his economics if you must, but look at how he handled the war, and remember, he is the LAST PRESIDENT to get it right. When the time came, he stood before Congress and demanded a formal Declaration of War, meaning that the country could not go back, meaning that opposing the war after that was sedition, meaning that the press could be muzzled to prevent defeating morale, meaning that the political opposition could not use opposition to the war as a platform, meaning that those who deserted the military and ran away were put to death, meaning that potential enemies inside the US were rounded up and put in camps, and captured spies were put to death.

THAT is how you fight a war. THAT is what the Constitution demands. FDR was the last President to obey the US Constitution when he took America to war. And THAT is why he was a greater war leader than Truman, or Eisenhower, or Kennedy or LBJ or Nixon or Reagan or either Bush. If you go to war without a Declaration of War, you set the country up for defeat. You'd think we would have learnt that by now.

FDR was the last President to obey the Constitution when it came to the war power.
We won decisively.

Since then, no President has gone to Congress and asked for a DoW before committing forces. And we've fought to draws or defeat, able to win battles, but never achieving our strategic objectives...because the naysayers at home can still bloviate. With a DoW, they are legally silenced. Sedition is illegal in time of war.

Too bad we don't just emulate FDR when it comes to war.
Declare it.
Forcibly silence domestic opposition.
Imprison enemy nationals and don't let them go.
Demand unconditional surrender.
Firebomb resisting cities and rip the guts out of enemy populations that support your enemies.
He got it right.
We have it wrong.


27 posted on 09/30/2005 2:25:15 PM PDT by Vicomte13 (Et alors?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | View Replies ]


To: Vicomte13

He got it right.
We have it wrong.

Guess again. While he was arming Uncle Joe in Russia
he left Americans high and dry in the Pacific, one
result, the Batan Death March.


30 posted on 09/30/2005 2:53:01 PM PDT by SoCalPol (More Died At Chappaquiddic than Guantanamo)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 27 | View Replies ]

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