"Inconsolable that their pleas to "work through" the U.N. did not stop Bush from invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein, now all the Democrats are eager for the U.N. to get involved so it can wreck the rebuilding process. Since we didn't let the U.N. lose the war for us, the least we can do is let them screw up the peace. The idea that we would involve those swine in the postwar occupation of Iraq is so preposterous that it's under serious consideration as next week's slogan for the Howard Dean campaign. I hesitate to raise it to the level of a serious argument by offering a rebuttal, but as luck would have it, we have two models for how to occupy a country after a war. Getting "the allies" involved is not the winning model.
"After World War II, the United States ran the Japanese occupation unilaterally. Without the meddling of other nations, the Japanese occupation went off without a hitch. Within five years, Gen. Douglas MacArthur had imposed a constitutional democracy on Japan with a bicameral legislature, a bill of rights and an independent judiciary. Now the only trouble Japan causes is its insistence on selling good products to Americans at cheap prices. By contrast, the German occupation was run as liberals would like to run postwar Iraq – a joint affair among "the Allies," the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union. It took 45 years to clean up the mess that created."
Great post, JH2...MUD
"...As the United States goes into its full stride, we must always be on guard against misconceptions which will arise naturally or which will be planted among us by our enemies. We must guard against complacency. We must not underrate the enemy. He is powerful and cunning-and cruel and ruthless. He will stop at nothing which gives him a chance to kill and to destroy. He has trained his people to believe that their highest perfection is achieved by waging war. For many years he has prepared for this very conflict-planning, plotting, training, arming, fighting. ... We may suffer further setbacks. We must face the fact of a hard war, a long war, a bloody war, a costly war. We must guard against defeatism. That has been one of the chief weapons of Hitler's propaganda machine-used time and again with deadly results. It will not be used successfully on the American people. We must guard against divisions among ourselves and among all the other United Nations. We must be particularly vigilant against racial discrimination in any of its ugly forms. Hitler will try again to breed mistrust and suspicion between one individual and another, one group and another, one race and another, one government and another. He will try to use the same technique of falsehood and rumor-mongering with which he divided France from Britain He is trying to do this with us even now. But he will find a unity of will and purpose against him, which will persevere until the destruction of all his black designs upon the freedom and safety of the people of the world. We cannot wage this war in a defensive spirit. As our power and our resources are fully mobilized, we shall carry the attack against the enemy-we shall hit him and hit him again wherever and whenever we can reach him. We must keep him far from our shores, for we intend to bring this battle to him on his own home grounds..."
Thanks for finding this, BL...FDR was a Socialist vis a vis domestic policy, but he made a pretty decent Commander-in-Chief, imho. Hopefully, Dubyuh has higher aspirations fer hisself...MUD