Thanks for pointing me to

F. D. R.’s undeclared war, 1939-1941 by T. R Fehrenbach

I have located it thru our local library system and put in a hold request.

Modern America is rightly known for sex-drugs-rock & roll and materialism. It is less well known that a citizen (in rural Wisconsin, anyway) can locate virtually any publication via the internet and have it delivered to his local libary within a week or so. What a great country!

BTW – is this kind of library service available in most parts of the U.S.?

Only a arm chair liberal who does not operate in the real world could think like this.

Any farmer knows that if he is going to get the cow milked in the evening he must find the cow where it is. Not where he thinks it is.

1. That a stable, pluralistic democracy can be created in Iraq with our help within a reasonable time, after which we can leave and the democracy will continue;

2. Once implanted in Iraq, democracy will tend to spread throughout the rest of the Muslim Middle East;

3. As democracy spreads throughout the Muslim Middle East, Muslims will have new hope for a bright peaceful future, and so the threat of Islamic terrorism will recede.

Each of those propositions is highly debatable. I see that some other posters have already cast doubt on proposition #1 and perhaps #2 as well. The new empowerment of Iran and the apparent formation of an Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis is casting further doubt on proposition #2. And the “democratic” victory of HAMAS in the Palestinian elections, even though HAMAS is a deadly anti-Western terrorist organization, certainly casts doubt on proposition #3. So does the rise of native-born jihadism in Western democracies. The London 7/7 bombers were not seduced by the trappings of democracy to abandon jihadism. Melanie Phillips’ book “Londonistan” suggests that even the world’s oldest democracy, Britain, can be an incubator of Islamic terrorism rather than an antidote to it.

Yet for the Iraq War to still be worth our commitment, all three of these propositions must be true.

I am also a big fan of Robert Spencer and his work.

I think Dr. Bruce Thornton, a colleague of Dr. Hanson at CSU Fresno, also would agree with TBranin, given Dr. Thornton’s views on radical Islam in his articles on Dr. Hanson’s Private Papers site.

Still, I think Dr. Hanson’s views are mostly correct, and I still consider him my favorite historian, but I think he is a bit too naive and idealistic about the prospects of a democratic Iraq. Mark Steyn, whom I also like, I will put in the same category–though I think he’s very funny and profound anyway, as G.K. Chesterton was in the 1910-30s.

I’m not saying that the Iraq War is lost; I’m saying that the idea of a truly democratic Iraq is lost. Iraq is doomed to chaos, but it won’t be because of us, but because of an imperialistic religion that, as TBranin said above, is “inherently incompatible” with democracy.

P.S. I’m not a neocon turncoat; I’ve been skeptical of the nation-building idea from the start.

–Eric

In response to your question about the US anti-war movement prior to our involvement, read FDR’s Undeclared War 1939-1941 by T.R. Fehrenback. It’s out of print but can be found on Amazon and possibly your local library. It’s well worth tracking down.

However, even if this does not work for whatever reason, do you foresee us leaving such a vital area to the rule of the mob?

You make a very good point that the triangulation of the left has really enabled the executive to loosen the rules of engagement. I view this as a positive step and wish it would have been done sooner…knowing all the while the western media would only accept it if the US were basically at the point of knuckling under. How strange. Please comment on why we feel the need to defeat ourselves. It is clear that our enemy does not care if civilians die, in fact he targets them. Yet we continue to beat ourselves up for every last little mistake when we make every effort not to kill the innocent.

Lastly, please comment on whether Mr. al Sadr should be exempted from attack. In my view (a simplistic one), he is our enemy since his cohorts are targeting US soldiers.

In 1809, during the Napoleonic Wars, the British were forced into a Dunkirk-like evacuation from Corunna, Spain. After this defeat, pressure was exerted on the British gov’t to evacuate all remaining forces from the Iberian Peninsula. Those advocating withdrawal included the commander of British forces still in Portugal (Gen. Craddock), other senior military personnel, many statesmen and large numbers of the public.

Furtunately, Sir Arthur Wellesley (later Duke of Wellington, victor of Waterloo) had a radically different approach. ” ‘I have always been of the opinion that Portugal might be defended, whatever might be the result of the contest in Spain.’ Wellesley believed that a British force of 30,000 and support for the Portugese Army should both safeguard Portugal from invasion and ‘as long as the contest should continue in Spain… would be highly useful to the Spaniards, and might eventually decide the contest’.

The British gov’t followed Wellesley’s recommendations. The result was a disaster – not for the British, but for Napoleon.

“For the first six months of 1941 the far-left wing of the Democratic Party sounded a lot like the Lindberg Right. The former were alleging that reactionaries were pushing the United States into an imperialistic war against a mostly benign Germany that had won the confidence of the progressive Soviets…”

Can VDH and/or one of the readers point me in the right direction for further research on this topic? I believe that the only reason we didn’t have an “anti-war” movement in WWII is that we were allied with Joe Stalin. However, I have not been able to come up with actual documentation about the actions of the left during the period of WWII prior to Hitler’s invasion of the USSR.

Thanks.

Might it be that history shows that pacifism and appeasement are the natural default states for democracies? If so then one should not be hard on liberals for lacking any intellectual rigor. To keep up the fight until the goal is reached is essentially Christian in nature and unnatural.

I notice also that National Review Online has taken a distinct turn to the left. They are advertising Dinesh D’Souza’s book which is about as wrong about Islam as could be. At any rate, I notice that Professor Hanson did not publish there this past week.

God bless!