COMMENTS:
Voted : No, surely there must have been a bigger debacle at some point
The implementation of the income tax and the Federal Reserve system in 1913 was when this great land became just another puppet for the international bankers.
pretty accurate assessment.
by LCD on Wed Dec 06, 06 9:54am
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Voted : No, surely there must have been a bigger debacle at some point
It has been a waste, but consider:
--maintenance of slavery by the Constitutional Convention
--the Civil War & failed Reconstruction
--the U.S. intervention in WW I & Wilson's meddling (that set up WW II)
--the failure to successfully unite with Europe to support the "whites" against the Bolshevik forces in 1917-1921 Russia
--the failure to prevent the USSR occupation of Eastern Europe
--the failure to prevent the communist takeover of China
--Vietnam and the succeeding fall of Indochina and almost of Thailand and the Philippines in the early 1970's.
Lots of strategic debacles, political and military, could make your list, El Gore-do.
Except that only the Iraq War may be the debacle that signals the end of the economic and political domination that the U.S. has enjoyed for the last 100 years, or so. And possibly usher in World War III.
A big mistake, but the Civil War was a bigger mistake.
Iraq will not be the cause of U.S. economic or social decline. A changing geopolitical landscape, increased economic competition and vastly improved communications links, and very bad U.S. fiscal policy (causing abandonment of the dollar as preeminent world currency) have been ongoing long before Iraq & have not been exacerbated by it by more than a few degrees. World War III? Who's starting it and who's sustaining it? We lose a few thousand men and our collective ass is whipped. We're headed home to sob in the corner soon. China has no reason to intervene--just make oil deals later. Basically, Iran grabs some territory, there's a fizzled attempt at a low-level civil war, and Kurdistan remains a permanent non-country unless Iran and Turkey agree to carve it up amicably.
I think Al Gore-do is the whiniest bastard on the planet. he just seethes at the fact that Curious Dubya will always be seen as having demolished his political career.
Felix: How about the The Heidi Game (16 Nov 68).
I see the American Civil War as inevitable. The war in Iraq was a consequence of the hubris of GWB. The Civil War, though tragic, was a necessary evil and defined the United States. In the scheme of events, the Civil War was not even close to the mistake of Bush's debacle in Iraq.
Elvislennon:
The Civil War was a debacle, pure and simple, regardless of whether or not it was avoidable. It led to the loss of about a quarter of the male population of the Southern states, complete destruction of the Southern economy and infrastructure, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of slaves directly and indirectly because of the war, and the death of half a million Federal forces. It caused suffering to millions who did not benefit significantly from slavery. It was an unconstitutional war, as seccession as a state right found in the original Articles of Confederation was never abrogated by the Constutution. It was not a wae about slavery to the Federals as most were indifferent and it was not a war aim until late in the war and one convenient added.
In the end, Reconstruction was a gigantic orgy of looting and corruption enforced by military occupation. When it was politically expedient, the North abandoned the South to its own devices: with a wrecked economy, with an even more entrenched system of racism, and embracing a ferocious sectionalism as politics.
Sounds like an utter disaster to me.
Felix:
The Civil War was about slavery, pure and simple.
And the disenfranchisement of blacks, Jim Crow, and all the rest, was the responsibility of Southerners, pure and simple.
Cranky:
I can name at least two dozen historians, not of the "Lost Cause" school, who would find that "pure and simple" statement to be utter bunk. Most recently, I'd recommend AWAY DOWN SOUTH: A HISTORY OF SOUTHERN IDENTITY by Professor James C. Cobb, as published by a small little regional press called Oxford University Press. Probably the one in Mississippi, eh?
Oh, and by your logic, we should have just gone and off and left the Germans and Japanese to sort things out on their own after World War II, right? Save the Radical Republicans, by the early 1870's the North was all about "exit strategy."
Voted : If it's not the worst, it's pretty damn close
The ramifications of this misadventure is vastly underestimated...since we are still in the forest we can't see the trees...but when the dust settles and the smoke clears this Country will have lost far more than can be accessed at this point in time...
Felix:
Slavery revisionism isn't quite as appalling as Holocaust revisionism, but it's still pretty amazing. A whole cottage industry has grown up around the idea of re-writing history to let Southern whites off the hook for both slavery and the Civil War. Not THAT'S bunk.
But so is the idea that the racial problems between whites and blacks in the South, post Civil War, are the fault of Northern whites and the U.S. government. And that bit of revisionism has been espoused by no less an illustrious Southerner than Robert Penn Warren.
There is a lot in common between Southern American and Middle Eastern Muslim ways of processing reality.
Voted : Yes, the Iraq War is America's biggest strategic error
Felix, we're going on all cylinders today, aren't we? Nice points.
Interesting points about the Civil War, Felix, but read some primary source material about what Southern leaders of secession had to say for themselves in their political speeches, editorials and declarations for reasons for secession. They had hysterical concerns for the future of slavery, and said so.
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