Bush made a mistake

[Alto Reed on a Tenor Sax]

My chain-email-forwarding friend sent me today a particularly poorly-reasoned bit about Iraq, our morals, et al. I post the text, and, just for kicks and giggles, my response (I did a "reply all," which will probably get me in trouble, but hey, you do what you gotta do).

For the record, I realize my response is not my best work, keep in mind that my primary purpose was just to procrasitinate studying for 10-15 minutes But do feel free to help me sharpen my thinking on the matters I mention.

Originally Posted by the forward

BUSH DID MAKE A MISTAKE

A MISTAKE--- President Bush did make a bad mistake in the war on
terrorism. But the mistake was not his decision to go to war in Iraq.
Bush's mistake came in his belief that this country is the same one
his father fought for in WWII. It is not. Back then, they had just
come out of a vicious depression.

The country was steeled by the hardship of that depression. But they
still believed fervently in this country. They knew that the people
had elected their leaders, so it was the people's duty to back those
leaders. Therefore, when the war broke out the people came together,
rallied behind, and stuck with their leaders, whether they had voted
for them or not or whether the war was going badly or not. And war
was just as distasteful and the anguish just as great then as it is
today.

Often there were more casualties in one day in WWII than we have had
in the entire Iraq war. But that did not matter. The people stuck
with the President because it was their patriotic duty. Americans put
aside their differences in WWII and worked together to win that war.
Everyone from every strata of society, from young to old pitched in.
Small children pulled little wagons around to gather scrap metal for
the war effort. Grade school students saved their pennies to buy
stamps for war bonds to help the effort.

Men who were too old or medically 4F lied about their age or condition
trying their best to join the military. Women doubled their work to
keep things going at home. Harsh rationing of everything from
gasoline to soap, to butter was imposed, yet there was very little
complaining.

You never heard prominent people on the radio belittling the President.
Interestingly enough in those days there were no fat cat actors and
entertainers who ran off to visit and fawn over dictators of hostile
countries and complain to them about our President. Instead, they
made upbeat films and entertained our troops to help the troops'
morale. And imagine this. Teachers in schools actually started the
day off with a pledge of allegiance, under God, and with prayers for
our country and our troops!

Back then, no newspaper would have dared point out certain weak spots
in our cities where bombs could be set off to cause the maximum
damage. No newspaper would have dared complain about what we were
doing to catch spies.
A newspaper would have been laughed out of existence if it had
complained that German or Japanese soldiers were being "tortured" by
being forced to wear women's underwear, or subjected to interrogation
by a woman, or being scared by a dog or did not have air conditioning.

There were a lot of things different back then. We were not subjected
to a constant bombardment of pornography, perversion and promiscuity
in movies or on radio. We did not have legions of crackheads, dope
pushers and armed gangs roaming our streets. (We also did not have
television then. Maybe that was a blessing.)

No, President Bush did not make a mistake in his handling of terrorism.
He made the mistake of believing that we still had the courage and
fortitude of our fathers. He believed that this was still the country
that our fathers fought so dearly to preserve. It is not the same
country. It is now a cross between Sodom and Gomorra and the land of
Oz. We even have the wicked witch of the west as the new Speaker of
the House of Representatives. We did unite for a short while after
911, but our attitude changed when we found out that defending our
country would require some sacrifices.

NOW HEAR THIS! We are in great danger. The terrorists are fanatical
Muslims. They believe that it is okay, even their duty, to kill
anyone who will not convert to Islam. It has been estimated that
about one third or over three hundred million Muslims are sympathetic
to the terrorists' cause.

Hitler and Tojo combined did not have nearly that many potential recruits.

That gereration has become known as,"The Greatest Generation." I wonder
what our present generation will be known as?

Originally Posted by my response

I just want to point out a couple of glaring problems with this fairly shallow
comparison of the two wars:

1

<<You never heard prominent people on the radio belittling the President.>>

That statement, and the paragraph that follows, is ridiculous. Five minutes poking around
online reveals an entire Wikipedia article dedicated to critics of President
Roosevelt, both during and after his presidency. As far as criticism from
celebrities, no less a figure than CHARLES LINDBERGH accused Roosevelt of being
a warmonger, and former president Herbert Hoover accused him of "sheer
fascism."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critici...n_D._Roosevelt

2

<<Therefore, when the war broke out the people came together,
rallied behind, and stuck with their leaders, whether they had voted
for them or not or whether the war was going badly or not.>>

This is ridiculous. Prior to WWII breaking out, when Italy invaded Ethiopia, Congress responded by passing "the Neutrality Act, applying a mandatory ban on the shipment of arms from the U.S. to any combatant nation." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankli...y.2C_1937-1941) In May, 1940, after the German blitzkreig, with Britian eminently threatened, "there was no consensus on how much the U.S. should risk war in helping Britain. " Later that year, Roosevelt won his third term by stressing his intention to keep the US OUT of war. As late as mid-1941, Roosevelt had "commited the U.S. to the Allied side with a policy of "all aid short of war.""

All this to say, Roosevelt, as much as he personally wanted to increase US
involvement in WWII, nonetheless kept us OUT of that war for several years, and
was only able to bring popular sentiment to his side after the bombing of Pearl
Harbor. To suggest that somehow Americans are LESS willing to follow a leader
into war today than in Roosevelt's day is nonsense. In fact, Roosevelt
virtually had to drag America into WWII, with Germany and Italy ravaging all of
Europe. Bush was able, with very little effort, to garner massive popular
support for his invasion of Iraq on hardly any evidence of aggresion at all
(not to mention the fact that most of that evidence has since proven false).