Re: What 'War' Was That Idiot Talking about?

On Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:17:30 -0700 (PDT), "bvallely@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"
<bvallely@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>Unlike modern Democrats, President Truman was not a historical
>illiterate nor a fool.  Determined not to repeat Wilson's short
>sighted, tragic, blunder, the Haberdasher green lite the Marshal Plan
>- which cost far more in today's money than Operation Freedom.  We
>still have troops in Europe to this day, the Europeans overwhelmingly
>want us to stay, and they've had uninterupted peace with each other
>since 1945.


More revisionist stuff. Truman did have the benefit of Keynes paper on
Reparations and their responsibility in giving us Hitler and WWII. See
"The Economic consequences of the Peace."

But that did not lead to the Marshall plan. The Marshall plan did not
originate until 1948 when the allies realized that socialism was
getting a hold in Germany because conditions were so harsh after the
war and under the occupation.  It was cold war anti-socialism that
delivered the Marshall Plan, not some post war vision of Truman's
fueled by Keynes' paper.

But yes I argued in 2001 we should have stayed out of Iraq and
Marshall planned Afghanistan to turn it into the prime example of
nonsectarian democratic Islam. We could have flooded them with
schools, rebuilt their universities and made them the next South Korea
and had more positive impact on US respect in the region. But Bush and
the cowboys wanted to use a hammer on Iraq instead. And now
Afghanistan is entering it's sequel.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/horsey/viewbydate.asp?id=1796