American History Rewritten

@parados,

Nixon ended the war, he did not expand it. Incursions into Cambodia were part of the tactics used, but not as an expansion, no more than an occasional bombing of hideouts across the border into Pakistan from Afghanistan is an expansion of the war in Afghanistan. I was there on the Cambodian border, my unit went into Cambodia, part of the 25th Division. It was LBJ that bears the responsibility of greatly expanding the war in Vietnam. Kennedy essentially started it, and another Democrat, LBJ expanded the war to what it was. Nixon bears little or no responsibility for Vietnam, except to try to successfully wind it up and withdraw.

I know Democrats would love to blame Vietnam onto Nixon, and they occasionally try it, but it is another liberal lie.

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@okie,

Sending troops into another country is an expansion in almost anyone's book. The number of troops may be the same but it is an expansion of scope.

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@parados,

Change of tactics, Parados. The incursions only went into Cambodia to take out the NVA staging camps for supplies into Vietnam, and if I remember correctly they weren't very far across the border and they were very temporary, hit and withdraw back to Vietnam. Besides I think it was remote country, not highly populated. It was not an attack on Cambodia. I never went there myself, but my unit did while I was on R& R, and they only went in for a couple days or so at a time. The reason I was in the 25th at the time was because Nixon had already started drawing down units, he withdrew the 1st. Division, but if you had less than maybe 9 or 10 months in country, you were transferred to another unit, so I ended up with the 25th. So even though tactics included hitting NVA camps across the border a little ways, I think Nixon was already drawing down our involvement. That is not a distinct expansion at all, just a difference of tactics. Proof is Nixon pulled us all out of Vietnam, remember the people hanging from helicopters in Saigon as the NVA closed in? Come on, Parados.

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@parados,

To dispel any confusion you may have about Vietnam, Parados, JFK greatly expanded our small numbers of military advisors in 1961, including Special Forces, but not until the Gulf of Tonkin incident and following did LBJ singlehandedly expand it into a full blown war, with peak U. S. military involvement of over 500,000 in 1968, before Nixon ever took office. Once Nixon took office in 1969, troop levels subsided, the war was not expanded, and troop levels subsided in 69, 70, 71, etc. until the close of the war. We were down to 156,000 troops in 1971 and 24,000 in 72, and by the time the war was finally over in 75, we had been long gone. Nixon was not in office 6 months when he proposed a peace plan. He talked about being a peacemaker at his inauguration. Nixon's whole operation was designed to figure out a way to get out of the country with some self respect and semblance of order to it, and try to give South Vietnam every reasonable chance to defend itself.

http://www.landscaper.net/timelin.htm#time%20line
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/U.S._Troop_levels_in_Vietnam_War

LBJ clearly bears all responsibility for expanding the war to what it was, before Nixon began to change policies there and to pursue an orderly plan and withdrawal, which involved various tactics that may have been different than LBJ's in some respects from time to time, negotiations, etc. It wasn't entirely pretty, but he got us out, and there is no way Nixon should be described as expanding the war.

You can argue that he expanded a certain tactic in the war, such as specific operations into Cambodia, or bombings in different areas, but that is not the same as expanding the war, as it is also obvious that other operations were curtailed. The emphasis of the war or tactics were varied from what they had been to some extent, but it seems clear that troop reductions were taking place and the overall troop or military involvement was winding down. Some of those operations were designed I think to try to apply pressure to some of the so called peace talks in the works, release of prisoners, etc.

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@okie,

Quote:

You can argue that he expanded a certain tactic in the war, such as specific operations into Cambodia, or bombings in different areas, but that is not the same as expanding the war,

I see, so he expanded it but he didn't expand it. Rolling Eyes

Yes, Nixon ended it but not before he expanded it. To try to restrict "expansion" to the number of troops is revisionism of the worst kind okie. If we use that argument then massing troops on a border is the same thing as sending troops across the border.

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Partisan obsession will always sacrifice reality to the party line. What you will see here, if this continues, is that defenders of the proposition that all "libruls" are evil, and have willfully warped the teaching of history in this country, will put themselves through any absurd contortion to attempt to defend the dim-witted straw men that this clown Schweikart is setting up. Schweikart knows his audience, and how to exploit them. The exercise he is engaged in here is selling his books, and the article starts right out touting his books. The article is a marketing exercise.

He immediately takes on Howard Zinn. Zinn is a clown. He is the kind of left-wing idiot whom the hysterical conservatives love to rave over. He fulfils their loony stereotypes. But Howard Zinn doesn't write textbooks, and it is doubtful that any textbook authors use Zinn as a source. Schweikart is smart enough to trail that red herring before his slavering audience, and i'll bet the article and hooraw like this thread serve exactly the purpose Schweikart intended--to sell his books.

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It was very difficult to find any reviews of this book. There are mostly only interviews with the author about his book.

Quote:

48 Liberal Lies About American History: That You Probably Learned in School
By Larry Schweikart
Review by Anita Sonawane, Feminist Review

48 Liberal Lies About American History is a shocking read. In formatting this book, Larry Schweikart states a "liberal lie", and then provides evidentiary support to refute claims made. However, at times, he fails to realize that some of these "liberal arguments" are much more nuanced than the ones he posits.

Of particular interest is his take on “Lie # 14: Women had no rights in Early America.” Schweikart takes issue with Carol Berkin’s and Mary Beth Norton’s statement in Women of America that, “The United States had founding mothers… but on the whole our history celebrates only the white founding fathers.” I researched Berkin’s and Norton’s text; in fact, they do not dispute that women had rights in early America. What they do find problematic is the relative superiority of men to women prior to and after the American Revolution, and the continued espousal of patriarchal society. Schweikart skews their argument, making it far more extreme than it really is.

Moreover, in discussing why men dominate the medical field, Schweikart says, “Doctors"in an age without anesthesia"had to perform surgery and occasionally amputate limbs while restraining a patient who was protesting to no small degree… Small and less physically powerful women were at an important disadvantage in such work"but not in being midwives, which was exclusively a female domain.” I found Schweikart’s words extremely sexist and antifeminist. Schweikart easily falls prey to the claim that men are physically superior to women. For years, this school of thought has served to perpetuate a gender hierarchy. Here, Schweikart hardly acknowledges gender historians who would rightly repudiate his analysis. In fact, Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to graduate from medical school in 1849, became a physician before the widespread use of anesthesia.

There is much more to be criticized in Schweikart’s book. Indeed, Schweikart could not possibly imagine that any history text teaches that “The News Media Is Objective, Fair and Balanced " and Always Has Been.” Even a superficial study of American history debunks this notion. For example, in 1898, yellow journalism"the sensationalism and distortion of facts"surrounding the sinking of the USS Maine clearly led to the declaration of the Spanish-American War. In his attempt to introduce the conservative viewpoint in these historical discussions, Schweikart makes radical assertions that even those on the right might find disturbing. The intention of his book is honorable; however, Schweikart will need to reconfigure some of his arguments if he seeks to gain a wider audience for his work.

My impression is that the book is skewed, starting with the fact that the author surveyed only college textbooks. Historical inaccuracies in elementary or high school textbooks are of greater concern, in my opinion.

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@wandeljw,

Your quote is a rather aloof and academic way of saying, "Schweikart's book is full of ****, here's an example of him lying about the claims of two women." Not that I don't like aloof academy.

Why, oh why does our villifying conservative buddy say liberals are scared of the evidence and then shirk all confrontation of the points of the book (even implicitly refusing to repeat what the book says)? We need to have strong defenders of hate-filled rhetoric, none of this obviously cowardly stuff!

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@djjd62,

djjd62 wrote:

none of those lies is better than my two favourite conservative lies

iraq has weapons of mass destruction

and

BOTH of those are true,
tho admittedly, we don 't know exactly WHEN
Saddam got rid of his WMDs. He actually USED them
on his own citizens, so from that we know that he had them.

The mission WAS ACCOMPLISHED
as soon as we overthrew Saddam; if u wanna argue that it
was only accomplshed when we arrested, him: OK,
thereby to prevent him from trying to re-instate his tyranny.

WHATEVERTHEHELL we are doing over there now,
it is NOT overthrowing Saddam; it is now some other mission.

Accordingly, BOTH of your favorites were TRUE.

DAVID

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@H2O MAN,

H2O MAN wrote:

If the facts don't meet the current liberal agenda they just change them.
The entire left wing agenda is built on a foundation of lies and support by the ignorant.

The essence of liberalism is DEVIATION.
Without deviation from something,
u have only conservatism; the actual fact itself.

Liberalism means veering away
from something, rendering a loose interpretation thereof.

Oboy is going to give us lessons
in what RADICALISM means.
(It means pulling up by "the root".)

David

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http://www.athenswater.com/images/CHANGE.jpg

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@parados,

parados wrote:

Quote:
I am curious which of his supposed historical inaccuracies you were taught, H2O. Please inform us and where you learned it and from what text book.

I asked for specifics to back up the author's lame ass statements and that was your only response?

Here's a simple one H2O. The author states that virtually all the names McCarthy provided were communists and/or spies.
McCarthy claimed to have had 205 names. Please provide evidence of those 205 names on McCarthy's list, then provide evidence to support them all being communists/spies. The simple fact is that McCarthy claimed to have that many names but never provided them to anyone. The author is weaseling by claiming the names McCarthy provided were communists. McCarthy provided a few names of which many had been members of the communist party. Most of those were known prior to McCarthy. There is no evidence to support the claim that all the names on McCarthy's supposed list even existed.

Joe McCarthy had his heart in the right place.
He did his best to fight against communist slavery,
to defend America. He has my love, admiration and esteem.
May Infinite Blessings be upon his Spirit and his memory.

David

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@OmSigDAVID,

Your basis in trust and belief in the Iraq II adventure is based solely upon a sinking loyalty to the the present regime. Its going to take a few years of solid work to erase the legacy of GWB.

He can, however, stand as a poor example of a Commander -in-Chief.Sort of like a JAmes Buchanan with a female wife.

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@H2O MAN,

that person lives in florida

the redneck riviera

i'm shocked

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Op-Ed Columnist
Add Up the Damage

By BOB HERBERT
Published: December 29, 2008
Does anyone know where George W. Bush is?

Bob Herbert

You don’t hear much from him anymore. The last image most of us remember is of the president ducking a pair of size 10s that were hurled at him in Baghdad.

We’re still at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel is thrashing the Palestinians in Gaza. And the U.S. economy is about as vibrant as the 0-16 Detroit Lions.

But hardly a peep have we heard from George, the 43rd.

When Mr. Bush officially takes his leave in three weeks (in reality, he checked out long ago), most Americans will be content to sigh good riddance. I disagree. I don’t think he should be allowed to slip quietly out of town. There should be a great hue and cry " a loud, collective angry howl, demonstrations with signs and bullhorns and fiery speeches " over the damage he’s done to this country.

This is the man who gave us the war in Iraq and Guantánamo and torture and rendition; who turned the Clinton economy and the budget surplus into fool’s gold; who dithered while New Orleans drowned; who trampled our civil liberties at home and ruined our reputation abroad; who let Dick Cheney run hog wild and thought Brownie was doing a heckuva job.

The Bush administration specialized in deceit. How else could you get the public (and a feckless Congress) to go along with an invasion of Iraq as an absolutely essential response to the Sept. 11 attacks, when Iraq had had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks?

Exploiting the public’s understandable fears, Mr. Bush made it sound as if Iraq was about to nuke us: “We cannot wait,” he said, “for the final proof " the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

He then set the blaze that has continued to rage for nearly six years, consuming more than 4,000 American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. (A car bomb over the weekend killed two dozen more Iraqis, many of them religious pilgrims.) The financial cost to the U.S. will eventually reach $3 trillion or more, according to the Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz.

A year into the war Mr. Bush was cracking jokes about it at the annual dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents Association. He displayed a series of photos that showed him searching the Oval Office, peering behind curtains and looking under the furniture. A mock caption had Mr. Bush saying: “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere.”

And then there’s the Bush economy, another disaster, a trapdoor through which middle-class Americans can plunge toward the bracing experiences normally reserved for the poor and the destitute.

Mr. Bush traveled the country in the early days of his presidency, promoting his tax cut plans as hugely beneficial to small-business people and families of modest means. This was more deceit. The tax cuts would go overwhelmingly to the very rich.

The president would give the wealthy and the powerful virtually everything they wanted. He would throw sand into the regulatory apparatus and help foster the most extreme income disparities since the years leading up to the Great Depression. Once again he was lighting a fire. This time the flames would engulf the economy and, as with Iraq, bring catastrophe.

If the U.S. were a product line, it would be seen now as deeply damaged goods, subject to recall.

There seemed to be no end to Mr. Bush’s talent for destruction. He tried to hand the piggy bank known as Social Security over to the marauders of the financial sector, but saner heads prevailed.

In New Orleans, the president failed to intervene swiftly and decisively to aid the tens of thousands of poor people who were very publicly suffering and, in many cases, dying. He then compounded this colossal failure of leadership by traveling to New Orleans and promising, in a dramatic, floodlit appearance, to spare no effort in rebuilding the flood-torn region and the wrecked lives of the victims.

He went further, vowing to confront the issue of poverty in America “with bold action.”

It was all nonsense, of course. He did nothing of the kind.

The catalog of his transgressions against the nation’s interests " sins of commission and omission " would keep Mr. Bush in a confessional for the rest of his life. Don’t hold your breath. He’s hardly the contrite sort.

He told ABC’s Charlie Gibson: “I don’t spend a lot of time really worrying about short-term history. I guess I don’t worry about long-term history, either, since I’m not going to be around to read it.”

The president chuckled, thinking " as he did when he made his jokes about the missing weapons of mass destruction " that there was something funny going on.

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@djjd62,

They just moved south from DC.

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@OmSigDAVID,

djjd62 wrote:

iraq has weapons of mass destruction

OmgSigDavid wrote:

BOTH of those are true,
tho admittedly, we don 't know exactly WHEN
Saddam got rid of his WMDs.

Sounds like you're failing at understanding temporal states. The claim, at the time, was 'Iraq has WMDs'. If he had gotten rid of them, then he didn't have them. This is rather easy to understand. That would make it a falsehood or at best, you have an argument from ignorance.

'Mission Accomplished' was a PR stunt. It is amusing and a false implication because there was so much more in store and the realities of Iraq turned out much different than our old pal Cheney would've had us believe. Even if you quibble about one mission being accomplished, you have to admit it's stupid to claim victory when it's clear there's far more to be done.

Thanks for the lecture on what 'liberalism' means. Blind hatred can be pretty entertaining.

And LOL at your love for McCarthy. Clearly lies are important when it concerns blowjobs, but not when it's fearmongering, right?

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@Shirakawasuna,

Shirakawasuna wrote:

djjd62 wrote:
iraq has weapons of mass destruction

OmgSigDavid wrote:
BOTH of those are true,
tho admittedly, we don 't know exactly WHEN
Saddam got rid of his WMDs.

Quote:
Sounds like you're failing at understanding temporal states.
The claim, at the time, was 'Iraq has WMDs'.
If he had gotten rid of them, then he didn't have them.
This is rather easy to understand. That would make it a falsehood
or at best, you have an argument from ignorance.

It did not matter,
because there was danger that Saddam woud nuke one of our
port cities, at a time convenient to him (SURPRIZE!!) with a nuke that did not necessarily
emanate directly from Iraq. Boats can come from a lot of places.
Saddam was an intolerable risk; a vindictive homicidal maniac
with a grudge against us and access to nukes.

Quote:
'Mission Accomplished' was a PR stunt. It is amusing and a false implication because there was so much more in store and the realities of Iraq turned out much different than our old pal Cheney would've had us believe. Even if you quibble about one mission being accomplished, you have to admit it's stupid to claim victory when it's clear there's far more to be done.

NONSENSE.
The mission was indeed accomplished
when the danger from Saddam was ended.

Thay have since invented new missions
that need not be accomplished. We shoud have left Iraq
fast and in shambles, thereby saving many American soldiers' lives
and tons of American cash.

Quote:
Thanks for the lecture on what 'liberalism' means.
Blind hatred can be pretty entertaining.

That shows that u were not able to understand.
I guess that can be pretty entertaining.
Its not hatred; its judgment of accurate (meaning conservative)
or deviant (meaning liberal). Liberalism is GOOD, if that from which
it veers away is bad, such that when Boris Yeltsin was liberal
about communism, veering away from it and toward freedom,
it was GOOD.

Quote:
And LOL at your love for McCarthy.
Clearly lies are important when it concerns blowjobs,
but not when it's fearmongering, right?

What is RIGHT, is that like fighting cancer,
fighting communism as soon as possible,
to dig it all out, is important.
I stand by everything that I posted.

David

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@Advocate,

More liberal lies.

When Bush leaves office, there will be very big reasons to be much more nervous. Advocate, for a guy that seems to care about Israel, I am surprised you do not understand how tenuous the situation will be with Israel, with their best friend, the U.S, now headed by a Palestinian sympathizer, Barack Obama. Just one example, but Herbert's reasoning is bizarre indeed.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

Quote:
Your basis in trust and belief in the Iraq II adventure
is based solely upon a sinking loyalty to the the present regime.

To WHAT "trust" do u refer ?
I never liked the Bushes.
When Reagan chose Bush,
I said he made a mistake.
What trust ?????

Quote:
Its going to take a few years of solid work to erase the legacy of GWB.

Comrade Hussein may well erase the legacies of GWB, George Washington,
James Madison, Jefferson rather as swiftly as possible;
he 'll do his best, and have fun with it.

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American History Rewritten

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