L
liangzhicheng
Guest
Yeah...the electoral college.
Theoretically, our votes count...theoretically...
Theoretically, our votes count...theoretically...
And so it Begins....
- Thread starter Bob Hubbard
- Start date
OP
- Thread Starter
- #22
I know someone who has been saying for years that there will be a revolution in this country. I disagree. I believe that most Americans are clueless, dumb and happily so. Lok at how many believe Sadam was responsible for 9/11. Hell, Most folks think theres only 2 parties and you must vote party lines.
Thats BS.
The amount of voters has been steadily declining. The lack of interest in the political process is what has allowed these criminals to stage their coup and take possetion of -our- govenment. Only by the power of the true majority will they ever be thrown down.
Browne got about 400,000 votes in the last presidential election. Yes, thats a far cry from the millions that Tush and Bore got, but its still a telling number. Perot I believe topped the million vote mark on his first campaign, but didn't do as well the 2nd time around.
My recomendation is that people get off their asses, really look at the issues and then cast their vote for whoever is really pushing what they want. Stop voting the 'party line'.
"But I'm just throwing it away cuz they cant win" is what I hear. I say, shut up dumb-***. It -does- count. As those numbers of so called 'throw away' votes climb, it will send a message to those in power. As the numbers increase eventually, we will retake our government 1 vote, 1 seat and 1 state at a time.
Like it or not, we are at war...and if we fail to answer the call, we will simply be crushed in the iron grip of tyranny that now is at our throats.
- "Right to Remain Silent" revolked
- "Requirement for a court oked search warrent" revolked
- "Right to a fair and speedy trial" revolked
- "Right to an attorny revolked
- "Right to Privacy" revolked
- "Right to Free Speech" being revolked
How many more rights must we lose before we wake up? The 'President" may be George Bush, but the government is by George Orwell.
Welcome to 1984.
Sleep
Sleep
Sleep
Sleep
Sleep
Wake up...because it may not yet be too late.
:soapbox:
Thats BS.
The amount of voters has been steadily declining. The lack of interest in the political process is what has allowed these criminals to stage their coup and take possetion of -our- govenment. Only by the power of the true majority will they ever be thrown down.
Browne got about 400,000 votes in the last presidential election. Yes, thats a far cry from the millions that Tush and Bore got, but its still a telling number. Perot I believe topped the million vote mark on his first campaign, but didn't do as well the 2nd time around.
My recomendation is that people get off their asses, really look at the issues and then cast their vote for whoever is really pushing what they want. Stop voting the 'party line'.
"But I'm just throwing it away cuz they cant win" is what I hear. I say, shut up dumb-***. It -does- count. As those numbers of so called 'throw away' votes climb, it will send a message to those in power. As the numbers increase eventually, we will retake our government 1 vote, 1 seat and 1 state at a time.
Like it or not, we are at war...and if we fail to answer the call, we will simply be crushed in the iron grip of tyranny that now is at our throats.
- "Right to Remain Silent" revolked
- "Requirement for a court oked search warrent" revolked
- "Right to a fair and speedy trial" revolked
- "Right to an attorny revolked
- "Right to Privacy" revolked
- "Right to Free Speech" being revolked
How many more rights must we lose before we wake up? The 'President" may be George Bush, but the government is by George Orwell.
Welcome to 1984.
Sleep
Sleep
Sleep
Sleep
Sleep
Wake up...because it may not yet be too late.
:soapbox:
RanaHarmamelda
Orange Belt
Kaith Rustaz:
Amen.
Amen.
M
MountainSage
Guest
kaith, look from a less extreme position on the issue of splinter groups have a few good ideas. I live in Oregon so neo-nazi are familiar to me, so I use them as my example. A radical "cause" doesn't mean that a person has no good ideas, just that there wrapped in a lot of other crap. I believe in their own neanderthal ways these group were warning us a long time ago that this very situation ways coming and they were correct. When there is an increase number of splinter groups, I think it show there are many people at the end of their rope with the situation and are now let go of the rope altogether. Got to remember I come from shoot first, ask question later intermountain region of the west.
Mountainsage
"Even a clock is right twice per day"
Mountainsage
"Even a clock is right twice per day"
R
rmcrobertson
Guest
Oh, canaries in the coal mine. Makes sense.
For anybody on this thread who has posted in favor of the Pat. Act--here's a concept for you. If I understand correctly, under the Act, everybody on this Forum who has posted has opened themselves up to investigation at the whim of some (probably unelected) bureaucrat.
Sweet.
For anybody on this thread who has posted in favor of the Pat. Act--here's a concept for you. If I understand correctly, under the Act, everybody on this Forum who has posted has opened themselves up to investigation at the whim of some (probably unelected) bureaucrat.
Sweet.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #26
I love my country. Unfortunately, for the last 2 years I've been more afraid of it than I can remember.
I never care if anyone agrees with my political leanings. (Life would be so much less interesting if that happened). My goals to get people to think for themselves, and really look at the issue for themselves, not to just depend on a 30 second sound byte from their chosen partys fair-haired boy.
I've voted Liberal, Conservative, Democrat and Republican, based on who was claiming to meet what I wanted.
The problem is, with about 60-70% of folks having let go the rope, we're all getting rope burn on our necks as those who shouldn't be allowed in power, walk right in.
We need more elected leaders from these 'alternative' parties...for too long, the 'big 2' have dominated. Hell, I almost hope the porn star gets elected in California....she's got some interesting ideas that could really kickstart things. Unfortunately, most people focus on the porn, and I also fear its only a PR stunt.
Just remember - I voted for Granpa Munster for Gov. of NY.
I never care if anyone agrees with my political leanings. (Life would be so much less interesting if that happened). My goals to get people to think for themselves, and really look at the issue for themselves, not to just depend on a 30 second sound byte from their chosen partys fair-haired boy.
I've voted Liberal, Conservative, Democrat and Republican, based on who was claiming to meet what I wanted.
The problem is, with about 60-70% of folks having let go the rope, we're all getting rope burn on our necks as those who shouldn't be allowed in power, walk right in.
We need more elected leaders from these 'alternative' parties...for too long, the 'big 2' have dominated. Hell, I almost hope the porn star gets elected in California....she's got some interesting ideas that could really kickstart things. Unfortunately, most people focus on the porn, and I also fear its only a PR stunt.
Just remember - I voted for Granpa Munster for Gov. of NY.
Preach on Brother Kath. . . preach on. You got my vote.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #28
That about sums it up. Because we are daring to question, we can now be declared an 'enemy combatant', whisked away in the dead of night, locked up for eternity, and no longer have -any- rights.
If you think I'm exagerating, ask the over 100 people still imprisioned since 9/11 who have not had a single charge levied, yet are not allowed contaact with the outside world. Or, ask Kevin Mitnick who spent several years in custody without a conviction or even a trial.
See:
http://www.freekevin.com/
I've read the "Patriot Act."
Stephen King could take a few lessons from its authors, because it is honestly the most frightening thing I have ever read.
Stephen King could take a few lessons from its authors, because it is honestly the most frightening thing I have ever read.
RanaHarmamelda
Orange Belt
Found this when logging out of my hotmail account.
Take it with a grain of salt, but still -- it highlights the unforeseen ( I hope) far-reaching effects of the PATRIOT act. It also makes me glad I have a thoroughly English last name.
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Banking/P59113.asp
Peace,
Me
Take it with a grain of salt, but still -- it highlights the unforeseen ( I hope) far-reaching effects of the PATRIOT act. It also makes me glad I have a thoroughly English last name.
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Banking/P59113.asp
Peace,
Me
OP
- Thread Starter
- #31
In the last few years more information on what the government is doing has been classified than any previous period..
I found this....its interesting...
===
Powerful leaders often conceal historical record in order to promote his agenda
By EDWARD CUDDY
Special to The News
9/14/2003
"Associated Press
After Daniel Ellsberg unleashed the Pentagon Papers, an enraged President Richard Nixon sent former CIA agents to dig up dirt on him, triggering a train of actions that led to Watergate and Nixon's impeachment."
The idea is as old as America: Government records, said Thomas Jefferson, should be available to the people, not simply preserved "by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use."
History is important. Important enough for powerful men to repress it and for others to risk life and freedom to reveal it. Today, President Bush is emerging as the nation's leading exponent of historical secrecy, keeping Americans from seeing important evidence about how their government has acted, and why.
"Every worst tendency toward secrecy has come out of the woodwork of this administration," said Tom Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archives. It simply doesn't "understand the value of openness."
Why is historical secrecy, especially when used as a cover for deception, so destructive? Because it can lead to disastrous policies and an erosion of our government's credibility.
Critics have faulted Bush for promoting his Iraqi war policy with false or exaggerated claims about Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction. But if the president has not been totally candid, he is just one in a long line of leaders who has distorted the historical record to justify his policies.
"The rewriting and distortion of history - as in all wartime regimes - is crucial," wrote Chris Hedges, a specialist in wartime psychology. The Cuban missile crisis, in 1962, for example, was arguably President John F. Kennedy's finest hour, a brilliant display of skilled diplomacy that defused the most dangerous crisis of the Cold War. But his rousing message to the American people was steeped in deception.
The nuclear missiles installed in Cuba, he fumed, posed a "reckless and provocative threat to world peace" by the USSR in its march toward "world domination." And while the missiles did pose an increased threat to the United States, Washington had already targeted Russian cities with nuclear missiles at the Soviet-Turkish border - an inconvenient fact that JFK conveniently ignored.
American history "demonstrates that we have no desire to dominate . . . other nations or impose our system upon its people," JFK boasted.
But in the previous decade, the United States had overthrown elected governments in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954), replacing them with pro-American regimes. Moreover, it had assaulted Cuba repeatedly: the Bay of Pigs invasion, crippling economic sanctions, commando raids and CIA attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro.
The selective historical amnesia practiced by Kennedy is a standard mechanism among nations. For 70 years, the Soviet Union's brutal history was so repressed that when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev freed writers to publicize their real past, there was so much confusion that schools had to cancel the history exams.
Since 1915, the Turks have successfully denied their genocidal violence when they drove 2 million Armenians into the Syrian desert to die. Japan still infuriates its neighbors by denying its World War II atrocities, a story so gruesome that when I assigned Iris Chang's "The Rape of Nanking" to students, I allowed them to skip over its most graphic passages.
"Who controls the past, controls the future; who controls the present, controls the past." George Orwell's famous dictum was artfully demonstrated recently when Bush fanned the flames of war by emphasizing the links between the Iraqi regime and al-Qaida terrorists.
Actually, Iraq and al-Qaida had a history of mutual hatred, and the CIA doubted their collaboration. Critics warned that attacking Iraq would divert critical resources from the real war on terrorism. But Bush persisted, falsely but successfully associating Iraq with the 9/11 atrocities, spiking fears that Saddam would supply al-Qaida with weapons of mass destruction, despite their enmity. A majority of Americans were persuaded that the threat posed by Saddam justified America's pre-emptive war against Iraq.
The president, indeed, liberated the Iraqi people from a vicious dictatorship - no mean achievement. But it was fear, primed by deception, that mainly rallied Americans to battle.
Powerful leaders manipulate history not only by twisting the facts but by concealing the evidence - especially the official records in musty archives around the world, the lifeblood of historians. The perennial battle over access, the flash point between those seeking the truth and those trying to hide it, constitutes one of the most crucial chapters in the history of history.
Heated controversies over British policies leading to World War II, for example, remain in dispute because documents are sealed until sometime later this century. After decades of ironclad secrecy enveloping Soviet archives, the collapse of the USSR came as a godsend for scholars, opening a gold mine of historical documents and providing new insights into the Cold War.
Historians salivate over the magnificent Vatican archives - "25 miles of shelved documents" covering more than a thousand years. But specialists in the 20th century remain frustrated over the 75-year rule keeping the records closed for momentous events going back beyond the rise of Adolf Hitler. Especially galling is the "Vatican's unwillingness to open its records" for Jewish groups seeking evidence of their assets looted by the Nazis to validate claims for compensation, wrote John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter.
Sometimes the struggle turns vicious. On April 24, 1998, Guatemala's Bishop Juan Gerardi Conedera publicized his Historic Memory Project, documenting the 36-year reign of terror under the country's military regime. Two days later, he was bludgeoned to death on orders from the military. He was murdered, observed a Guatemalan nun, because he wanted the truth to emerge, "things which powerful people wanted left unseen. . . ."
For sheer drama, it's hard to top the Daniel Ellsberg story - his conversion from Pentagon hawk to the rebel whistle-blower who unleashed the Pentagon Papers, a history of the steps leading to the Vietnam War. Working in President Lyndon Johnson's Defense Department, Ellsberg experienced firsthand its pervasive deception. He once filled a rush order for "six alternate lies" for Secretary Robert McNamara's press conference.
But those lies were small potatoes compared to Ellsberg's discovery three years later as a researcher on McNamara's Vietnam history project. Poring over documents from the 1950s, Ellsberg was appalled at what he was reading: President Dwight Eisenhower's decisions to "overturn" the Geneva Accords, cancel Vietnam's 1956 elections and prop up Ngo Dinh Diem's "police state." All of those actions flatly contradicted the blatant falsehoods that, for all his Harvard education, had shaped Ellsberg's pro-war views.
By then, Vietnam had become a hellhole, devastating young Americans by the thousands and Vietnamese by the millions. Radicalized by history, he became an apostle of history, releasing the secret documents to the press to expose two decades of "executive deception" - a drastic act that he feared would bring him life imprisonment.
The impact rippled far. For the first time, in the middle of a war, Americans could glimpse the glaring contradictions between Washington's secret intelligence reports and its wartime statements. Historians obtained a treasure trove of documents, which might still be locked up without Ellsberg's bold revelations. An enraged President Richard Nixon sent former CIA agents to rifle Ellsberg's psychiatrist's files to dig up dirt, initiating a train of actions that would lead to Watergate and Nixon's own ejection from office.
Some people called Ellsberg a traitor. But his "betrayal" consisted of revealing the government's dark secrets to the American people, not a foreign enemy. The judge at his trial, alerted to Nixon's dirty tricks, threw the case out of court.
Ellsberg's civil disobedience goes to the heart of democracy. A free people must know what their government is doing in their name, with their money and with their soldiers' lives. That's the law thanks to the Freedom of Information Act (1966) and the Presidential Records Act (1978), which mandate the release of government documents within a reasonable time.
"By law," wrote David Cole, a specialist in legal affairs, "information may be classified only if its release would threaten national security. . . ."
Unfortunately, the "national security" loophole has spawned an army of stonewallers: officials classifying documents without just cause or blotting out entire pages when responding to FOIA requests. Erwin Griswald, who argued Nixon's case against publishing the Pentagon Papers, later acknowledged the "massive overclassification of documents." The vast majority of them should be declassified, declared the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan in his study, "Secrecy: The American Experience."
Recent criticism over governmental secrecy has focused on Bush's resistance to congressional committees investigating the intelligence failures leading to the 9/11 tragedy. More serious was Bush's refusal to release President Ronald Reagan's papers in January 2001, as mandated by the Presidential Records Act. Bush simply trumped the law with an executive order empowering himself and future presidents to withhold presidential papers, even if former presidents want them released.
Bush's reasons for sealing the records are not clear. But those papers do cover an era bristling with contradictions to the righteous rhetoric underpinning Bush's policies. In the Reagan years, Washington supported violent dictatorships in Latin America and Asia. It armed radical Islamist forces in Afghanistan, budding terrorists who looked like the good guys against the Soviets before they trained their sights on Americans. And most telling, the United States embraced Saddam, already tagged a psychopathic killer, and built up his military machine when he was perpetrating the same atrocities Bush later cited to goad Americans to war.
Defensible or not, the messy episodes recorded from the Reagan era are best kept hidden for a president touting a world that he sees clearly divided between good and evil.
Our ignorance of Vietnam's history was among the "major causes for our disaster in Vietnam," McNamara confessed in his Vietnam memoir. His cautionary tale should apply to all our foreign relations, especially the Arab-Muslim world today.
Open and honest history is no guarantee of successful policy. But without it, we are more vulnerable to the falsehoods and double standards that flourish in times of conflict, more subject to the entangling web of fears and false perceptions that ensnare nations on both sides when they go to war.
"The study of history should transcend boundaries rather than reinforce or reproduce them," wrote historian Eric Foner. "In the wake of Sept. 11, it is all the more imperative that the history we teach be a candid appraisal of our own society's strengths and weaknesses, not simply an exercise in self-celebration. . . ."
EDWARD CUDDY is a professor of history at Daemen College.
===
I found this....its interesting...
===
Powerful leaders often conceal historical record in order to promote his agenda
By EDWARD CUDDY
Special to The News
9/14/2003
"Associated Press
After Daniel Ellsberg unleashed the Pentagon Papers, an enraged President Richard Nixon sent former CIA agents to dig up dirt on him, triggering a train of actions that led to Watergate and Nixon's impeachment."
The idea is as old as America: Government records, said Thomas Jefferson, should be available to the people, not simply preserved "by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use."
History is important. Important enough for powerful men to repress it and for others to risk life and freedom to reveal it. Today, President Bush is emerging as the nation's leading exponent of historical secrecy, keeping Americans from seeing important evidence about how their government has acted, and why.
"Every worst tendency toward secrecy has come out of the woodwork of this administration," said Tom Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archives. It simply doesn't "understand the value of openness."
Why is historical secrecy, especially when used as a cover for deception, so destructive? Because it can lead to disastrous policies and an erosion of our government's credibility.
Critics have faulted Bush for promoting his Iraqi war policy with false or exaggerated claims about Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction. But if the president has not been totally candid, he is just one in a long line of leaders who has distorted the historical record to justify his policies.
"The rewriting and distortion of history - as in all wartime regimes - is crucial," wrote Chris Hedges, a specialist in wartime psychology. The Cuban missile crisis, in 1962, for example, was arguably President John F. Kennedy's finest hour, a brilliant display of skilled diplomacy that defused the most dangerous crisis of the Cold War. But his rousing message to the American people was steeped in deception.
The nuclear missiles installed in Cuba, he fumed, posed a "reckless and provocative threat to world peace" by the USSR in its march toward "world domination." And while the missiles did pose an increased threat to the United States, Washington had already targeted Russian cities with nuclear missiles at the Soviet-Turkish border - an inconvenient fact that JFK conveniently ignored.
American history "demonstrates that we have no desire to dominate . . . other nations or impose our system upon its people," JFK boasted.
But in the previous decade, the United States had overthrown elected governments in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954), replacing them with pro-American regimes. Moreover, it had assaulted Cuba repeatedly: the Bay of Pigs invasion, crippling economic sanctions, commando raids and CIA attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro.
The selective historical amnesia practiced by Kennedy is a standard mechanism among nations. For 70 years, the Soviet Union's brutal history was so repressed that when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev freed writers to publicize their real past, there was so much confusion that schools had to cancel the history exams.
Since 1915, the Turks have successfully denied their genocidal violence when they drove 2 million Armenians into the Syrian desert to die. Japan still infuriates its neighbors by denying its World War II atrocities, a story so gruesome that when I assigned Iris Chang's "The Rape of Nanking" to students, I allowed them to skip over its most graphic passages.
"Who controls the past, controls the future; who controls the present, controls the past." George Orwell's famous dictum was artfully demonstrated recently when Bush fanned the flames of war by emphasizing the links between the Iraqi regime and al-Qaida terrorists.
Actually, Iraq and al-Qaida had a history of mutual hatred, and the CIA doubted their collaboration. Critics warned that attacking Iraq would divert critical resources from the real war on terrorism. But Bush persisted, falsely but successfully associating Iraq with the 9/11 atrocities, spiking fears that Saddam would supply al-Qaida with weapons of mass destruction, despite their enmity. A majority of Americans were persuaded that the threat posed by Saddam justified America's pre-emptive war against Iraq.
The president, indeed, liberated the Iraqi people from a vicious dictatorship - no mean achievement. But it was fear, primed by deception, that mainly rallied Americans to battle.
Powerful leaders manipulate history not only by twisting the facts but by concealing the evidence - especially the official records in musty archives around the world, the lifeblood of historians. The perennial battle over access, the flash point between those seeking the truth and those trying to hide it, constitutes one of the most crucial chapters in the history of history.
Heated controversies over British policies leading to World War II, for example, remain in dispute because documents are sealed until sometime later this century. After decades of ironclad secrecy enveloping Soviet archives, the collapse of the USSR came as a godsend for scholars, opening a gold mine of historical documents and providing new insights into the Cold War.
Historians salivate over the magnificent Vatican archives - "25 miles of shelved documents" covering more than a thousand years. But specialists in the 20th century remain frustrated over the 75-year rule keeping the records closed for momentous events going back beyond the rise of Adolf Hitler. Especially galling is the "Vatican's unwillingness to open its records" for Jewish groups seeking evidence of their assets looted by the Nazis to validate claims for compensation, wrote John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter.
Sometimes the struggle turns vicious. On April 24, 1998, Guatemala's Bishop Juan Gerardi Conedera publicized his Historic Memory Project, documenting the 36-year reign of terror under the country's military regime. Two days later, he was bludgeoned to death on orders from the military. He was murdered, observed a Guatemalan nun, because he wanted the truth to emerge, "things which powerful people wanted left unseen. . . ."
For sheer drama, it's hard to top the Daniel Ellsberg story - his conversion from Pentagon hawk to the rebel whistle-blower who unleashed the Pentagon Papers, a history of the steps leading to the Vietnam War. Working in President Lyndon Johnson's Defense Department, Ellsberg experienced firsthand its pervasive deception. He once filled a rush order for "six alternate lies" for Secretary Robert McNamara's press conference.
But those lies were small potatoes compared to Ellsberg's discovery three years later as a researcher on McNamara's Vietnam history project. Poring over documents from the 1950s, Ellsberg was appalled at what he was reading: President Dwight Eisenhower's decisions to "overturn" the Geneva Accords, cancel Vietnam's 1956 elections and prop up Ngo Dinh Diem's "police state." All of those actions flatly contradicted the blatant falsehoods that, for all his Harvard education, had shaped Ellsberg's pro-war views.
By then, Vietnam had become a hellhole, devastating young Americans by the thousands and Vietnamese by the millions. Radicalized by history, he became an apostle of history, releasing the secret documents to the press to expose two decades of "executive deception" - a drastic act that he feared would bring him life imprisonment.
The impact rippled far. For the first time, in the middle of a war, Americans could glimpse the glaring contradictions between Washington's secret intelligence reports and its wartime statements. Historians obtained a treasure trove of documents, which might still be locked up without Ellsberg's bold revelations. An enraged President Richard Nixon sent former CIA agents to rifle Ellsberg's psychiatrist's files to dig up dirt, initiating a train of actions that would lead to Watergate and Nixon's own ejection from office.
Some people called Ellsberg a traitor. But his "betrayal" consisted of revealing the government's dark secrets to the American people, not a foreign enemy. The judge at his trial, alerted to Nixon's dirty tricks, threw the case out of court.
Ellsberg's civil disobedience goes to the heart of democracy. A free people must know what their government is doing in their name, with their money and with their soldiers' lives. That's the law thanks to the Freedom of Information Act (1966) and the Presidential Records Act (1978), which mandate the release of government documents within a reasonable time.
"By law," wrote David Cole, a specialist in legal affairs, "information may be classified only if its release would threaten national security. . . ."
Unfortunately, the "national security" loophole has spawned an army of stonewallers: officials classifying documents without just cause or blotting out entire pages when responding to FOIA requests. Erwin Griswald, who argued Nixon's case against publishing the Pentagon Papers, later acknowledged the "massive overclassification of documents." The vast majority of them should be declassified, declared the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan in his study, "Secrecy: The American Experience."
Recent criticism over governmental secrecy has focused on Bush's resistance to congressional committees investigating the intelligence failures leading to the 9/11 tragedy. More serious was Bush's refusal to release President Ronald Reagan's papers in January 2001, as mandated by the Presidential Records Act. Bush simply trumped the law with an executive order empowering himself and future presidents to withhold presidential papers, even if former presidents want them released.
Bush's reasons for sealing the records are not clear. But those papers do cover an era bristling with contradictions to the righteous rhetoric underpinning Bush's policies. In the Reagan years, Washington supported violent dictatorships in Latin America and Asia. It armed radical Islamist forces in Afghanistan, budding terrorists who looked like the good guys against the Soviets before they trained their sights on Americans. And most telling, the United States embraced Saddam, already tagged a psychopathic killer, and built up his military machine when he was perpetrating the same atrocities Bush later cited to goad Americans to war.
Defensible or not, the messy episodes recorded from the Reagan era are best kept hidden for a president touting a world that he sees clearly divided between good and evil.
Our ignorance of Vietnam's history was among the "major causes for our disaster in Vietnam," McNamara confessed in his Vietnam memoir. His cautionary tale should apply to all our foreign relations, especially the Arab-Muslim world today.
Open and honest history is no guarantee of successful policy. But without it, we are more vulnerable to the falsehoods and double standards that flourish in times of conflict, more subject to the entangling web of fears and false perceptions that ensnare nations on both sides when they go to war.
"The study of history should transcend boundaries rather than reinforce or reproduce them," wrote historian Eric Foner. "In the wake of Sept. 11, it is all the more imperative that the history we teach be a candid appraisal of our own society's strengths and weaknesses, not simply an exercise in self-celebration. . . ."
EDWARD CUDDY is a professor of history at Daemen College.
===
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