Morton Keller: None Dare Call It Conspiracy
Variations of "Bush lied" have been part of the political scene ever since America plunged into its permanent overseas embroilment in the Second World War. Reviewing that record won't settle the current dispute over how and why we got into Iraq. But it should remind us that George W. Bush's accusers are hardly walking in fresh snow.
The charge that FDR knew of the Japanese intention to attack Pearl Harbor, but used it to ensure U.S. entry into the war against the Axis, surfaced after 1945, when the war was over, FDR was dead, and the decks were cleared for some sleeves-rolled-up recrimination. In 1948 the progressive historian (and prewar isolationist) Charles A. Beard accused Roosevelt of "maneuvering the country into war." Anti-New Deal Republicans such as Robert A. Taft, anxious for a stick with which to whack at FDR, thought his "policy of bluff" drove Japan to its Pearl Harbor attack. The accusation never really took hold, but never wholly faded away. Eccentric historian John Toland (who found much good in Hitler) resurrected the FDR conspiracy story in his book "Infamy" (1982), which unfortunately appeared a year after Gordon Prange's "At Dawn We Slept" definitively buried it.
Fast forward (not very far) to June 1950, and to what almost everyone saw as North Korea's invasion of South Korea. Once again the U.S. was caught flatfooted by a devastating assault. And once again, politically motivated conspiratorialists shifted the blame to an administration charged with either cuddling up to the communists or hell-bent on going to war with them....
When we get to Mr. Bush, WMDs and Iraq, the principle that while history doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes, applies in spades. In March 2003, as in December 1941, June 1950 and the summer of 1964, there was broad agreement that Something Had to Be Done. If flat-out lying created that mood, that is a black mark indeed on American policy making. But if the conspiracy charge was (to put it mildly) far from open-and-shut, and if the conspiratorialists were driven more by ideology and partisanship than by proof, then a healthy skepticism is in order.
History's lesson is this: In modern America, the path to war is beset with actions that rest on uncertain or arguable justification. The political/ideological fringes will craft theories of conspiracy with scant regard for fact or probability. And the opposition will make what it can of this material, within the limits of political prudence.
Read entire article at WSJ
The charge that FDR knew of the Japanese intention to attack Pearl Harbor, but used it to ensure U.S. entry into the war against the Axis, surfaced after 1945, when the war was over, FDR was dead, and the decks were cleared for some sleeves-rolled-up recrimination. In 1948 the progressive historian (and prewar isolationist) Charles A. Beard accused Roosevelt of "maneuvering the country into war." Anti-New Deal Republicans such as Robert A. Taft, anxious for a stick with which to whack at FDR, thought his "policy of bluff" drove Japan to its Pearl Harbor attack. The accusation never really took hold, but never wholly faded away. Eccentric historian John Toland (who found much good in Hitler) resurrected the FDR conspiracy story in his book "Infamy" (1982), which unfortunately appeared a year after Gordon Prange's "At Dawn We Slept" definitively buried it.
Fast forward (not very far) to June 1950, and to what almost everyone saw as North Korea's invasion of South Korea. Once again the U.S. was caught flatfooted by a devastating assault. And once again, politically motivated conspiratorialists shifted the blame to an administration charged with either cuddling up to the communists or hell-bent on going to war with them....
When we get to Mr. Bush, WMDs and Iraq, the principle that while history doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes, applies in spades. In March 2003, as in December 1941, June 1950 and the summer of 1964, there was broad agreement that Something Had to Be Done. If flat-out lying created that mood, that is a black mark indeed on American policy making. But if the conspiracy charge was (to put it mildly) far from open-and-shut, and if the conspiratorialists were driven more by ideology and partisanship than by proof, then a healthy skepticism is in order.
History's lesson is this: In modern America, the path to war is beset with actions that rest on uncertain or arguable justification. The political/ideological fringes will craft theories of conspiracy with scant regard for fact or probability. And the opposition will make what it can of this material, within the limits of political prudence.