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.

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.

What a clever article. While pretending to defend Bush, Keller manages to trash McCarthy and the US reasons for attempting to defend South Vietnam. He dismisses the treasonous lies of the left as typical of the "opposition". His prescription of "healthy skepticism" toward the Democrats falls far short of the outrage that any patriot should feel.

Keller's attempt to whitewash various Democrat administrations doesn't hold up. Regardless of whether it is ever proven that Roosevelt set up Pearl Harbor, the Democrats were in power for 9 yeas before the attack. Likewise, the Democrat regime had been in power for 18 years when the North Vietnamese attacked. A new Democrat regime was in power for almost 4 years at the time of the Gulf of Tonkin. Bush had been president for less than 8 months at the time of an attack that had been planned for years (and Bush made the mistake of keeping Democrat intelligence organizations). It has generally been the Democrats who have weakened the country and encouraged our enemies to attack.

The point that Keller should have made is that it is the "opposition" that is involved in a conspiracy. It is not a conspiracy of brilliant minds scheming to overthrow the government, but a conspiracy of foreign interests taking advantage of useful idiots on the left. Following a pattern that worked well in Vietnam, the enemy is casting itself as a bunch of innocent "insurgents" attempting to evict an oppressive occupation. The media and the rest of the left have gone along with the story, instead of describing the murderers as the fifth column that they are. Hence, the conventional wisdom is that we are still fighting a war against Iraq (even though the Iraqi army surrendered long ago). Because the enemy is not properly defined, the reason for the war has become clouded. As a consequence, our ability to take the necessary action against Iran has been undermined if not destroyed.

The two surviving Democrat ex-presidents are prime examples of the "useful idiots" doing the work of the enemy, but not all Democrats have been so consistently antagonistic to the country's interests. Truman elected to use nuclear weapons in order to save American lives. In light of the many soldiers murdered by the fifth column in Iraq, Bush should consider following Truman's example in dealing with Iran.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.