Curtis - do you have any kind of cite to back up your assertation that “Chiang Kei-Sheik was on the brink of crushing the Communists in Manchuria when George Marshall forced them to negotiate instead.”
Anything that the KMT were anywhere near victory in the civil war anytime in the *decade *before 1949?
Marshall failed to puppet master the KMT to come out on top. That part is true. Aid to Generallissimo Cash My Check was not cut by the way only threatened. The only way that the KMT would have won is if the US shipped entire armies to China and took on the communists ourselves. You might want to read Stillwell and the American Experience in China and then you’d have a little context on how well a US led effort would have helped. The KMT lost when a) they let the Long March survive and thrive in Yan’an and b) proactively pursued the civil war instead of taking on the Japanese.
Again, you made a bald faced assertation that CKS and the KMT were on the brink of winning. Please provide some real cites to back up that claim. And then some cites to back up the claim that Marshall forced the KMT to negotiate instead of fight to victory.
Yep. A reliable source, unlike the right wing blogs which are all repeating the same talking point. Just because a bunch of people tell the same lie, that doesn’t make it true.
Its hosted on the National Public Radio site. Did you even read Alexiev’s article? There is far more to it than a claim about the exact figure of the debt. The broader point is the level of welfare dependence and low level of academic achievement amongst those who will make up the majority of the population in the future.
Yeah, I read it, did you read it? It is garbage, wherever it is hosted. The NPR site hosts a National Review article. It is a bald faced lie that $13 billion goes to immigrants in California.
How many millions/ billions go to immigrants in California? I have no clue but this may be part of the problem CA is having? Why are we not addressing the problem? How many immigrants can a state support and stay solvent?
We keep increasing the number of immigrants we allow into the US every year. New Zealand and other countries have tough restrictions on immigration.
I would think the economy alone would be reason enough to shut down immigration until our economy rebounds. We could also deport all illegals back to their countries and save a ton of money.
Why doe we want to bring so many immigrants in at a time like this? Any ideas?
Look, let’s not get hijacked: We’re debating about President Johnson and his performance in office and his legacy. Now, can anyone seriously contend LBJ did the wrong thing, in signing the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which abolished the openly racist (effectively limiting immigration not only to Europeans but to Northwestern Europeans, and intentionally freezing out Eastern Europeans, Southern Europeans, and practically all European Jews) national-origins quota system of the Immigration Act of 1924? Even knowing what we know now about the social and economic effects of post-1965 immigration to America, is there any of you who, in LBJ’s shoes, would have hesitated for a moment to sign that bill?! If so, why?
So, after the U.S.’ propping up South Vietnam for 20 years and training its military all that time, South Vietnam was still such a basket case that it was dependent on a substantial flow of U.S. cash for its moment-to-moment existence as a nation.
I’d honestly never realized that that was the argument you guys were making about the cutting of funds. Holy cow.
That’s quite the own goal, isn’t it?
I could have sworn there was something about WMDs, but maybe my memory’s playing tricks on me.
Iraq’s certainly less stable than it was in 2002, but we have semi-democratized it. Of course, this has come at a cost of a few hundred thousand Iraqi lives, but hey, we didn’t have to pay that cost; the people who we were supposedly helping did. :rolleyes: I don’t think we’re exactly the proper judges of the reasonableness of those casualties.
OTOH, imagine what we could have done with the roughly $700 billion we’ve already spent over there, and the hundreds of billions yet to come in VA expenses and the like. You think many people would have supported this war at the time if it had been known we were going to be there for the rest of the decade, and the bill would run well over a trillion dollars? Not a chance. Hell, the Bushies fired one guy who estimated, during the run-up, that the war might cost us a couple hundred billion.
And it might not have happened for decades, either: Saddam was a 65 year old in pretty good health when we invaded.
Your problem is, it doesn’t make it any more true either.
Considering that containment of Communism was pretty much universally accepted as a necessity by both parties, I don’t think he should take all the blame for Vietnam. More than any other individual, perhaps.
I think passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, despite the knowledge that it would cost the Democratic Party the South for decades, was a stunning triumph, and frankly what he should first be remembered for.
He knew that no President in the near future would have the sort of political capital he gained from JFK’s assassination, and he did what he knew was right despite the cost.
Considering how fractured and ineffective the leadership of the civil rights movement became after MLK’s death, it might never have passed otherwise.
Sorry for going off topic. Thanks for the cites. Interesting that from LBJ on we went from 120,000 immigrants a year till today over a million a year. It was to be more free to all countries. After LBJ several more immigration bills also affected todays numbers by increasing the numbers of immigrants. I would not have been hesitant to sign a bill making it more equal to other countries but I would not want to increase the overall number to what it is now.
We aren’t letting in more immigrants every year; the number of immigrants, including those on temporary visas, stays pretty stable at a little under 1 million a year. New Zealand and other countries’ restrictions on immigration are pretty meaningless, because we are not another country. In any event, New Zealand does not have tough immigration restrictions; the 2005 census showed that 20% of the population was foreign born. By contrast, 12.5% of the US population is foreign born, and that figure actually went down last year.
“The economy” would be a terrific reason to shut down immigration if you were somehow upset that the economy was doing too well and trying to destroy it. Quite apart from the illegals who pick our tomatoes and oranges (because nobody else will), there are any number of industries which rely on skilled, graduate and postgraduate immigrant labor to remain competitive. However, if you want to spend $8 on a potato or $2,500 on an annual physical - before lab screening - you’re on the right track.
Deporting illegals wouldn’t save us any money at all. We already do that.
You need to distinguish between skilled and unskilled immigration. As noted above in the Alexiev article, the overall burden of low skill immigration is massive as the subsequent generations are doing worse academically.
We support Israel similarly-until Israel got it’s nukes had we not supported them like that it’s quite likely they would have been crushed by the Arabs. Plus the cuts were massive-hundreds of millions of dollars.
And what the Democrats suggested, that we withdraw from Iraq, would have made it worse-a lot of more Iraqis dead.
We only started supporting them in the manner we do now after the Camp David accords; we basically bribed Israel and Egypt over the finish line on that deal. Israel already had nukes at that point.
At any rate, you’re saying South Vietnam was a basket case that would fall apart pretty much the moment we ceased sending them big bucks, even after we’d been propping them up for a generation.
Whatever. When your guys got us into a gigantic fuckup, griping that the other guys’ way out of the cesspool doesn’t meet your standards is pretty silly.
There’s a theory in some quarters that Iran was the real string-puller in making the war happen. No doubt they were trying - and apparently your guy Chalabi was an Iranian agent the whole time - but I think the war was a done deal once the neocons managed to become the inner circle of advisors to a very dumb, very hawkish President.
However, it’s been clear since 2003 that Iran is the big winner of the Iraq War, speaking of own goals. The ups and downs of the occupation period haven’t affected that one whit.
If we had waited only a decade or so South Vietnam could have been greatly strengthned. Already the Vietnamese army was growing more competent and defeat the North Vietnamese. Think of it as a Marshall Plan for Asia.
Which would be defeat.
No. For instance in World War II both the Soviets and the US could be considered to “win”.
