Wasn’t there almost 60.000 US casualties in the Vietnam war? Against a few thousand. The Vietnam war was far worse.
“Blunder” tends to mean a choice of the worst possible option. In the case of World War II, I believe there was a worse option than spheres of infuence, and that’s Allied armies continuing their march east and trying to oust Stalin.
So, US involvement in WW2 is far, far worse (and by your logic a bigger mistake) than Vietnam, Iraq, or actually, anything the USA has ever done?
After all, more casualties there than any other foreign war!
-Joe
I would not rely on Mr. Loewen for history lessons. He plays fast and loose with the facts. I tried checking the citations in one of his books and they often didn’t pan out.
I’m surprised it took this long for someone to bring this up as an example, but I agree it was certainly a doozie. Still not on a par with the invasion of Iraq (nothing tops that, in my opinion) but a very big mistake nonetheless. Not only did it lead to the overthrow of the Shah’s puppet regime by the Ayatollah’s very anti-american theocracy, but it also showed that America were all for spreading democracy unless the democracy in question didn’t suit them.
If you’re saying it is morally troubling that we would overthrow a a duly elected government, I agree; but saying “it came back to bite us in the ass” seems to be missing two points: one, it didn’t bite us in the ass until two decades later, and two, in hindsight, we basically had a choice of having rocky relations with Iran starting either in 1953 or 1979. Certainly you don’t think that we’d have good relations with Iran today had it not been for the coup?
Completely setting aside morality, from a strictly realpolitik view, the coup seemed to serve US interests for about 25 years. If one were a cold-hearted bastard, I think one could see that’s a pretty damn good return on a $1 million investment, so I just can’t see it being a true disaster – like Iraq – in which we’ve gotten absolutely nothing but trouble as a result of a terrible decision.
Well, that reputation wasn’t earned by Iran alone. There’s Guatemala, Indonesia, El Salvador, Chile… and the list goes on.
How about US support for Israel? If we wish to identify specific actions, either our recognition of Israel in 1948, or 1920-ish Congressional support of the LoN mandate.
Is it clear that we - or the world as a whole - is better off for the existence of an independent state of Israel?
And for our pains its cost us a hell of a lot more than $1 million to boot! :smack:
Even if we assume for a moment that if the US didn’t support Israel and the country was completely destroyed (and the population most likely slaughtered) that this would have made the US popular in the region, do you REALLY think that this would be a feather in our collective caps??? I think the US support for Israel is one of the shinning moments in our history…one of the times we actually didn’t fuck up and did the right thing for the right reasons. The world is certainly better off because there is an independent state of Israel IMHO. YMMV.
-XT
How, exactly?
Well, an argument can be made that the failure of the US to be more involved in (strengthening the League of Nations?) world affairs after WW1 helped make WW2 possible, with it’s millions of deaths. But the USA could not, alone, have stopped Hitler. The western European powers (France and UK) also would need to be strong, too.
The difference between then and now is that 1919-1933 seems like ancient history (sorry, but it does) to a lot of folks nowadays, while the worries of the current global tensions seem, well, more immediate. This gives the US/Iraq issue a bit more “weight” in such a question than the US ratifying the Versailles Treaty and entering the League of Nations.
A hundred years from now, somethig else may vie for the honor of the History Channels “Worlds Worst Political Blunders” episodes.
Who’s this “you” you’re talking about? I **opposed ** the invasion back in 2003.
I think it’s appalling that after all the bloodshed the best that we can hope for is worse that our starting point. That’s failure.
Personally I fail to see how anything would have turned out better if we had taken a tougher line with Stalin. Its extremely unlikely he would have backed down. As far as I can see it would just have reduced the chances of getting through the next three-quarters of a century without getting into a shooting war.
QUOTE=PBear42]surely our policies towards, Native Americans ought to rank somewhere in the list of things we’d like to reconsider?
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I think this certainly counts as the most amoral foreign policy actions. But it was a series of actions over centuries not a single decsion. Even if you could point to a single action that did have a tremendous effects on the native americans, from a pure amoral strategic point of view it probably made sense. I just so happens that in the Iraq fiasco the what was unbelievable wrong from a strategic point of view was also wrong from a moral point of view. Unless you buy the “rescueing the people of iraq from tyranny” excuse, which personally I do not especiially as it was only trotted out after the “WMD” and “Al-Qiada” excuses spectacularly failed.
When it is somewhere other than the middle-east.
I’ve got another candidate: no Marshall -type plan after the fall of the Soviet Bloc.
You could quibble with this on a number of grounds:[ul][li]It was mostly a non-decision.[]Outside Russia and few former Soviet republics, it’s not easy to see terrible consequences so far.[]It wasn’t only or mainly a US foreign policy decision.[/ul]There’s something to be said on both sides of all of these, but perhaps that can be left for another time.[/li]
But I think it’s a real candidate. Whilst real democratic or rule of law institutions might not have emerged in places like Russia where they don’t have old roots, they’d have had a better chance. The looting of former state assets and the failure of liberation to greatly improve most people’s lives has opened the field for the return of old authoritarian, imperial and anti-Western ways.
The Litvinenko affair has pushed my thinking in this direction quite a bit.
To me, overthrowing Saddam Hussein was nowhere near being the worst decision in US history.
The way we have mishandled the occupation of Iraq, on the other hand, will live as as testament to greed, stupidity, and lack of even grade school level planning for as long as there are history books.
w.
I sincerely agree that it’s too early to tell.
But I’m reminded of the Rodney Dangerfield exchange with his mother:
Rodney: Everyone hates me.
Mom: That’s just not true – everyone hasn’t met you yet.
Maybe not, but going to war in the Middle East to do it can’t be any worse than second in that department.
I’d strongly disagree with this… the history of war is a history of mis-management and bungling. The current fiasco certainly manages to hold its own amoungst the other blunders down the years, but could not be described as the worst example of it. But most of these other blunders are remembered as side-notes.
What makes the decision to invade Iraq so unbelievably dumb is in the middle of a war on Al Qiada which appeared to be heading our way we deciede to hand the cause celebre and training ground in the heart of the middle east, while we divert our resources from the main front in Afghanistan. And for what ? To depose a secular dictator with no links to Al Qiada. After that initial mistake it didn’t matter how badly or well the operation was carried out it was still a huge win for Al Qiada. The incompetent handling of the invasion just made sure it was gargantuan win for Al Qiada rather than merely a huge one.
There is nothing to compably dumb this to in US history. There have been other fiascos (e.g. Grenada) but these were boondoggles which had no were near lasting repercusions we will see from Iraq.
I heard GW the other night dangling his pie-in-the-sky scenario about a peaceful, democratic Iraq that is an ally in the “war on terrorism.”
Balls.
We probably would have had numerous allies and even Iraq wouldn’t have been an opponent in the “war on terrorism” had we not invaded.
The second tragedy of Vietnam was the failure among this generation of American policymakers to learn the lessons of that war and heed them in Iraq. Vietnam was a tragedy of American myopia, Iraq a tragedy of American hubris and stupidity.