Oh, Good

I kept wondering when contemporary rightwingers would recognize that they're not, at the end of the day, the heirs to the mainstream anti-communist tradition at all. Rather, they're the heirs to the "rollback" fantasists whose counsels Dwight Eisenhower wisely rejected and pushed to the margins of the American political debate. Orrin Judd t the rescue:

Unfortunately for the hundreds of millions of victims of Communism, our willingness to follow the Kennan model meant that the Cold War lasted for decades, during which we stood by as tens of millions were murdered and the rest lived in near slavery. To the extent that Kennan was responsible for our not settling Soviet hash in the late 40s, he (and we) enabled the repression and mass murder of a significant portion of the human population for a disturbingly extended period of time. The cost of his accuracy was catastrophic to them and morally disabling to us. Four decades of compromising with evil led directly to the spiritual malaise that even Jimmy Carter could diagnose and lament — though, having bought into the Kennanesque status quo, he was incapable of snapping us out of it.

Ah, yes, settling Soviet hash through a massive war during which, one assumes, no bloodshed or suffering or any other unpleasantness would have taken place. Too bad we listened to weak-kneed Harry Truman. Peter Robinson proves that not all conservatives have lost their marbles on this one.

Comments

Who the hell is "Orrin Judd" and why should we care what he thinks?

Posted by Joel | October 14, 2007 9:16 PM

They are always seeking final solutions. Half measures are inherently weak. Thus it is hopeless to negotiate with just about anyone because such only offers temporary solutions and that simply won't do.

The end of history is near and clear and that end in neoconservative or Christian Fundamentalists terms is the same. American final and total domination of the world. And it is good, and right, it is destiny.

Posted by rapier | October 14, 2007 9:27 PM

We need to settle the hash of monsters like Judd. Preferably with bullets to the back of the heads. Let these fucking monsters get a fucking taste of their own medicine. See how they fucking like it.

Posted by patriot | October 14, 2007 9:32 PM

One is amazed that people like Mark Steyn are not laughing at themselves, so painful has the parody become.

Posted by Robert Taft's Ghost | October 14, 2007 9:37 PM

Rick Perlstein's book on Goldwater paints a very colorful picture of the divides between the "traditional Republican party" as it was in the 50s, and the batshit insane Goldwater/Reagan/Buckley contingent. The hard right believed that Ike was borderline treasonous for not tossing nukes at Kruschev. Very much like today's armchair warriors, the John Birch right were convinced that they were the real patriots, the real warriors, and that guy who actually destroyed the Nazis was somehow weak-kneed and untrustworthy. It's amazing that many of the policies embraced by the hard right back then (destroy Social Security, belligerent foreign policy stance, anti UN) finally became open White House policy in the Bush administration. Even Reagan had the good sense to try to govern effectively and not go completely overboard with the ideological extremism.

Posted by pinson | October 14, 2007 9:54 PM

I do notice that Robinson does the mandatory genuflecting before the corpse of St. Ronald for supposedly putting an end to the Soviet Union -- no doubt by Forcing Them Into Surrender Through SDI. It's always amusing to see this, since Reagan himself made repeatedly clear that he hd no such intention. Notwithstanding his fuzzy-mindedness on other subjects, he was well aware (as was Bill Buckley) that trying to force the Soviets into a corner with the threat of SDI might very well end up provoking them to launch a first strike on us BEFORE we could get it.

Reagan kept proposing to offer a copy of our SDI technology to the Soviets so that they could activate an SDI system simultaneously with ours -- as he told Gorbachev at Reykjavik, "I would never have supported it if I didn't think it could be shared." Gorby turned him down, being aware (as just about everyone who wasn't near senility by then was aware) that if we allowed the Soviets enough access to our SDI technology for them to build a similar system, it would just mean that both sides would be aware from the start of the technological Achilles' heels of both systems and thus know from the start how to penetrate them, making them both useless. But at least Reagan's intentions were saner than those of his postmortem worshippers. By the time he actually made it to the White House, as John Judis points out, he had abandoned Goldwater's "Why Not Victory?" lunacy and settled for continuing containment of Communism -- which is all we COULD do while waiting for a miracle (which, against all hope, and beyond any control the US could have exerted, actually happened).

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | October 14, 2007 9:55 PM

It may be true that not all conservatives have lost their marbles, but Robinson hasn't proven that he hasn't lost his marbles. Though weakly conceding that "settling the Soviet hash" wasn't an option, he nevertheless sticks to the official wingnut historical narrative argues that Reagan "snapped" the cold war to an end.

Posted by d | October 14, 2007 9:58 PM

As for "settling the hash" of the USSR in the late 1940s, before they could get the Bomb, it should be remembered that Bertrand Russell also repeatedly urged the US to do so -- but for a different reason: he figured that once the Soviets got the Bomb, a two-way nuclear world war that would probably destroy all human civilization was almost inevitable. Without that motive, he wouldn't have regarded it as worthwhile for exactly the reason Yglesias mentions -- it would have been even bloodier than allowing Stalin's regime to continue existing.

Truman, being notoriously unsentimental, just might have followed Russell's advice had he known that the Soviets were going to get the Bomb so soon. But the OSS kept assuring him that they couldn't possibly do so before 1960, and Truman himself somehow managed to convince himself that -- as he repeatedly told aides -- they would NEVER get it, being just a bunch of ignorant ten-thumbed potato-eaters. When he was awakened on that morning in Nov. 1949 and told that we had detected clear signs of a Soviet nuclear explosion, he kept asking, "Are you sure? Are you sure?" It was not Harry's finest moment.

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | October 14, 2007 10:02 PM

The corruption of the Brezhnev period and the hopeless planning system sent the USSR economy and thereby the whole system into a tailspin long before Reagan. If he did anything at all Reagan only made it crumble a few years before it would have anyway.

Posted by Mike | October 14, 2007 10:05 PM

Not sure about all this. Just checking in after a long weekend. What's this about Mickey Kaus blowing goats? I haven't heard anything so scandalous (yet eminently believable)since reading Ann Coulter spread for horses. And when exactly is she going to refute those rumors?

Posted by steve duncan | October 14, 2007 10:05 PM

Orrin Judd believes that if Hitler had only invaded the Soviet Union he would have been a great benefactor of humanity.

No, I'm not kidding. (speaking as a former Judd troll)

Posted by calling all toasters | October 14, 2007 10:07 PM

Hitler did invade the Soviet Union. So is he a benefactor or not?

Posted by kvenlander | October 14, 2007 10:25 PM

Very much like today's armchair warriors, the John Birch right were convinced that they were the real patriots, the real warriors, and that guy who actually destroyed the Nazis was somehow weak-kneed and untrustworthy.

I don't know about weak-kneed, but the John Birch right sure considered Joseph Stalin to be untrustworthy.

You couldn't have meant Ike, could you? Because you did say "destroyed the Nazis", which was clearly what the Soviet forces did.

Crediting Ike with beating, let alone destroying, the Nazis is like crediting Joe Borowski for beating the Yankees.

Posted by McKingford | October 14, 2007 10:37 PM

When he's talking about the murder of a significant portion of the human population, what does he mean? This is post WW2 right? Does he mean the Great Leap Forward? If he is that's pretty daft. Negligent homicide - yes, murder - no.

Posted by Mike | October 14, 2007 10:52 PM

If only the US and its allies had settled the Soviet s' hash after World War ONE, when the regime was weak and Russia was torn by internal strife. They should have introduced substantial forces around the perimeters of the old Russian Empire, supported anti-communist partisans and taken on Red forces directly, when even a relatively small force could bring down the fledgling Bolshevik regime. No forced collectivization. No consolidation of Communist rule over the 'stans and the western republics of the later USSR. No War Communism, no purges, no Yezhovschina.

What??

Posted by Jim Henley | October 14, 2007 10:53 PM

I see what you did there Jim. Pretty clever :)

Posted by Mike | October 14, 2007 10:58 PM

Didn't the blogosphere go through all this about how FDR betrayed the world at Yalta back in 2005? Is there going to be a biannual revival now?

Posted by KCinDC | October 15, 2007 12:35 AM

Between the revolution-spreading rhetoric, the desire for extrajudicial detentions (without questioning their necessity), the torture, the highly suspect barrage of propaganda, and the invasion of countries due to strategic location (and not much else), I've always thought that the Podhoretzes and Kristols were not only not the intellectual heirs to the "mainstream anti-communists," they were, in fact, the intellectual heirs to the Soviet communists.

Or admirers at the very least.

Posted by Shinyk | October 15, 2007 1:34 AM

A man of the left with any true appreciation of history would be very reluctant in inviting contrasts between the left/right of today than the left/right of then.

if yglesias and his his loyal following of halfwits are heirs to any branch of leftwing thinking it is the 'Uncle joe is teh sex' kind.

Posted by pimp hand strikes! | October 15, 2007 4:29 AM

I don't think I can trust anyone who would, without irony, use the phrase "settle their hash..."

Posted by Anthony Damiani | October 15, 2007 4:58 AM

In the US South blacks couldn't drink from white people's water fountains or use white people's bathrooms or sit in the front of a bus until mid-1960s. Which was no different from Nazi Germany circa 1936. Do they regret not settling Southern hash in the late 1940s?

Just curious.

Posted by abb1 | October 15, 2007 5:49 AM

The contemporary right is also heir to the people who accused Eisenhower, Marshall, and much of the Army of being knowing agents of the Communist conspiracy. That's what the issue was with McCarthy - not anti-Communism.

I haven't read Coulter's book rehabbing McCarthy and I don't know whether she addresses this issue. But I've talked to people who took her book seriously and based on their responses, she misled people on this point.

Posted by John Emerson | October 15, 2007 6:28 AM

Do they regret not settling Southern hash in the late 1940s?

I doubt it. But I would fully support 'settling' things with the south right now. They aren't much different than they were then, and they are little more than a blight in our civilization. They do nothing but take money from the federal government, while never contributing anything to it but the same systemic corruption that keeps much of their land in third-world status. There can be no doubt that's we'd be better off if we cut them loose to indulge in their racist, incompetent ideology.

Posted by Soullite | October 15, 2007 7:45 AM

"Orrin Judd believes that if Hitler had only invaded the Soviet Union he would have been a great benefactor of humanity." --calling all toasters

"Hitler did invade the Soviet Union. So is he a benefactor or not?" --Kvenlander

Kvenlander's question is a nice illustration of what happens when the word "only" is moved around:
"if Hitler had only invaded" means something very different from
"if only Hitler had invaded"

I assume calling all toasters meant the former.
Maybe it would have been even clear as
"if Hitler had invaded only"

Posted by Barry | October 15, 2007 8:03 AM

Is it just me, are this blog's commenters gradually turning more and more sociopathic? Mass murder of Zionists? Raze the south? Sheesh.

Anyway, to the extent that the U.S. was morally compromised in the Cold War, it was surely in 1) the intermingling of opposing communism and supporting U.S. business interests (e.g. the overthrow of Guzmán in Guatemala on behalf of United Fruit, the overthrow of Mossadeq, etc), and 2) even when motivated by the worthy cause of anti-communism, rather than venal business interests, ruthlessness and an ends-justify-the-means mentality, mixed with a touch of good old-fashioned ineptitude, which in some cases was more destructive than the communism being opposed (e.g. supporting the French in Indochina and the Vietnam War, domestic McCarthyism, supporting the mujahedeen in Afghanistan).

My sense is that right-wingers are generally frustrated by the failure of the world to erupt in bloody conflagrations with sufficient regularity. Some of them deal with this through fantasy, and claim that at this point we're in the midst of World War IV. Others deal with it by regretting whistfully that the 20th century was insufficiently bloody. And, of course, almost all of them try to do what they can in the here and now to bring the world closer to a state of world war.

Posted by Julian Elson | October 15, 2007 8:06 AM

The Nat'l Review and similar nutcases are merely returning to their roots, as mentioned above. They were more 'intellectual' than the BirchSociety back in the late '50s; they quoted Edmund Burk and had some pretty heavy-weight political writers (Russell Kirk, DeBorgegrave--surely misspelled). But their general ideas were about the same. It's worth remembering that Wm Buckley's earliest books preshadowed the Christian Right (God and Man at Yale) and supported Joe McCarthy (McCarthy and His Enemies).

They still imagine that American liberals are the heirs of Alger Hiss. Our 'original sin' was the Yalta Accord. Never mind that the Soviet Army could have rolled onto the Atlantic if Stalin had desired and looked like it might. Hell, at the time of the Yalta meeting Marshall Zuhkov (also misspelled) was only 40miles from Berlin while the US Army was barely over the Rhine!!

In the comment sections of 'GreenFootballs' and the ilk we are often called Communists. In fact it is they who choose to believe comfortable mythology and to rage in their secret places against the cruel winds of reality.

Pathetic. That's what the right wing has become--just pitiful.

Posted by JohnMcC | October 15, 2007 12:58 PM

Point taken Mr. M, but I think you understand what I'm saying.

Posted by pinson | October 15, 2007 1:52 PM

"settling Soviet hash in the late 40s"

Hmmmm... When NATO was founded in 1949, the allies could muster 12 divisions on the continent. The Russians 175.

Posted by Norway | October 15, 2007 4:00 PM