The Truman Analogy

Harry Truman was hugely unpopular when he left office, but people love him now. This seems to give a lot of comfort to George W. Bush and other members of his administration, but Spencer Ackerman makes the excellent point that Truman still isn't admired for his handling of the Korean War. It's that, in retrospect, other things Truman did came to look really smart and far-sighted.

But what the Bushites want to get out of their Trumania is vindication for what they did in Iraq. There's just nothing comparable to Truman's work on post-war institution-building in the non-Iraq portions of Bush's legacy. I think he's done an okay job in regards to some things like our relationship with China and so forth, but all the action's been in Iraq and it's been a disaster.

Comments

True, but Petraeus /= MacArthur.

Whatever you think of the Surge it's nowhere near as crazy as Inchon/the push north, and Petraeus seems much more in touch with the situation on the ground than MacArthur was.

What I'm saying is that they're wrong for a variety of reasons, and you can make the case that Korea wasn't necessarily all Truman's fault.

Posted by Statler | June 9, 2008 4:29 PM

I think, Matt, you ignore that Truman's legacy is shared with George Marshall, Dean Acheson and a hell of a lot of others.

When you look at Bush's shared legacy, if anything, it gets worse.

Posted by Greg | June 9, 2008 4:35 PM

The biggest threat to a rational evaluation of the Bush years is the pro-contrarianism bias in journalism and academia. You probably won't be able to build your career on an analysis of how much Bush sucks, because everyone knows that—you might be able to build a career on analysis of how Bush was actually awesome, because no one else will be saying that.

Posted by G C | June 9, 2008 4:38 PM

What exactly is Matt taking issue with in President Truman's handling of Korea? He was correct to do the intervention. He was correct to it with a broad coalition under the auspices of the United Nations. He was correct to deny MacArthur the authority to use nuclear weapons at his discretion and may have prevented a Third World War.

Posted by Tim K | June 9, 2008 4:41 PM

But what the Bushites want to get out of their Trumania is vindication for what they did in Iraq.

Huh?

Posted by Al | June 9, 2008 4:42 PM

I think that Truman actually gets a lot of credit for having the cojones to fire MacArthur who was more or less considered a deity. Truman took a lot of flack for this at the time. Beyond that though, I agree though that in general Korea did have a lot to do with why he was unpopular in office and for a while afterward. There were also some scandals in different ways he annoyed liberals and conservatives. His personal qualities were much less appreciated then than in later years.

Posted by Puzzled Panda | June 9, 2008 4:43 PM

Bush's legacy may surpise you. It seems historians are apt to forget horrors if the president also speaks about idealistically when he promotes the slaughter of fellow humans.

Example: Wilson was a true maniac, taking political prisoners, sedition laws, idiotic wars of aggression in Latin America and later in Russia. And a racist to boot - promoting segretion in depts, in some cases for the first time since Lincoln freed the slaves. Wilson was widely loathed by the end of his term, and he was never especially popular as president. But he's now considered one of the greats.

Harding, on the other hand, freed political prisoners, attempted to make peace with other nations, set up the Dept of Veterans, attempted to end lynching... and he was highly popular even at the end of his term. Now he's considered the worst president.

Posted by hankest | June 9, 2008 4:45 PM

I think that Bush's implementation of the do not call list, which saves us from the scourge of telemarketers, will be remembered long after Iraq is forgotten. If he can just extend it to cover email spam he will secure his place as one of the best presidents evah.

Posted by Justaguy | June 9, 2008 4:45 PM

Better to compare Bush's legacy to LBJ's. Both are hated by their enemies and friends but for entirely different reasons. And if both the left and right feels your weaknesses outweigh your strengths then who exactly is going to admire you in 60 years.

Posted by Gordon Gekko | June 9, 2008 4:48 PM

Since we're going with pie-in-the-sky hypothetical revisionist histories, maybe the Bushies should reference the Catholic Church.

500 years of bloody Crusades by Popes from the 11th Century to the 16th Century, but today, the Pope is revered as a man of peace.

So yeah, it could happen.

But it won't.

Posted by WinSmith | June 9, 2008 4:49 PM

I think that Bush's implementation of the do not call list, which saves us from the scourge of telemarketers, will be remembered long after Iraq is forgotten. If he can just extend it to cover email spam he will secure his place as one of the best presidents evah.

Posted by Justaguy | June 9, 2008 4:50 PM

His personal qualities were much less appreciated then than in later years. - Puzzled Panda

IMHO, it's more that these personal qualities have been forgotten and replaced with the legend of the "home-spun" Truman. Not that Truman wasn't home-spun or straight-talking, but he also was, um, a very partisan Democrat. Many of the Trumanolatrists tend to forget that -- they tend to view Truman-style Dems. today as being "hyper-partisan" and "shrill", just as they tend to view the Marshall/Acheson-style foreign policy Truman promulgated to be tantimount to appeasement.

Posted by Red Sea Pedestrian, So Shouldn't I be in Shul not Work? | June 9, 2008 4:55 PM

AP: President Bush's former spokesman, Scott McClellan, will testify before a House committee next week about whether Vice President Dick Cheney ordered him to make misleading public statements about the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity.

McClellan's lawyers said he has accepted House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers' invitation to testify June 20. The attorneys said McClellan will appear and be sworn during the proceedings.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Somebody really hacked this man off. Or he's dying of cancer. Or God itself paid him a visit and demanded penance. Something.
I wonder if Bush will try to intervene and halt his testimony?

Posted by steve duncan | June 9, 2008 5:00 PM

Truman still isn't admired for his handling of the Korean War.

This is true. However, there are several respects in which he should be. He had the guts to fire MacArthur. He was willing to negotiate with the other side after radically scaling back war aims. And he took a firm stand in favor of expanded rights for enemy prisoners (specifically, the right not to be forcibly repatriated -- many had good reason to fear punishment for being captured), even though it meant prolonging the war. In my view it is this last which most vividly highlights the gulf between him and Bush.

Mostly Americans hated how long the war went on, with little progress either on the battlefield or at the negotiating table, and blamed Truman.

Whether going to war for South Korea in the first place was a good idea is a question I still go back and forth on, however.

Posted by Ryan | June 9, 2008 5:23 PM

Like Bush today, Truman was an odious and dishonest President. He used all of the same propaganda we hear today from Bush to prop up a despicable dictator Syngman Rhee who had no role in the Korean opposition to Japanese aggression. He was a loyal American puppet who aggressively pursued Communists and any others who harbored the slightest Democratic ideals, enriching himself all the while, beyond measure. All the while Truman and subsequent President's constantly praised this scumbag. The massacres of hundreds off thousands of innocents

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4557315.stm

before North Korea took any kind of parallel reprisals, was robustly denied by Truman's propaganda machine and amplified by America's well-oiled propaganda machine called the media. This story including photos, documents, and descriptions was covered up for a half-century and only now reported (Of course the government-controlled Communist press had a more accurate account of the sordid outrage against humanity). But here in America not only do we have no accounting for such crimes against humanity, the criminals are lauded not only by the diseased-right but also by the liberal, National Security hawks.

Posted by della Rovere | June 9, 2008 5:48 PM

But... there has not... been.... another 9/11...

*melodramatic, breathy, faux-emotional tone of voice*

Posted by What a melodramatic, simple-minded Republican would say | June 9, 2008 5:52 PM

Like Bush today, Truman was an odious and dishonest President. He used all of the same propaganda we hear today from Bush to prop up a despicable dictator Syngman Rhee who had no role in the Korean opposition to Japanese aggression. He was a loyal American puppet who aggressively pursued Communists and any others who harbored the slightest Democratic ideals, enriching himself all the while, beyond measure. All the while Truman and subsequent President's constantly praised this scumbag. The massacres of hundreds off thousands of innocents

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4557315.stm

before North Korea took any kind of parallel reprisals, was robustly denied by Truman's propaganda machine and amplified by America's well-oiled propaganda machine called the media. This story including photos, documents, and descriptions was covered up for a half-century and only now reported (Of course the government-controlled Communist press had a more accurate account of the sordid outrage against humanity). But here in America not only do we have no accounting for such crimes against humanity, the criminals are lauded not only by the diseased-right but also by the liberal, National Security hawks.

Posted by della Rovere | June 9, 2008 5:53 PM

There has not... been.... another 9/11...

Therefore, Bush is... vindicated... of all alleged wrong-doing and incompetence...

He could become a Satan worshipper almost, and... it would still be forgiven...

Posted by What a melodramatic, simple-minded Republican would say | June 9, 2008 5:56 PM

In any case, predicting how history will judge this or that seems like a futile enterprise. If the US becomes an imperialist nation ruled by frat-boy douchebags, then Bush will be viewed as Augustus, and "Bush" will be come the official title of the president. If not, he'll likely be viewed with contempt, unless starting unnecessary wars to put your name a notch higher on the "Great presidents list" comes back in vogue.

Uh, and Truman wasn't president in 1980, though perhaps he was still operating his Truman propaganda machine from beyond the grave. (Not that that excuses the Korean mililtary dictatorship, just thought it was an odd comment)

Posted by TheF79 | June 9, 2008 6:05 PM

The Korean War is largely forgotten, especially the Truman Administration's foul-ups that got us into it, such as Dean Acheson's speech outlining America's perimeter of countries we'd defend that didn't include South Korea.

In the long run, personality rules with the public, while the media's opinion is mostly driven by simplifying ideology (e.g., Truman=Democrat=Good). Both look bad for Bush.

Posted by Steve Sailer | June 9, 2008 6:07 PM

GW Bush's legacy = extending daylight savings time

Posted by dizzyg | June 9, 2008 6:44 PM

I don't know how Truman is viewed now on his conduct of the Korean War, but what people hated about it then is that, in contrast to World War II, we weren't going for victory, and were stalemated. In retrospect, that was better than the MacArthur plan to attack China and invite the use of nuclear weapons. The Korean War was not a disaster in the same way as Iraq or Vietnam was.

Bush will get some points for there not being another 9/11-type attack, but they will ambiguous points, because there are many reasons why something didn't happen.

His international legacy will be colored above all by his failure to do anything about climate change (in contrast to what Gore would have done, and Bush's succesors will do), a greater disaster than Iraq, which will pale in comparison.

Iraq will also be overshadowed by his presiding over the decline of American economic and political power in the world (of which the war was a key part). And, in contrast to Truman, who was an institution builder, especially internationally (UN, GATT, NATO, etc.), Bush has heavily damaged that legacy and has been an institution destroyer.

He has battered the American system of government, directly by attacking the Constitution, and by his incompetance, of being head of a conservative government that systematically trashed the positive uses of government.

On top of that, he's damaged the power and effectiveness not only of government but of his own party, the Republican Party.

With all that, are there still those who think history will look kindly on his administration? He is not in the mold or league of those presidents with mixed legacies, such as LBJ, Wilson, and Reagan.

Posted by John Raymond | June 9, 2008 6:49 PM

Whatever you think of the Surge it's nowhere near as crazy as Inchon/the push north

Inchon was a great success which drove the North Koreans out of the South, no? I won't debate the poorness of the decision to invade North Korea.

At any rate, how can anyone deny that Truman loused up the Korean War? Obviously, it would have been worse if Douglas MacArthur had been listened to and we'd nuked China, but other than that there's not much to be said in favor of Truman's Korea policy.

The Korean War was not a disaster, but it shouldn't have happened, serious mistakes were made in conducting it (especially the decision to invade the north), it became a bloody stalemate after the Chinese came in, and Truman couldn't figure out how to end it. He deserves flak for it.

As to Wilson, can we note that, while Wilson was certainly a flawed president who had some terrible policies, especially with respect to civil liberties and civil rights, he also had a lot of accomplishments. A great deal of serious progressive legislation took place under Wilson - the Underwood Tariff, the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, the establishment of the Federal Reserve - much more than under either of his predecessors. Wilson's foreign policy can obviously be faulted, but I think it's hard to see that he was really wrong in getting the U.S. involved in World War I, given that he obviously could not foresee that a German defeat would lead to Hitler, and such, and that the League of Nations actually was a far-sighted idea which was ahead of its time, although the execution obviously left much to be desired.

Anyway, Wilson did a lot of crappy stuff, but he also did some good stuff, and his idealistic moments were a lot more substantive than Bush's. Also - Wilson is no longer viewed as a great president. As far as I can tell, most everything I read about Wilson is about how overrated he is. Can anyone name a historian in the last 25 years or so who thinks really highly of Wilson?

Posted by John | June 9, 2008 7:03 PM

This is true. However, there are several respects in which he should be. He had the guts to fire MacArthur. He was willing to negotiate with the other side after radically scaling back war aims. And he took a firm stand in favor of expanded rights for enemy prisoners (specifically, the right not to be forcibly repatriated -- many had good reason to fear punishment for being captured), even though it meant prolonging the war. In my view it is this last which most vividly highlights the gulf between him and Bush.

=================================================

Baloney!!!

Truman was in charge when millions of Soviet citizens were forcibly repatriated to the USSR after WW II. It is one of the most shameful espisodes in US history

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag

When the war ended in May 1945, as many as two million former Russian citizens were forcefully repatriated (against their will) into the USSR.[21] On 11 February 1945, at the conclusion of the Yalta Conference, the United States and United Kingdom signed a Repatriation Agreement with the Soviet Union.[22] One interpretation of this agreement resulted in the forcible repatriation of all Soviets. British and U.S. civilian authorities ordered their military forces in Europe to deport to the Soviet Union up to two million former residents of the Soviet Union, including persons who had left Russia and established different citizenship years before. The forced repatriation operations took place from 1945-1947.[23]

Soviet POWs on their return to the Soviet Union were often treated as traitors (see Order No. 270).[24][25][26] According to some sources, over 1.5 million surviving Red Army soldiers imprisoned by the Germans were sent to the Gulag.[27][28][29]
=================================================

Also I don't remember hearing of Truman taking any principled stands against 100,000 Japanese American citizens being interned without trial during the war do you?

Posted by Campesino | June 9, 2008 8:14 PM

Bush will be remembered for starting the Iran war - not the Iraq war.

Unless he lets McCain start it - then Bush will be remembered for the Iraq war. And since the Iran war will result in the US being driven out of Iraq, he will be remembered along with McCain as being the two worst Presidents in US history.

If Obama wins (not a certainty, in my view), it will depend on how much Obama does to rectify Iraq. If he does a lot to end US involvement there, Bush may benefit from that despite having started it. If he lets it continue, Bush will get the blame for starting it, and Obama will get the blame for continuing it - especially if Obama starts a war with Iran as a result of his failed "diplomacy" and the effect of that is as I've said, the US gets driven out of Iraq.

How Iraq ENDS, in other words, will determine Bush's legacy as far as Iraq goes. And whether Bush starts the Iran war or not will determine his overall legacy.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 9, 2008 8:15 PM

Everyone else has hammered the truman angle and Iraq, but I'd like to drop a point about the last bit of you post, Matt.

You may recall before September 11th (those halcyon days, when we had a different mindset), a certain incident took place in the South China sea between an American P-3 and a Chinese jet fighter "escorting" it. This incident, definitely a diplomatic incident, led to a lot of nationalistic bravado and strutting. And the 2000 election also had a lot of worry-worry about China beneath it. Were it not for 9/11 and the Iraq war, and our need to keep Asia from boiling over, who thinks that Taiwan may have declared independence and possibly hot war with China may have occurred by now, considering the neocon cowboys in office?

Posted by N < | June 9, 2008 8:43 PM

Bushies also like to compare themselves to Churchill. But the big difference is Churchill was right, where Bushies were wrong.

Bush and McCain even handed much of Afghanistan (with much of Pakistan) back to the terrorists who attacked us. Churchill never advocated that sort of stupidity.

Posted by Owen | June 9, 2008 9:09 PM

Also I don't remember hearing of Truman taking any principled stands against 100,000 Japanese American citizens being interned without trial during the war do you?
Posted by Campesino

Why should Truman, only VP in 1944 and focused on waste in war contracts care about restrictions on 100,000 enemy aliens from Japan and their dependents, or the 20,000 enemy alien Germans and Italians and their dependents treated the same way?
By the time Truman was President, the Nipponese and Germans had begun leaving the internment camps or resettlement locales. 10,000 Nipponese who refused to renounce the Emperor and said they hated America were vountarily deported at war's end. As a sick joke, they also got "reparations checks" for the Internment sent to their Prefectures. The 20,000 European and American survivors of Japanese internment (33-35% died in Jap internment camps) got nothing. The Japs also killed around 120,000 American civilian subjects in the Philippines.

Boo hoo for the designated Japanese enemy aliens and their born in the USA dependents. They had a 99.9% survival rate in their camps, lived and ate better than most American WWII soldiers, had apologies and compensation checks coming to them since 1947. And, the postwar assessment was that 10% were gung-ho loyal to America, 40% were leaning pro-American, 20% didn't care who won, 20% leaned pro-Japanese, and 10% were utterly disloyal to America and fanatically devoted to the Japanese conquest of Asia.

***********************
On Presidents- Wilson, Truman, and JFK appear to be overrated by left-leaning academia.

Nixon and to a lesser extent, LBJ, appear to be headed for more rehabilitation given the lasting value of many of their programs and initiatives. Next to FDR, they are the two most consequential (in positive ways) of the 20th Century. Especially now that we know that Nixon was minor-league compared to the law-breaking and constitution-flouting Wilson, FDR, Truman, JFK and LBJ did.

Carter and Bush II appear headed for the toilet bowl of turd Presidents, with Bush II possibly, just possibly getting a shot at partial redemption if it turns out Iraq helped destroy radical Islam as a credible force.

Posted by chris ford | June 9, 2008 9:15 PM

For all of you crediting Truman with firing MacArthur, that's like shooting someone in the stomach and then putting a bandaid over the bullet. MacArthur was already well-known as an idiot by the start of the war, including to Truman. He was just scared he would suffer politically by not having MacArthur in charge. We are talking about a guy who abandoned his troops in the Pacific for death and ordered the use of an overabundance of violence against WWI vets protesting in DC. Truman could have put Eisenhower in charge of that war from the beginning without any real political damage to himself and probably won the war (or at least reduced North Korea down to a sliver along the border with China instead of being half the peninsula).

Simple question: did the Korean War go badly under Truman? Yes. That's the question that matters. MacArthur's decision to basically march on China instead of focusing solely on the communists in the North was beyond stupid.

Posted by Reality Man | June 9, 2008 10:05 PM

Truman tried to seize the steel industry and got smacked down. A lot of phony-baloney Unitary Executive/war authority crap should have been settled then. Would that Bush would remember that. Would that Congress would remember that.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | June 9, 2008 10:06 PM

The fact that "radical Islam" was never a credible force is obvious to all but idiot racists like chris ford. But I do love how he lumps Carter in with the architect of the brutal Iraqi pogrom.

Tell us mr. ford, how many people did Carter's foreign policy murder? How does his presidency even come close to being the disaster that is George W. Bush's?

Posted by Circus Freak | June 9, 2008 10:17 PM

"And, the postwar assessment was that 10% were gung-ho loyal to America, 40% were leaning pro-American, 20% didn't care who won, 20% leaned pro-Japanese,"

Wow Chris Ford, that's some America hating shit right there. You've just admitted that 90% of a population was jailed purely due to their race, and you're defending it, woo weee, they ate good! what a great consolation!

Bill of Rights.

Posted by mike | June 9, 2008 11:00 PM

I hate analogies like this. There are big differences between Korea War and Iraq. Some favor Bush, some favor Truman. But Attackerwhatchathingy's analysis is pretty freakin' thin here.

Posted by dragnet | June 10, 2008 12:01 AM

Wow Chris Ford, that's some America hating shit right there. You've just admitted that 90% of a population was jailed purely due to their race, and you're defending it, woo weee, they ate good! what a great consolation!
Bill of Rights.
Posted by mike

How stupid can an anti-American be? No other member of the East Asian race group was interned. But saying "race persecution" helps the lies your Anti-Americanism is predicated upon.
The only thing groups like Chinese and my Filipino-side ancestors occasionally needed to make clear in World War II was that they were no Japs - to certain American low-educated, like blacks and white rubes, who didn't know the difference.

Posted by chris ford | June 10, 2008 1:01 AM

It's hard to tell just how stupid an anti-American like chris ford can be. It's one thing to be an idiot racist, but to come out and use racial slurs, to suggest that the moderate Jimmy Carter is on par with the monstrous Bush, that takes some phenomenal stupidity.

Posted by Circus Freak | June 10, 2008 2:30 AM

Most of the important points have already been made, but by way of a few supporting facts:

--It was official US policy (most clearly expressed by Eisenhower's JCS) that Korea was an area of no particular strategic interest that would probably devolve into the Soviet sphere of influence. Truman changed his mind about this on the spur of the moment in 1950, throwing soft, poorly-equipped occupation troops in front of the Soviet-equipped NorKo meatgrinder resulting in the worst US military setback since the Battle of the Bulge. The US Eighth Army was almost totally destroyed, with many of its soldiers left to die alone in frozen wilderness.

--Perhaps two million people died in the Korean war, including nearly 40,000 GI's. We killed an estimated 11% of North Korea's population with a bombing campaign that's been described as "genocidal". There were numerous massacres of civilians, including South Koreans, by our ground troops, and prisoners were treated abominably.

--At the "conclusion" of the war, the aggressors were still in charge of all the territory they started with- currently the world's largest concentration camp, working on nukes. South Korea survived as a military dictatorship for years before finally evolving into a democracy.

If Iraq emerges as a reasonably democratic, reasonably pro-Western state at peace with its neighbors and pumping oil, Bush will be seen in a much better light, multiple mistakes notwithstanding.

Posted by robert powell | June 10, 2008 2:37 AM

If Iraq emerges as a reasonably democratic, reasonably pro-Western state at peace with its neighbors and pumping oil, Bush will be seen in a much better light, multiple mistakes notwithstanding.

If robert powell suddenly becomes a rational human being and realizes that we murdered a few hundred thousand Iraqis for the vanity of sociopaths like himself and Bush then the desert will suddenly erupt into flowers and rainbows with unicorns on the barbecue roasting on spits made of their own horns.

Posted by Circus Freak | June 10, 2008 2:56 AM

Truman was a war criminal by any definition of the word and also set the stage for the nuclear arms race that now ensures we can annihilate all of humanity many times over in a snap - great guy, yeah.

Posted by novakant | June 10, 2008 5:00 AM

The Korean War is directly responsible for US intervention in the Republic of China on Taiwan. The war was the catalyst for renewed US engagement in the region to contain Communism.

Simply put, if the US had decided not to assist Taiwan, then there would probably be another war in the 60s between the Republic of China and the PRC.

Posted by Jack Uphill | June 10, 2008 5:11 AM

If Circus Freak suddenly becomes a rational human being and realizes that Ba'athist Iraq murdered at least ten times the number of people that have been killed since the invasion (by far the biggest percentage of whom were killed by other Arabs, not us), and that given the kind of response he seems to favor would certainly have continued running up the score, it may be possible for us to have a serious discussion about our policy in the Persian Gulf without having to suffer through the tiresome propagandistic exaggerations and preening narcissism of do-gooder ignoramuses.

Posted by robert powell | June 10, 2008 7:41 AM

I expected that some moron like Campesino would pipe up in outrage at my limited defense of Truman for his 'no forcible repatriation' stance in Korean War armistice negotiations.

Campy, my familiarity with this subject goes considerably beyond an ability to cut-and-paste from Wikipedia. Let's just leave it at that for now.

Truman was in charge when millions of Soviet citizens were forcibly repatriated to the USSR after WW II. It is one of the most shameful espisodes in US history

Arguably true, and the important thing is that *Truman himself thought so*. That's a major reason why, he told advisors, he determined not to let it happen again with Communist prisoners in Korea. (Psywar advisors also pointed out that there were potential propaganda benefits, but the evidence suggests that in Truman's own mind humanitarian considerations were foremost. And in this he was opposed by many in the army, who saw sticking up for enemy prisoners' rights as an unworthy obstacle to a ceasefire.)

And on a narrower point by Robert Powell:

There were numerous massacres of civilians, including South Koreans, by our ground troops, and prisoners were treated abominably.

It's unclear from context whether, in that last phrase, you mean Communist or UN prisoners. It is certainly true of the latter. Of the former, bad treatment by UN authorities was mostly the result of neglect rather than malice. The US never made a priority of assigning quality leadership and troops/guards to run the camps. For long stretches the prisoners themselves ran the compounds. Eventually factional violence got badly out of hand and the US, embarrassed by the kidnapping of one of its own camp commanders by prisoners, cracked down hard.

There's much that's regrettable about US detainee-handling policy in Korea, but none of it approaches the deliberate, systematic abuses of detainees explicitly sanctioned by the Bush administration. By its 'no forcible repatriation' stance the US afforded enemy prisoners *additional* rights *beyond* what Geneva explicitly recognized; it also publicly denounced torture and prisoner abuse in the strongest terms at the UN and in other fora. The contrast with the Bush administration is about as stark as can be.

Posted by Ryan | June 10, 2008 9:22 AM

robert powell's fantasies about Iraq notwithstanding, Bush's brutal assault on the Iraqi people has resulted in more deaths in five years than the entire reign of the Baathists. His ignorant comment about who did the killing underscores his incompetence to speak about foreign policy - as the Iraq's conquerer the United States is responsible for the security of its people. Without George Bush's assault on the Iraqi people the millions of victims of the Iraq war would not be displaced, wounded, and dead.

Were he to recognize these simple facts we could have a rational discussion about our policies in the Persian Gulf rather than having to suffer through the tiresome propagandistic exaggerations and preening narcissism of warmongering ignoramuses.

Posted by Circus Freak | June 10, 2008 10:11 AM

Think about this - South Korea was just about the most homogeneous nation on earth by the time the fighting ended. Between then and the election of Kim Youngsam, Korea had exactly one year of civilian democratic rule. The idea that a racially and religiously diverse country with a recent history of genocide and ethnic cleansing like Iraq sitting on a bunch of oil (and thus subject to the oil curse) in the middle of a bad neighborhood will somehow turn out as well as South Korea on a similar timeline is ludicrous. At best, Iraq is just the next Nigeria - no one is ever really in charge of the whole country, ethno-sectarian civil wars kill millions, oil wealth lets the rulers enrich themselves while ignoring the people, assassination is common and the rulers are deposed every few years in a coup.

Posted by Reality Man | June 10, 2008 11:08 AM

I expected that some moron like Campesino would pipe up in outrage at my limited defense of Truman for his 'no forcible repatriation' stance in Korean War armistice negotiations.

=================================================

So sad, Ryan. When the facts don't support you, your first reaction is to call people names. And dishonest - your defense of Truman wasn't limited at all and you didn't mention it as limited to the Korean War. Name-calling is the last refuge of the argument loser. Actually in your case, the first refuge

================================================ Campy, my familiarity with this subject goes considerably beyond an ability to cut-and-paste from Wikipedia. Let's just leave it at that for now.

================================================

My knowledge of the subject goes well beyond Wikipedia. You frankly have yet to demonstrate by your comments that yours even rises to that level. I thought I've give you a short-cut to help cure your ignorance.

=================================================

Arguably true, and the important thing is that *Truman himself thought so*.

=================================================

If the important thing is that Truman *thought so* why didn't he do anything about it! He didn't stand idly by and let it happen (a la Rwanda) American troops rounded up and handed over hundreds of thousands of people to slavery and death. Do some research on Operation Keelhaul.

And you view the whole episode as a *growth experience* for Truman! How much blood did he have to have on his hands to learn the lesson?

Posted by Campesino | June 10, 2008 11:51 AM

Robert powell: " IF Iraq emerges as a reasonably democratic, reasonably pro-Western state at peace with its neighbors and pumping oil, Bush will be seen in a much better light, multiple mistakes notwithstanding."

ponies!

Posted by dj spellchecka | June 10, 2008 1:19 PM

Seriously, i don't see how arguing that bushco killed less Iraqis that Saddam did [numbers impossible to prove or disprove] does much to assuage the immorality of the unwarranted invasion.

besides, everything that the u.s. has done to Iraq in the commission of furthering our interests there have resulted in dead Iraqis.

in the 80's rumsfield was shaking hands with Saddam, the CDC was giving out biological samples and western countries were helping with the chemical weapons program. the result? Saddam killed an estimated hundreds of thousands of Kurds.

in the 90's the sanctions killed Iraqis.

how is any of this moral?

Posted by dj spellchecka | June 10, 2008 1:31 PM

your defense of Truman wasn't limited at all and you didn't mention it as limited to the Korean War.

Here's a hint, Campy: I DIDN'T MENTION ANY OTHER WAR or any other actions of Truman outside the Korean War. Perhaps, when you assumed I was making some broader case for Truman's awesomeness, what you were hearing was the deranged voices inside your own head.

If the important thing is that Truman *thought so* why didn't he do anything about it!

You'd have to ask him. What *is* clear is that he resolved not to let it happen again, in Korea, and indeed it didn't.

Once again: I am not lauding Truman's actions (or, indeed, US policies more generally) with respect to Soviet displaced persons and ex-PWs immediately post-WWII. *You* brought those up, not me. To restate my simple, limited argument: There are several respects in which Truman should be admired for his handling of the *Korean War*, and prisoner repatriation policy is one of them.

But if you really want to argue about the earlier episode, fine. The post-WWII forced repatriations produced some truly heart-rending stories, and US authorities evinced considerably callousness. But if you're determined to blame Truman for this, you should really spread it around a bit. For one thing, FDR, not Truman, signed the Yalta deal with the Soviets. Second, Eisenhower, as Army Chief of Staff during this period, was better-positioned than either man to see the consequences of the policy first-hand, since it was the army that was in charge of physically returning these people and it was Ike's subordinates who occasionally grumbled about the injustice of it. But Ike raised nary a peep of protest.

The principal reasons for the policy: The fact that the Soviets had some American PWs (actually, ex-PWs liberated from the Germans) in their custody, effectively hostages, whom US authorities feared would not be returned if the US did not reciprocate; British insistence (lots of Brits were 'hostages' too); the overstretched Army's desire to not be responsible for feeding and housing any more displaced persons than it had to; basic official callousness towards all the categories of dispossessed Europeans uprooted by the war, callousness exacerbated in this case by the fact that some (though by no means all) of the Soviets in question had switched sides and *fought for the Nazis*.

So yes, I do know my shit on this, Campy. If you're interested in non-polemical history (which I suspect you're not), check out Mark Elliot's _Pawns of Yalta_. No American official comes out of it looking very good, but he has brains enough not to lay it all on Truman.

Oh, and if you can't take being called a "moron" then stop arguing like one. I suspect you're one of those typical wingnuts who thinks the US could have simply abrogated the Yalta agreement -- onward to Moscow! -- without any bad consequences to itself, its allies or its interests. Oh, and apparently you'd also like us to have invaded Rwanda or something. Whatever. I've wasted enough brain cells on you.

Posted by Ryan | June 10, 2008 4:12 PM

The forced repatriation of Soviet citizens was disgraceful, as Campesino points out and Ryan acknowledges. But lots of people were culpable, including Roosevelt and Churchill--the problem didn't just appear for the first time at Potsdam. Moreover, we can't ignore the context. Millions of people were in motion-- Germans, Poles, Ukrainians, Jews, and many others variously expelled and relocated.

The "argument" is not who killed the most--Saddam is far and away the winner by any objective count. It's about whether or not there needs to be an international system with some checks on states that perpetrate genocide, wars of aggression, the development and use of wmd's, state support of terrorism, etc. We decided to stand against Iraq on that basis in 1991, and it was the right thing to do. We still need to find our way to a reasonable conclusion of the war that was started by the invasion, rape, and annexation of the UN General Assembly member and US ally, Kuwait, by the genocidal police state of Ba'athist Iraq.

Posted by robert powell | June 10, 2008 6:28 PM