File this one under "current events". (This was the list I intended to post prior to the whole DeathFlu business).
Yesterday, during his endorse-a-thon of Dean, Gore said:
"Our nation in its 200-year history has never made a worse foreign policy mistake," Gore told a raucous crowd of labor activists...
This struck me immediately as a ridiculous statement, and so, here are:
5. Somalia/The Blackhawk down incident. While the toll in human life was not immediately large, I believe that al Qaeda was emboldened by what they saw as the US cutting and running after a little bit of pain. I think that event fueled a string of attacks: Khobar Towers, the African embassies, the Cole and the WTC. As such, the entire Somalia policy, and secifically the way it ended, was a huge foreign policy mistake.
4. Carter and Iran: the management of both the pre- and post- revolution foreign policy by the Carter administraton was inept.
3. The Marines in Beiruit:
The shocking attack killed 241 U.S. servicemen in a single strike — more than died on the deadliest day of fighting in Vietnam, this year's invasion [no longer the case, -ed., but the numbers are still close] of Iraq or the entire 1991 Persian Gulf War.
We failed to keep any peace, and suffered a devastating attack--for nothing.
2. The Korean War: 36,940 battlefield deaths for a war that ended in stalemate--and we are still there and the North is a nuclear powered member of the Axis of Evil (you can throw in the inept Clinton/Carter poicies regarding allowing the North Koreans access to nuclear power plants).
1. Viet Nam: 'nuf said. (And Gore knows this--he referred to Iraq as a "quagmire", and we all know that that is an allusion to Viet Nam--so if Iraq is being compared to the most obvious foreign policy mistake the country has ever made by way of showing how bad Iraq is, how can Iraq be the "worst"?).
If you want to play along, here's how.
Update: This is today's entry in the BELTWAY TRAFFIC JAM
May I add Smoot-Hawley? I think that would count as foreign policy.
Also, put in Wilson's pushing the League of Nations (albeit never ratified by the Senate) and that whole German reparations thing after WWI.*
* This may be a bit of a sticky issue here given that American isolationism in the interwar years may be construed as a major policy blunder, and the rejection of the League is then seen as a hallmark of isolationism. However, I think the League itself was stupid from the get-go (cf. the UN today). One could imagine greater US leadership in the world without the League.
** Moreover, including the Wonder Twins in the League of Nations simply added to the immaturity of the organization.
Posted by: John Lemon at December 10, 2024 12:41 PMI guess we could take a step back and say that throwing our hat in the WWI ring opened up several large cans of nasty worms.
I wish the Kaiser had been in power in 1933.
Posted by: Ken at December 10, 2024 06:07 PMKen,
With all due respect... "um, no." Getting involved in WWI was both proper strategically and humanely. The war was deadlocked and it was bringing down a generation of Europe. The US was on the cusp of emerging as a world power (beyond the W. Hemisphere) and strategically this showed our might and our will. No one could have foresaw Hitler in 1918. Hitler's rise may have been due more to the damage of the reparations agreement, which I argue was the real foreign policy blunder as it did not let a wounded dog heal. And even then, the Russian Revolution that was provoked by WWI (regardless of US intervention in the war) may have provided similar nationalist fuel to the Nazis fire.
Posted by: John Lemon at December 10, 2024 10:27 PMDon't forget Kosovo and Bosnia... and perhaps Haiti as well.
Posted by: Aakash at December 12, 2024 07:40 PM