Biggest blunder since WWII

the worst fuck up since ww2 might very well be what is happening right now.
we have just repeated the same mastakes that caused the great depression of the 1930's. now, the question is... well we also be dumb enough, to let this lead to the set up for ww3 and, total extiction of all life on earth?
only time will tell if we are now living in the biggest fuck up since ww2. I PRAY THAT WE ARE NOT!

 

the americans must vote in large numbers to get the government they deserve

step one was to remove bush

step two will be to remove obama and pull out of iraq and afghanistan

unless the americans vote in large numbers the religious fanatics who have no other wish than to make the "prophecies" come true they will have no rest, more of them will be homeless, more people will be unemployed, they will have less healthcare and finally they will lose everything they own.

 

Actually, I'd say nuclear escalation has been the single biggest human blunder since the world began-- let alone since WWII.

Yah, it's hard to argue with that. In my few lucid moments I wonder what the world's reaction would be if Iran or North Korea or somebody used a small nuke on one of their neighbors. Just a little one ... not big enough to cause nuclear winter and all that, just big enough to level a medium-sized city and kill a few hundred thousand people. That's about on par with something Chemical Ali or the Khmer Rouge did.

How do you suppose the world would react? Would the West retaliate militarily? Or just impose economic sanctions ("you offed 100,000 people ... no more microwaves or SUV's for you!"). And does it matter who the neighbor was?

 

Thread topic, greatest blunder since World War II by the U.S. (that's what Caliente says in entry #9):
Vietnam war, no question. 58,202 American dead, 304,704 wounded in action. Source:
http://www.rjsmith.com/kia_tbl.html
Result: military defeat of the South Vietnamese state and army. No domino effect ever happened, except the short-lived lunatic Khmer Rouge victory, which the Vietnamese eventually took care of.
The South Vietnamese were seriously disadvantaged in 1974-75 by the cut off of funds, especially military aid, by Gerald Ford, at a time when Soviet military aid poured into the north. They were also disadvantaged by inept American leadership, including both Johnson and Nixon, but that's a topic for another thread.

 

And all 58,202 of them died for what? Nothing that I can see. The domino theory turned out, with 20-20 hindsight, to be b.s. I remember my father, who was a fairly high-ranking military officer, telling me that they all knew South Vietnam was going to fall anyway, no matter what we did. It was all basically a game played by the Joint Chiefs and the hawks in Congress.

Here's an interesting question ... who do you consider to be the real instigator of the Vietnam War ... Eisenhower, Kennedy, or Johnson?

I think the answer depends on how you think Kennedy would have proceeded had he lived.

 

The question is not well put, since every event has many causes. You might enjoy Robert McNamara's memoir, "In Retrospect".
The 1954 Geneva agreement between France and the Viet Minh provided for elections to be held in 1956. By then Eisenhower was propping up Ngo Dinh Diem. Diem said that he had not signed the 1954 Agreement and would not be bound by it and would not hold an election. Many observers feel that the Lao Dong (North Vietnamese) and their candidates in the South would have won that election in 1956 if it had been held.
The Viet Cong (NLF) started the 1960-1975 Vietnam war with their armed insurgency in 1960. The U.S. was not the instigator -- it joined in a war that was already in progress.
In 1963 Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu were considering negotiating with Ho Chi Minh (McNamara, "In Retrospect", pp 74-75). This was a contributing factor in the American withdrawal of support for Diem under Kennedy. Some 16,000 American military advisers were sent in quietly under Kennedy, and some were killed in action.

Of course, Johnson started his bombing campaign in 1964 and introduced major ground units in 1965.
Throughout all these years there was a failure on the American side to distinguish between Communism, with its ideology of world revolution, and nationalism, which was the primary motivator of both North Vietnam and South Vietnam. Contrary to what the winners (North Vietnam) say, nationalism in South Vietnam was a fact and many South Vietnamese died or were wounded fighting for their country.

McNamara, Secretary of Defense for Kennedy and Johnson, has his own take on your last question, and he was very close to the action.

The president did not tell me what he planned to do in the future. Moreover, whatever his thoughts may have been before Diem's death, they might have changed as the effects of that event became more apparent...
Having reviewed the record in detail, and with the advantage of hindsight, I think it highly probable that, had President Kennedy lived, he would have pulled us out of Vietnam. He would have concluded that the South Vietnamese were incapable of defending themselves, and that Saigon's grave political weaknesses made it unwise to try to offset the limitations of Sounth Vietnamese forces by sending U.S. combat troops on a large scale. (Ibid pp. 95-96)
​

 

You might enjoy Robert McNamara's memoir, "In Retrospect".

McNamara was an interesting figure, but I tend to take political memoirs with a grain of salt, since they are so often turn out to be self-serving, revisionist hokum. And in McNamara's case, he's somewhat of an enigma anyway. He went from being a voice of reason in Kennedy's cabinet, one of the few who did not want to invade Cuba during the Russian missile thing, to basically being Johnson's "Vietnam thug". I know in his later years he became very protective of the Kennedy legacy. But of course indirectly that meant his legacy, too.

And it's interesting that he says Kennedy didn't tell him (McNamara) of his plans in Vietnam ... Bobby Kennedy said unequivacably that JFK planned to withdraw the advisors, but not until after the 1964 election, because he was being hounded so badly for being "soft" on communism. Maybe JFK only told Bobby at the time and no one else, but I thought that was pretty much common knowledge.

 

David Harris, who like me was jailed for refusing to fight in Vietnam, comments on McNamara. Harris met with McNamara in later years at Harris's editor's request and was given an autographed copy of the memoir: "To David, an honorable man. With admiration, RSM".

In his book, "Our War -- What We Did in Vietnam and What It Did to Us", Harris says,

In the months since, I have shown my autographed copy to several friends from the old days, and we have always laughed, shaking our heads in amazement that I should end up with such a relic from such a man.
When I look at that inscription by myself, however, I don't laugh. Rather I am full of endless puzzlement. If Robert S. McNamara indeed feels that way, I cannot begin to fathom how he manages to live with himself. Were I he, I suspect I would have blown my brains out years ago.
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Then there's the Country Joe McDonald lyric:

Look up yonder in the sky, now, what is that I say?
It's a bird it's a plane it's a man insane, it's our President, LBJ.
He's flying high up in the sky, just like Superman,
But I've got a little piece of kryptonite, yeah, I'll bring him back to land.

Saying come out, Lyndon with your hands held high,
Drop your sixguns partner and reach for the sky,
Got you surrounded and you ain't got a chance,
Send you back to Texas make you work on your ranch.
​

 

The Industrial Revolution started long before WWII, but did not hit its full stride until shortly after the war ended. It has its obvious benefits, but also the potential to make the earth nearly uninhabitable, and devoid of natural resources. Since this both an environmental and historical issue, I decided to start a new thread on it in the Environmental forum.

 

Vietnam

 

A big blunder but not the biggest blunder would be the 1953 CIA/MI6(or is it MI5?) backed coup which overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran and put The Shah back in power. If that hadn't happened Iran might have become a secular Islamic Republic like Turkey and we could have had an ally instead of an ememy.

Certainly no the biggest Foriegn Policy f*ck up but a big one with far reaching consequences.

 

This is from your entry #9 on this thread. It doesn't come as a surprise that an American has some difficulty distiguishing between American history and world history. They (Americans) are working to rule the entire world -- why else would they have 76 overseas military bases?* On the date they do rule the world, they will promptly re-write history (work in progress) just as the Soviets were in the habit of doing.

* http://benefits.military.com/misc/installations/Browse_Service.jsp
(I'm trying to determine where David Vine came up with the number, 1000 bases. The list of 76 has only 3 entries for the Middle East and none for Afghanistan.)

 

Well especially since WW2 world history as in fact been dominated by American and Soviet actions.

 

I have no such difficulty. Certainly, not nearly the difficulty you have in reading and comprehending what I said.