A Drama-Free Election: The Iraqi vote was a victory for Prime Minister Maliki. Now he'll need to do something for the Shiite masses. (Reuel Marc Gerecht, 02/16/2009, Weekly Standard) Making sense of Iraq's January 31 provincial elections isn't easy. That they were an enormous success for Iraq, and for the United States, is certainly true. When remembering 2006, when Iraqis were dying like flies in what the New York Times's Dexter Filkins described as a "symphony of suicide bombers," and when even staunch pro-war American liberals and conservatives saw the invasion as misbegotten, I grow more respectful of my old history teacher Martin Dickson, who counseled to measure time, especially in the Middle East, in centuries, not years. In the streets of Baghdad, especially those deeply scarred by violence, where women and children now bustle about well-stocked stores and an almost incomprehensible array of political posters has been plastered, it's difficult to comprehend how a former pro-war liberal like Peter Beinart could opine, only two weeks before the provincial elections, that the Iraq invasion remained "one of the great blunders in American foreign policy history." I recently finished a book I found almost inexplicable: Failures of the Presidents by Thomas J. Craughwell. I'd like to think I'm as mindful of presidential failure as most anyone, but the manner in which the specific "failures" herein were chosen eludes me. As near as I can tell, beyond a couple inarguables--like FDR's internment of Japanese Americans and Pierce's repeal of the Missouri Compromise--Mr. Craughwell almost reflexively chose any even remotely imperial exercise by the United States and a smattering of anti-Progressive actions, but that's it. Some of the choices are odd because they are comparatively minor within the given president's own history of blundering: does anyone really believe that Woodrow Wilson invading Mexico was a worse failure than getting us involved in WWI and then fighting for the League of Nations instead of for colonial self-determination? The latter contributed not just to the advent of WWII and the Cold War but eventually the WoT. Likewise, wouldn't you have to consider Herbert Hoover's inept response to the the Crash to be a bigger "failure" -- given that it helped turn depression into Great Depression -- than dispersing the Bonus Army marchers? Now I'd understand that if the author were a raving Leftist, but the cover blurbs suggest past approval for his books from The American Spectator, The Times of London and The Chicago Tribune and his dust jacket bio says he's written for the American Spectator and the Wall Street Journal, so what's going on? Consider the two most peculiar inclusions on the list: McKinley's war with Spain and W's war against Saddam. One might argue that writing before the surge was widely accepted as succeeding led to the latter--though the Introduction specifically mentions the danger of juding presidents contemporaneously--but the final assessment of the results of McKinley getting us involved with the Philippines suggests that being aware of W's success in Iraq wouldn't have mattered: Astonishingly, the conflict forged a lasting bond between the two nations. The United States made good eventually on its promise of national independence. An American-style government was established in 1916, and the Philippines became a self-governing commonwealth in 1935. Filipinos fought valiantrly side by side with Americans in World War II...Okay, stop, rewind... If that's a "failure" then the word has been robbed of meaning. (Reviewed:) Grade: (C-) Tweet Websites:-BOOK SITE: Failures of the Presidents (Fair Winds Press) -GOOGLE BOOK: Failures of the President -GOOGLE BOOK: Stealing Lincoln's Body -EXCERPT: The Bay of Pigs Invasion: John F. Kennedy (Failures of the Presidents) -ESSAY: FAILURES OF THE PRESIDENTS: THE FIVE GREATEST PRESIDENTIAL MISTAKES OF ALL-TIME (Thomas J. Craughwell, Failure Magazine) -ESSAY: Patron Saints for Modern Challenges (Thomas J. Craughwell, St. Anthony Messenger Magazine) -REVIEW ESSAY: PIUS DEFENDERS : Three long-out-of-print books by respected scholars address the Pope's actions to save the Jews during World War II. The evidence is incontrovertible. (Thomas J. Craughwell, Winter 1998, Latin Mass ) -ESSAY: Saints Misbehavin': Even the holiest men and women were not always thus. (THOMAS J. CRAUGHWELL, October 27, 2006, WSJ) -ESSAY: The Gentile Holocaust (Thomas J. Craughwell, Catholic Culture) -ESSAY: Pius XII and the Holocaust (Thomas J. Craughwell, Catholic Culture) -ARCHIVES: The American Spectator : Contributors : Thomas J. Craughwell -ARCHIVES: Thomas J. Craughwell (Britannica Blog) - -REVIEW: of Failures of the Presidents by Thomas J. Craughwell with M. William Phelps (Steve Martinovich, Enter Stage Right) -REVIEW: of Failures of the Presidents (Jennie W, American Presidents Blog) -REVIEW: of Failures of the Presidents (Marc, Spinning Clio) -REVIEW: of Failures of the Presidents (Mark Whittington, Associated Content) -REVIEW: of Failures of the Presidents (Dr. Jonathan Dolhenty, Radical Academy) -REVIEW: of Thomas J. Craughwell. Stealing Lincoln's Body (Thomas R. Turner, Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Society) -REVIEW: of Stealing Lincoln's Body (Eric Fettmann, NY Post) -REVIEW: of Stealing Lincoln's Body (David B. Williams, The Seattle Times) -REVIEW: of Stealing Lincoln's Body (Harold Holzer, Washington Post) -REVIEW: of Stealing Lincoln's Body (Michael Kammen, Chicago Tribune) -REVIEW: of Stealing Lincoln's Body (AW Perdue, Times Higher Education) -REVIEW: of Saints Behaving Badly: The Cutthroats, Crooks, Trollops, Con Men, and Devil-Worshippers Who Became Saints by Thomas J. Craughwell (Panorama of the Mountains) Book-related and General Links: |
Copyright 1998-2015 Orrin Judd