what is seldom heard is that a presidency is short term thing... and there are many things that incubate for years. Like recessions, wars have this way of bubbling up years later, and the prez that gets stuck, gets blamed... very few people realize that it was Truman and then Ike who backed the French in the First Indochina War in Viet Nam... Given the Korean war at the time, it made the most sense... In retrospect? Everyone ignored Uncle Ho when he was trying to gain independence, Woodrow Wilson, league of nations, FDR... because after all Viet Nam is a small country, and they had other troubles in the world to worry over.
How would they have known that decades later, it would develop into an ugly war? Sure, there were signs, but given the moment, and the limitations of knowledge, I think it would have been a long shot to interpret the signs correctly.
Who knew that backing the Afghani against the Soviets would cause us problems down the road, but then maybe the Shah should have showed us a bit of that...
All in all, trends and problems are long term, people, short... fixes too, long term...
yes to all of it. and sure one could argue "then keep your nose out" but that isn't effective either.
mostly, i'm just pretty surprised such a report/investigation, and by extension an admittance that it started before Bush, came from the Times of London.
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sforzinda
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Date: 2006-10-02 05:20 pm (UTC)How would they have known that decades later, it would develop into an ugly war? Sure, there were signs, but given the moment, and the limitations of knowledge, I think it would have been a long shot to interpret the signs correctly.
Who knew that backing the Afghani against the Soviets would cause us problems down the road, but then maybe the Shah should have showed us a bit of that...
All in all, trends and problems are long term, people, short... fixes too, long term...
/longwinded prince of the obvious pondering ;)
no subject
Date: 2006-10-02 09:40 pm (UTC)mostly, i'm just pretty surprised such a report/investigation, and by extension an admittance that it started before Bush, came from the Times of London.