Submitted by Bloggerator, Dec 9, 2006 00:33

NOT HISTORY. POLITICAL HOKUM. Republican paid propaganda. America's Fiasco (q.v. Fiasco, Thomas Rickets, q.v. Cobra II, Gordon and Trainor, q.v. Division and Regimental historyies). Elections are history and the dismal fading away of American public support is not a sign of weaknes in any quarter, but of intept, incompetent leadership. If this guy is a professor, we're looking at what's wrong with our schools. We have idiot right wingers teaching incorrect history, wrong science and imposible chemistry. THIS is the partisan intepretation of history with made up facts. Where do they get these people? Reality is something different than the ideologues who make up the facts of history to fit their twisted perspective. This a hack defending an inept incompetent by faint and incompetent comparison. This academic, supposedly a disinterested observer, has provided misleading or compleely inaccurate information. No nation, even a warlike one, is ever prepared fully for war. But neither was Germaby in WWII and it was a primary aggressor. Admiral Yamamoto believed thee Japanese would lose WWII, but planned as best he could. His political leadership wanted War with the United Staes and, ignoring his advice, they lost. That shoud be familiar. With historians like this, we don't need political hacks. We have historical fiction writers who invent bogus historial facts to go with their bogus political assumptions to go with their dreamy ideogical stupidity. To get a passing grade, most require a 60 or higher. This guy falls short of getting 30 percent right -- andthen some. Sort of a quarter truth. Overoptimism is a common fault of political leadership. Invented facts are the bent of revisionists and loopy right wing historians. Here we have one. To take a few of the claims from an encylopedia of error. --American political leadership overestimated the time to defeat of Central Powers in WWI? Hardly. Wilson et al were too pessimistic -- unless someone things the Germans should ahve surrendered because of something that might happen. American troops did not begin to arrive in significant numbers Europe until Summer of 1918. With an increase of 10,000 troops a day, the Armistice was signed a few months later, in November. It took nearly a year to get those troops there. It was a conscious decision by Americ an political leadership not to send untrained troops. American losses exceeded what they probably should have been. In military terms, the war lasted a few months. -- The Spanish war (ot the War of 1898) lasted a matter of weeks. That included the Philippines here Dewey had Gridley fire when ready. Spanish ground forces were easily defeated by Ameircan forces -- the Spanish were all too ready to shed themselves of the Phillipines where independence was a foregone conclusion, until the United States poliical leadership decided they wanted the spoils of war. Thus began the second completely unplanned phase, but it was after initial goals had been achieved and new, unrealistic goals set. The extended war resulted from goals that were set in stone AFTER the Spanish were defeated. ---The Philipplines dragged on we were in the early stages as we are in Iraq. Anyone who knows, knos that Iraq is not in the early stages about anything. It is advanced failure -- and so it was before this propaganda was written. Mammo, don't send your kids to history grad school to be idiots. -- The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The decisive battle was fought six monhs later at Midway -- despite designation of Europe as the priority theater. Arguably, the decisive defeat came at Coral Sea a month earlier. What's different from Iraq? FDR didn't trmpet vicory at all before he died, except for the hop. FDR (and HST) expected the war to last longer. -Any superiority of Japanese aircraft became completely irrelevant with Midway, in the strategic sense, given that its cadre of trained naval Pilots died with the sinking of their carriers by Spruance (defacto commander, Fletcher deferring due to location). Wildcats flight characteristics were inferior to some but not all of those of the Zero. The most devastatting losses against the Zerio came from outmatchd non-fighter planes. The situation easy so quickly that fighter upgrading could be better managed, in the Pacific, in Europe and in Russia. --Wiildcat victories came despite "inferior" bombers (or torpedo, etc). and fighters. Four Navy pilots made ace in th "inferior" Wildcats and despite their shortcomings, Wildcats had some advantags that helped their pilots do more than hold their own until the F6F and F4U entered service in large numbers. --Being fully prepared for the next war is this guy;s fantasy. We don't know what it will be. Given the outrage of the era's NeoCons, FDR was lucky to have become the arsnal of democracy. Before the war started, under FDR's presidency, the P-39, the P-51 and the many other aircraft were developed before U.S. Entry. The first P-51 was developed nire than a year before the war began for us, and was developed in record time. But good enoughis sometimes what we have to do -- at least when someone takes the ime to consider the consequences of each choice. --The jeep aircraft carrier was a more important factor in winning the Pacific War than the impoved aircraft that used them. Those planes are important, but Americans won in the Pacific on good planning, good execution and damned fine willingness to do what was needed. Bt verhone understood what was wanted -- and could see it was possbil from fairly early on. but this Schweikar's writing to fit his facts to his political beliefs. We would likly have lost more pilots had we not improved our aircraft., but we had learned to produce thousands upon thousands of aircrew and used tactics such as the Thach Weave of John Thach to neutralize Japanese advantages. Fighting smart is beter than stupid. The Japanese had not learned. --Iraq has lasted longer than WWII (and with planning it's worse, i.e. there was no time for planning a detailed scenario of response. FDR (HST) won a world war in far less tim, thank goodness, than it took Bush to destroy American hop. FDR did not dream up reasons for war. They existed. So many countries were or allies that it became the United Nations. --Lincoln didn't plan the Civil War, but when things went wrong he took the fall. And he sacked the people early on who failed. Our curren generation mostly gets promoted if they say the right thing. More Bush incompetency. In lincoln's war,l hundreds of thousands died, but at least he had a reasonable idea of what he wanted. --George Washington. Could we have a little repect from right wing hacks?Rumsfeld said he never won a battle. It's true he had opposition. It's also true he held things together enough for a win and did not divide the revolutionaries against themselves. It's also true that the British kept baiting him time and again to fight battles against hem that he couldn't win. When he fought, he won some andlost others, but frquently accomplished his goals and more. he became commander in chief afer the British launched the largest amphibious invastion to date there. He forced the British to abandon the most important city in America with minal casualties. Bunker (Breed's) hill was a sideshow. Washington accomplishd a military masterpiece. HE ALSO NEVER SAID, "BRING THEM ON" Or made vague promises of victory. --The Spanish War was considered foolish by the President, McKinley, who felt he had been forced into it. The Phillipines went off schedule because we failed to recognize the indigenous freedom movement. So they had to be made colonials first, then freed. --Puerto Rico was already autonomous. The U.S. forces invaded and took it back. Did we really resolve the Philippines? Not really. Right wing stories to the conrary, we mostly stopped trying to subdue the Morros so they stopped trying to kill us. But they consider a source of unrest today because an American president chose to ignore reality. American's to blame first?No! Americans wanted no part of this neo-colonialization. People who put Ameircans and its economy first, put an end to foreign adventures like this until decades later. Had the war lasted longer, it would have been a health catastrophe. It was over, quickly. No one expected it to end so fast. So much for expectations. --The Japanse constantly shifted tactics. Despite the initial lack of opposition, if anythiing Americans had more reason than ever to anticipate a bitter Japanese response. Life would no doubt be easier if every enemy kept repeating the tactics of before. -Most historians can tell you what the goals of WWII were. Schweikart can't even describe the goals of Iraq because there really weren't any that could be said out loud. And someone misplaced the cause in a stack of fabricated documents. --Percentages of troops committed, etc before we won the war in the Philippins and Moros. Sorry. We didn't win. On a good day, we claimed a stalemate, but you've been busy helping Michelle Malkin write her diatribes. Or original goal was to make the Philipppins a colony. We were to totally pacifiy the Morros.We agreed to eventually leave when it beame apparent Americans didn't want us there and we couldn't stay anyway. What's different is that eventually, American presidents recognized they needed to Change. --War Crimes. There are two approaches to war crimes. You can accept they happen and both try to prevent them and punish those that did happen. Or, you can stick your head in the sane and pretend all the accusations come from Democrats. Actually, Schweikart, some of those people are in my Republican party. You keep making up your facts or using factoids instead of narrative reality. The Filipino muslims have nver been competely pacified and the Pershing stories are mostly invented myths even though he desrves to be a myth or legendary figure. -War against terrorism is an athoritarian myth. Terrorism cannot be defeated. It can be held at bay by appropriate tactics. That may be military or not. But terrorism has been with us sicne civilization began. If you wipe out the IRA, the Basques will use the tactics. It is an unending struggl against terrorism, but compare those lost to terroists to traffice accidents. and we don't tear up the constitution to make people feel safe in the buzzmobiles. --Civil War. Both sides of the aisle. That would be the Republicans and the, shucks, Republicans. And then the Democrats. Lincoln understood that victory or defeat in a major batle would determin his luck in elction. Could Schweikart repeat again what the objectives in Iraq are. No, I didn't think so. The aisles here are defind by stupid and not stupid. --Weapons. The Krag was okay for its time. But most nations were in the process of changing firearms and we had gone to war with an old style rifle. With experience, we learned that the Mauser desin of 1893 was better, easier to load and could use higher veolocity ammunition that was just coming into widespead us. Don't play the technology game Schweikart -- you don't know what you're talking about. This isn't right or left. As one conservative said today, the Iraq war was absurd and possibly criminal. Certainly criminal in its use as an elction ploy and in how stupidly it was executed. --Look in a mirror. There's Churchill. There's FDR. There's HST. THEN THERE'S WHO THERE IS. Not a happy picture of marginal competency.; --medicine. Yellow fever and other tropical disease was ignored by political and ideological advocates of a war with the Spanish. The military was told to shut up ore than once. And, given a chance during an unwarranted occpation of Cuba, the military and its doctors, notably Walter Reed, determined the cause and how to prevent Yellow fever andother diseases. --We expected hte Spanish military to be better than it was, at sea or on land. The assumptions were wrong. What we failed to undersand was minding our own business. --The stunning collapse of Saddam's armies? sounds good but they weren't much of a factor. Ever. The last time they amounted to anything, Bush 41 kicked their asses to hell. --The Sherman Tank. You really don't know anything, do you.The Sherman was overmatched in Normandy against heavy German Tanks, but the Germans couldn't get tank reinforcements for tanks blated by p47 and oher attack aircraft (due to combined arms attacks on Seine crossings). And we had lots of Shermans. Unlike Hitler, we hit a stage where we could either make and maintain tanks, or keep thinking of miracle weapons. More importantly, in much of the European theater, the Sherman was superior to heavy German tanks. Speer and HItler talked constantly for a period about theproblems that Shermans were causing in Italy and in tough terrain where German panzers couldn't go. The Germans weren't doing well on light or medium tanks. The Sherman was a a tweene. But infantry won that battle and te tankers were right there with them. Which Ameerica are you inventing? --The enemy has a vote. Wellthe obvious is nice. Trouble is that you and your ideological buddies didn't boher to figure out who the enemy was. You're the guys who wanted to attack Mexico when we were attacked at Pearl Harbor. "Aircraft Part II. You seem not to know that Americans designed planes that matched or exceeded very allied and Axis aircraft .. and we had jet fighters in the pipeline through Kelly Johnson. To paint your pitiful picture, you have to demean people who won the war that had to be won. Our problem in Iraq is not through no tenough airploans or tanks that are good enough while we fight a multi-front war. Our problemis that a political leadership made a bone headed decision and is sticking to it. Hello George II, the Lloyd George of the battlefield, i.e the guy who can talk the talk but don't do squat. That's not an isolationist poisiton. We took Cuba. We took the Philippines. We too Puerto Rico and kept it. What makes the Spanish War like the current war is that the military defeated a military foe quickly, then found they hadn't know about any of the independence movemets. No good cause for the war. The Spanish apparently hadn't done anything to us. The colonists certainly hadn't. McKinley didn't set off to give democracy to anyone, but to gather colonies in an era of colonies.We didn't need the Spanish War and we didn't need Iraq. We needed to finish Afghanistan and get it right. We haven't. We lacked the "first line aircraft" capable of defeating the Zero and year after Pearl Harbor?" Anissue of theory versus reality. Japanese pilots were superb initially, but slowly replaced. They flew a plane that was serious AS LONG AS tey fought on their own terms.. The Zero (modified like all planes through the war) was like most military aircraft. It had virtues and weaknesses. John Thach innovated the Thatch Weave tactic to neutralize the advantages, but still complained about his aircraft. Fair enough. But using "inferior" aircraft, Thack achieved a kill ratio of between 2-1 and 3-1 BEFORE the introduction of the Hellcat F6F (also the F4U) to replace the Wildcat F4F. The Wildcat had superior armor and weaponry and superior flight characteristics. Fly it right and it brought you home. Self-sealing tanks helped pilots get home. WE have had revisionism from oneside or the other forever. Lately though we are gettign revisionism from people like Schweikart who don'tbother reintepreting facts. They just mak them up or color them so much no on can find anything truthful. Go back to fixing Ohio election.

Note: Comments are screened, and in some cases edited, before posting. We reserve the right to reject anything we find objectionable.