Errors In American History

[the gentleman]

Some have suggested that I believe the United States to be perfect. This is, in fact, far from the truth. The Untied States has made serious mistakes in its history: it’s just that the real mistakes are not the ones commonly identified by America’s opponents. The problem is not that America is too aggressive, too bullying, or too imperialistic: but that it is insufficiently all of those things. Mistakes by American leaders are, to a great degree, responsible for creating the world in which we live. It’s just that the mistakes are not the ones we commonly identify.

I’m going to restrict myself to the years since the middle of the 20th Century, since the mistakes made during the end of the Second World War in Europe (and in the immediate aftermath of the war) are already widely recognized. But there are some that are not.

The first mistake of which I wish to speak occurred in early 1951. This error was made, as the worst typically are made, by men with the best of intentions. In the fall of 1950, as the United Nations forces approached the Yalu River which separates North Korea from China, the Chinese Communists had intervened in the Korean War, launching a massive offensive using hundreds of thousands of troops. Thus was the conflict, in which North Korea had been almost totally defeated, transformed into what the Supreme Allied Commander, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, deemed an, “entirely new war.”

http://www.adamyoshida.com/2004_04_01_arch...330155925273074

[george]

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