"Normalcy" means the period before an absolutist leader with a messianic complex plunged the nation into foreign war and domestic repression in order for good to defeat evil in the world.

At least, that's what Harding meant. Say what you will about Warren Gamaliel Harding, there is a certain nobility in a bad president who recognizes, and is ashamed by, his own failed presidency.

They taught me in high school or maybe grammar school that "normalcy" isn't an actual English word.

But, then, my parents didn't have the money to send me to Phillips Academy.

Maybe they should have tried Groton.

I have to say that when I saw the headline with "Bush" and "Normalcy" I thought it was an Onion story.  I mean, seriously, does Bush want to *increase* comparisons of him to Harding?  The two are almost twins!  Does he think that it makes him look good by comparison?  

In fact, it's possible that Bush has also been using stock phrases of James Buchanan or Andrew Johnson and we just haven't been paying attention.

Now if we can only get W to flash the Nixonian 'v for victory' hand-symbol...

Harding was still very popular at the time of his death as Teapot Dome had not fully emerged as a scandal.

I'm afraid the closes rough historical analogy to Bush's situation is to Harry Truman who, as a result of a costly and not well understood war, was extremely unpopular with popularity in the very low double digits.

Eisenhower won, partly on a platform of ending the war.  He is rumored, however, to have ended it by threatening the Chinese with nukes.  I don't know that this has been corroborated not having red that portion of history's backstory very closely.

However, Eisenhower hardly retreated from Korea, as all are aware.  The line had already been drawn between North and South.  We held the line there.  

South Korea went on to become, like West Germany, a clear example of the superiority of capitalism to communism.  A nearly perfect laboratory and test case, even better than the two Germanys in some ways, starting as they both were from a more primitive base.

People here tend to be very ahistorical.  Like Americans in general.  We shall have to wait and see if Bush is still a goat in ten or forty years.  His having held removed Saddam and created a Fort Apache Iraq in the midst of all the bad guys may prove to have been an historical turning point in favor of the West.

And, despite what your Democratic candidates pretend to be telling you, I don't think either Obama or Hillary will be able to withdraw from Iraq because the disaster they would create would entirely subsume their administrations.

Like it or not guys, as with Germany, Japan, and Korea, we are destined to be in Iraq and the rest of the M.E. for a long time.

In terms of popularity, Bush's situation is similar to that of Harry Truman in 1952. In terms of historical legacy, though, I think he'll be right down there with Warren G. Harding.

And Chan' last sentence will end up being Exhibit A in the historical case against Bush. Unlike West Germany, South Korea, or Japan, 5 years after the end of the war we were not mired in the middle of a sectarian civil war and trying to redefine "the mission" so that we could claim we achieved it. It is hard to imagine Bush's Iraq debacle being viewed as a positive years later, in the way that Truman's early Cold War decisions are now.

I love Rhubarbs' first post in this thread. Kudos!

Jeff Frey writes, "...unlike West Germany, South Korea, or Japan, 5 years after the end of the war we were not mired in the middle of a sectarian civil war and trying to redefine "the mission" so that we could claim we achieved it."

Yes, Jeff.  And Unlike Germany and Japan, we did not utterly destroy the country and then occupy it with millions, or at least hundreds of thousands of soldiers.  Unlike Korea, there was not a clear line and a demilitarized  zone between the bad guys and the good guys.

Unlike Korea, we have not lost nearly 34,000 men killed in Iraq, either.  In the Indian wars, perhaps a better comparison, we lost 106,000.  Since that war lasted about 100 years, that average 1,060 Americans killed per year.  A higher rate than we have lost in Iraq where it has averaged 800/yr.

History is long, Jeff Frey.  We'll just both have to wait to see how it turns out.

Agreed on all your points in the last post, Chan. But I still maintain:

(a) the Bush administration should have thought of that BEFORE invading and occupying Iraq. But they didn't, and they will be judged harshly for it.

(b) Although a different point, supporters of the war today need to articulate a clear vision for what the hell we are supposed to be accomplishing, and what it will cost to do that. And then we either accept that or get the hell out.

Jeff Frey, common ground.  Bush ought to have heeded the general who said we needed half a million men to secure Iraq.

We had deployed that many during the Persian Gulf war to drive them out of Kuwait.  That half a million would have provided the "overwhelming force" as per the Colin Powell Doctrine.

It is ironic, ole man Rumsfeld sided with the Young Turks of the Pentagon who believed in smart, small, fast, high tech armies.  As opposed to the big Cold War era type designed to face the Soviets.

The yOung Turks and Rummy were proved half right.  160k was enough to conquer the country.  But, not enough to subdue it utterly.  For that, you need lots of boots on the ground.

Our purpose in Iraq, which bush has never copped to, has always been a long term occupation of the middel of the middle east to pacify the savages.

That's why I compare it to the Indian wars the United States waged it North America.  It took us from the end of the Revolution until 1890 to full pacify the territory now occupied by 48 of the states.  And, it cost us more than a thousand soldiers a year, on average.

Even with superior technology, logistics, organization, and infrastructure, we got our asses whipped from time to time.  I'm sure you've heard of the Little Big Horn.

From our perspective, Jihadihists are savages.  And like the American Indians, they are smart enough to use our own technology and techniques against us.  

In the case of the American Indians it was the horse and cavalry tactics.   And the rifle.  

in the case of the Islamists, its the cell phone, the Internet, the jet aircraft and it's immense load of explosives called jet fuel.  And, the box cutter.

More recently, they've acquired from our enemies, the designs for sophsiticated "improvised" bombs.

The Iranians and Saddam before them help terrorists the way the French helped the Indians against the English and their colonists in North America.  It was the use of surrogate savages to get at their mortal enemies.

Luckily for us and the world, the English won that war.  And then the Napoleonic Wars, whci were really a continuation of the Seven Years War (which we call the French and Indian War.  At least our end of it.)

Nothing that is happening now, dear Jeff Frey, is entirely new.  Only the technology changes.

Chan, worldview changes. The Indian wars, Chechnya, Darfur, etc, are all viewed today through a very different perspective than would have been applied in the 1800s, or the 800s. There are many things that were done in the past and considered acceptable that are no longer considered acceptable. Like slaughtering most of the inhabitants of a captured city and taking the rest as slaves, to pick an example that was typical of the ancient world. But even the Indian wars fall into the category of things that would not be acceptable if done today (ethnic cleansing).

You may be right that Bush's real goal was to set up a long-term occupation in the middle of the Middle East to "pacify the savages". If so, then he was a fool and a liar in addition to being an idiot and a bungler. That mission, if it was indeed the true one, could only have been sold to the American people by lying about the true goal and true cost. And it was a fools errand as well.

Of course, Jeff Frey, you cannot tell the American people that you are fighting a war against barbarism in the Middle East because it is now a mortal danger to the West and the U.S.

Of course you can't admit that it may take a century or even more to resolve this, because that's how history often works.  Witness the multi century wars between the English and the French, the Germans and the French, etc.

And, if you think the Indian Wars such an immoral enterprise, then imagine still being amongst the huddled masses of Europe while North America lay essentially fallow, in the possession of tribal primitives.  Historically, that was a non-starter.  Europeans would not stay contained in Europe because they were vital, ambitious, highly civilized, technologically advanced, short of land, and hungry.

We are in a situation with the savages of the Middle East where if we do not subdue them, they will sooner or later get hold of nuclear weapons-- maybe from Iran or Pakistan under another regime, maybe down the road from the Chinese.   They will gain these weapons and they will destroy us.

You may want to sit and wait for that day.  I do not.  the only defense against barbarians, is offense.  As the Romans learned eventually with their rueful demise.

What is likely to happen is that the West, in its weakness and desire to hide from this vast difficulty, will retreat.  Then a nuclear event will take place.  The response from the west will be an indiscriminate nuclear retaliation of great swaths of the Middle East.  

By our weakness we will create an armageddon and a holocaust against our enemies-- and millions of innocents-- that could have been avoided if we had remained strong and resolute.

jeff Frey, you may deluded yourself that we are somehow kinder and gentler now than in ages past.  That people are somehow different.  We are not.  They are not.  Two thousand years is a tiny swipe of history.  And the essential character of humanity and the laws of conflict and survival in epoch battles has not changed.

"Stop the World, I Want to Get Off," was the title of a Broadway comedy farce in the '60s.  It might easily be the motto of people today who are trying to hide from history.  Led by Obama and Hillary.  (though should they either of them achieve the presidency, will likely be forced to face the reality of Iraq.  No surrender is possible without death following close behind.  First for the Iraqis.  Eventually for us.)

CORRECTO TO A MAJOR STATISTICAL ERROR

I used a statistic above (from the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs) that 106,000 U.S. soldiers were killed in the nearly 100 year Indian wars.)  And, I said that averaged 1000/yr, moe than Iraq's 800/yr.

WAY WRONG!  106,000 is the number of participating American soldiers in the wars, 1817-1898.  The battle deaths are only reckoned at 1,000.  

this is incredibly low, and only 1/100th of what I originally quoted.  Apparently our advantage over the natives was far beyond what I would have guessed.

Of course, it would probably be useful to add how many European/American settlers were killed in the civilian portion of the war.  I would expect the figure would at least be in the tens of thousands.  I'll go look and see if there are statistics on that.

It doesn't much change my basic point, when civilizations clash, as happens frequently in history, the cost in lives is not cheap.  

In the case of the Indian Wars, it was extremely lopsided.  White Americans were killed in much vaster numbers in their wars against the English, the Mexicans, the Spanish, and each other, than against the Indians.  For the Indians, the story is much different.

CLARIFICATION:  It wasn't the Veterans Affairs website that misinformed me.  It was my blurry eyes.

Whoah, ChanRobt, are you putting me on here?

(1) The idea that we can occupy and pacify the entire Muslim world and hold them down until they get civilization is absolutely fucking nuts. You are talking about putting about a billion people under the imperial boot. It's just not going to happen, even if we wanted to. And occupying even a large fraction of the Middle East long term does not guarantee in the slightest that your nuclear armageddon scenario can't play out anyway.

(2) I'll take my chances living in a free democracy, thank you, instead of a country where our leaders commit us to a policy of endless war behind our backs. You are welcome to move to an autocracy if you think that is a better way to achieve national interests. There are several oppressive authoritarian states out there with different orientations -- perhaps one will suit your fancy better than our pesky republic.

(3) People do change. Only our biology is the same as the people of 2000 years ago. Our culture is very different. If culture was hard-wired in our genes, assimilation would be impossible. As would social progress.

By the way, I was not attempting to make any post-facto moral judgement about the Indian wars. Simply noting that a repeat of them would be morally unacceptable today, and any country pursuing such a policy would be a global pariah.

Jeff Frey, you don't have to occupy every last country, or even many of them.  The concept is called hegemony.  The Britosh conquered the world with very few men and mainly using leverage.  

They would play factions off each other, and use trade etc.  They established Pax Britannica which lasted more than a hundred years.  

And might have lasted far longer if it weren't for the jealousy and rivalry of other European nations, especially Germany.

Iraq is mean t to be a leverage point where we can establish stability, and hegemony, at least indirectly.  Something similar worked in Europe after WW2, and held off the Soviet hordes who far outnumbered us.

Jeff Frey, we have evolved.  But mainly in that two world wars, which were European civil wars, violently rejiggered the 19th Century world and eliminated most of the European rivalries.

Now our challenges come from the Middle Eastr (bad actors with state support).  And, eventually from China.

Under the right circumstances, not hard to imagine, neither the Jihadhists and their relatives, nor the Chinese, would show the scruples you are depending on.  "World opinion" is mainly Western civilized opinion.  Europe and North America.  Don't depend on it to save us.  

Don't think it will hold us back from doing what we need to do to survive.  Unless our death wish continues indefinitely.

Iraq, in historical terms, is a regional skirmish.  I repeat, if a nuclear attack is ever successfully perpetrated by terrorists, the retribution from the West or at least the United States, will not be proportional.  It will be a holocaust, an apocalypse that will kill millions of innocents and destroy ancient civilizations.

To prevent an immense war, that will likely be one-sided in our "favor", we need to pursue a small war.  It does not mean occupying the entire Muslim world or even very much of the M.E.  It means pacifying the nastiest parts of the M.E., which have been the Iraq-Iran anvil for nearly thirty years.

If we fail, Iraq will look like the invasion of Grenada in contrast to what will come.

You must use historical imagination.  Or simply imagine one nuke blown up in Washington DC during, say, the State of the Union, which would decapitate us by killing the entire government-- President, VP, Speaker of the House, the entire Congress, the Supreme Court, the Pentagon Leadership.

What do you think would be the response to something of that magnitude?  Just extrapolate from what we did when 3,000 of our ordinary citizens were killed by M.E. terrorists and you'll have a clue.

Chan, I do not share your apocalyptic view. I also think you are engaging in fantasy here. You are trying to re-do the 19th century with us in the role of Britain, but the world is not the same as it was in the 19th century. We do not have enough manpower in our  military to sustain the present troop levels in Iraq. Nor can we afford to repeat Iraq x2 or more.

And although our military power is beyond that of any country (and beyond that of most of the rest of the world combined), your scenario is not realistic even if we wanted to try. We are vulnerable to other forms of power. Not the least being that the American people will not go along with what you propose.

Try this scenario on for size.

(1) War with Iran shuts down oil exports through the Straits of Hormuz.

(2) Venezuela boycotts US oil purchases. Other countries follow. US runs short of oil in very short order, dips into strategic petroleum reserve for military operations. Massive gasoline, heating oil shortages.

(3) Russia shuts off natural gas pipelines and oil exports to western Europe. European producers do not sell to US, to keep Europe running.

(4) China and Saudi Arabia dump their dollar reserves on the market and buy Euros. Dollar crashes. Between lack of oil and trade chaos, US economy grinds to a near halt.

(5) President ChanRobt threatens to nuke any country that doesn't do what we want?

In any case, I do not want the US to turn into what its most feverish opponents imagine it is. That's more or less what you are calling for. On the positive side, I think I may have figured out what you do in your undisclosed location, Dick Cheney! See you on another thread.

Nobody is going to refuse to sell oil to us.  They are most of them commodity based countries.  They like and want our money.

China and the Saudis are not going to dump their dollars.  They would be screwing themselves by making their holdings lose value radically.  It's essentially the old saw, "If you owe the bank, $100,000, they are your creditor.  If you owe them $100,000,000, they are your partner."

I'm not talking about replicating the British Empire.  We don't want or need an empire.  But, we do need to neutralize the types who did what was done on 11 September.  Sooner or later, such people will get nukes.  Maybe five years, maybe 25-- it doesn't matter.  We can't ever let that happen.

No, you do not threaten to nuke any country that doesn't do what you want.  But, you very quietly let a nuclear Iran if that comes to pass, know that if there is a nuclear event in the west, we will have to assume they were behind it.  And, that we will retaliate against them with a large quiver full of nuclear missiles.  

This is Neo-MAD.  A contemporary version of Mutual Assured Destruction that in its diabolical way, worked during the Cold War.  With this kind of threat, you make terrorists the problem of the Irans of the world as well as our problem.

If you don't have an apocalyptic view of the possible future, then you do not have sufficient imagination.  But, don't worry, the Pentagon does.  

If terrorists ever get suitcase nukes, all bets are off.  The world as you think it is changes completely.  We can't sit and wait for that.  

AMPLIFICATION:  I ought to have written:  "...Nobody is going to refuse to sell oil to us.  They are most of them commodity based countries.  They like and want and NEED our money.

AMPLIFICATION:  "...Sooner or later, IF WE ARE NOT HIGHLY PRO-ACTIVE WITH OVERT AND COVERT ACTIVITY, such people will get nukes.   Maybe five years, maybe 25-- it doesn't matter.  We can't ever let that happen.