So this is settled...

[DestinFlPackfan]

49 minutes ago, mugtang said:

Cuban Missile Crisis

But it all started with Eisenhower and his plan to overthrow Castro. Kennedy followed his plan. ' The Bay of Pigs' invasion which led to the Cuban Missle Crisis.

 

[HR_Poke]

On 2/21/2017 at 7:44 PM, happycamper said:

Link our just no. Unless you think a communist kanto would be a good idea.

With nukes, sure, but he was the first president to be in a position to use them. 

To threaten with the military? Lol

So just Korea? Seems pretty specious

So.... As president he defended Israel and desegregated the federal government but as a private citizen he was racist.

If personal morals are a factor now why isn't Carter in the top ten?

Leahy, who was Truman’s personal chief of staff, wrote in his memoir that the “Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender…. The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan.” MacArthur went further. He told former President Hoover that if the United States had assured the Japanese that they could keep the emperor they would have gladly surrendered in late May.

 

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-stone-kuznick-hiroshima-obama-20160524-snap-story.html

dropping the bomb did nothing to end the war. It was a show of force to the soviets and it failed. 

Korea set the precedent that's far more important than quantity of internevtions.

Truman was a terrible president with the lowest approval rating of any president until Bush jr. He was incompetent and is the reason we have the current interventionist foreign policies, massive military industrial complex and huge standing army today. 

[happycamper]

5 minutes ago, HR_Poke said:

Leahy, who was Truman’s personal chief of staff, wrote in his memoir that the “Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender…. The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan.” MacArthur went further. He told former President Hoover that if the United States had assured the Japanese that they could keep the emperor they would have gladly surrendered in late May.

 

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-stone-kuznick-hiroshima-obama-20160524-snap-story.html

dropping the bomb did nothing to end the war. It was a show of force to the soviets and it failed. 

Korea set the precedent that's far more important than quantity of internevtions.

Truman was a terrible president with the lowest approval rating of any president until Bush jr. He was incompetent and is the reason we have the current interventionist foreign policies, massive military industrial complex and huge standing army today. 

Seems like you are getting a bit fast and loose with revisionist history here. 

Dropping the bomb ensured a surrender. The Emperor was not in charge. Citing an opinion piece by Stone is, frankly, laughable. The decision to drop the bombs were based on the fact that Japan's strategy was to bleed the US out in amphibious invasions until they could secure a surrender that left the military junta more or less intact. The atomic bomb, while not worse than firebombings, showed that bunkering in the home islands was not a tenable strategy.

Korea's precedent was that if the full security council of the UN agreed on intervention, it was acceptable. I don't see how this principal applies for Vietnam, or Panama, or Gulf War 2, or... whatever. For that matter, I'd have to say that Korea was FAR from the precedent of intervention. We intervened in the october revolution and we intervened in the Mexican civil war, in Haiti, in Guatemala... 

We are the colossus of the north. WE had interventionist foreign policy since before TDR. Our massive military industrial complex was a result of the cold war- but, frankly, the reason why it is so massive is our GDP is massive. Per capita, we have a fairly average military. Our standing army is what, half a million? So 0.15% of the population? That's equivalent to what, an army of 30,000 for a country the size of Canada? 

Furthermore, it took generations to build both the military industrial complex and a professional army. To pin the start of them 70 years ago is silly. They took outside threats, they took inside support, and they took both for decades.

You seem to be reaching for "Truman bad" than really caring what he did

[CPslograd]

1 hour ago, happycamper said:

Seems like you are getting a bit fast and loose with revisionist history here. 

Dropping the bomb ensured a surrender. The Emperor was not in charge. Citing an opinion piece by Stone is, frankly, laughable. The decision to drop the bombs were based on the fact that Japan's strategy was to bleed the US out in amphibious invasions until they could secure a surrender that left the military junta more or less intact. The atomic bomb, while not worse than firebombings, showed that bunkering in the home islands was not a tenable strategy.

Korea's precedent was that if the full security council of the UN agreed on intervention, it was acceptable. I don't see how this principal applies for Vietnam, or Panama, or Gulf War 2, or... whatever. For that matter, I'd have to say that Korea was FAR from the precedent of intervention. We intervened in the october revolution and we intervened in the Mexican civil war, in Haiti, in Guatemala... 

We are the colossus of the north. WE had interventionist foreign policy since before TDR. Our massive military industrial complex was a result of the cold war- but, frankly, the reason why it is so massive is our GDP is massive. Per capita, we have a fairly average military. Our standing army is what, half a million? So 0.15% of the population? That's equivalent to what, an army of 30,000 for a country the size of Canada? 

Furthermore, it took generations to build both the military industrial complex and a professional army. To pin the start of them 70 years ago is silly. They took outside threats, they took inside support, and they took both for decades.

You seem to be reaching for "Truman bad" than really caring what he did

I'm not a huge Truman guy, but I'm more or less with you on this, and think HR is too hard on Truman.

Truman went through this time period about 20 years ago where all of the sudden he was historically popular.  Now, it seems to be Ike's turn.  He seems to be getting a lot of positive coverage these days.

On the bomb, I don't agree with HR.  They had a few days to surrender, and they didn't, so we dropped the second one.  Also, I think people forget how cheap life was by summer of '45.  An argument could be made that the atom bombs actually helped during  the occupation and reconstruction of Japan.  Of course, that's no solace to the tens of thousands killed those days.

I would make the theoretical argument that we were wrong to demand unconditional surrender from Germany rather than Japan.  But that is awfully easy to say from my couch in California 70 years later.

 

[CPslograd]

2 hours ago, DestinFlPackfan said:

But it all started with Eisenhower and his plan to overthrow Castro. Kennedy followed his plan. ' The Bay of Pigs' invasion which led to the Cuban Missle Crisis.

 

Ok, but Ike specifically said not to do it if you won't/ can't commit air power.  

I put the Bay of Pigs on JFK.  He got cold feet.  He needed to either be committed to it, or not go with it.

I don'really think he handled the Cuban Missile Crisis terribly though.  A blockade was the right action, and a later quid pro quo was appropriate.  In the early sixties the Soviets could have rolled through Western Europe in a few months, we couldn't defend Europe conventionally.  The whole first offset was about using nukes to overcome The Soviets conventional advantage.  MAD was just developing then, it wasn't accepted theory.  In that context he couldn't let the Soviets put nuclear missiles on Cuba.

I don't know, being president is like calling plays as an OC.  If it doesn't work everyone is going to blame you, even if it does work people are going to say it would have been better if you'd done this or that.  And we never really know, because the president doesn't get do overs.  Events foreseen and unforeseen happen regardless of his decision.

[retrofade]

I will never understand why FDR is so highly rated in these stupid "rankings". 

[halfmanhalfbronco]

15 hours ago, youngrebelfan40 said:

I mean, if we're going to knock presidents for being racist you'd have to eliminate like 42 or 43 of them (including Trump).

 

I am disappointed that my colleagues ranked JFK so high. He was a complete media creation who almost got us into thermonuclear war. The best thing that happened to his legacy was his assassination.

Brutal.

[thelawlorfaithful]

4 hours ago, halfmanhalfbronco said:

Brutal.

An early death is the best thing that can happen for the reputation of the marginally talented. Just look at Jim Morrison.

[halfmanhalfbronco]

1 hour ago, thelawlorfaithful said:

An early death is the best thing that can happen for the reputation of the marginally talented. Just look at Jim Morrison.

Or that slut princess Diana.

[DestinFlPackfan]

2 hours ago, halfmanhalfbronco said:

Or that slut princess Diana.

You have just jumped the shark. ?

[SJSUMFA2013]

3 hours ago, halfmanhalfbronco said:

Or that slut princess Diana.

Or that hack Jimi Hendrix.

[halfmanhalfbronco]

19 minutes ago, DestinFlPackfan said:

You have just jumped the shark. ?

[SJSUMFA2013]

1 minute ago, Joe from WY said:

Excellent point. I always thought Morrison was amazing too. Same could go for Otis Redding or Janis too. 

To me the perfect example of dying young is someone like Kurt Cobain. I'm a big Nirvana fan but his premature death led to them continuing to be the face of Grunge after all these years. I always wondered (like I do with Morrison or Hendrix) what would have happened if they hadn't died. I'd imagine Cobain would kind of be a Michael Stipe kind of character. 

Same thing happened in hip-hop with Pac and biggie. Hip-hop could have evolved much faster if they had lived. Gangsta rap became revered and lasting, and hence bastardized by hacks trying to cash in, rather than a trend. There's no reason that "woke" rappers like Kendrick Lamar and chance the rapper needed to wait until this decade to start winning Grammys except that the east-west beef became a lionized part of the history and engrained the idea in people's heads that rap and gang-banging were synonymous. Neither Tupac nor biggie wanted to glorify their lifestyles but their deaths ensured just that. They also ensured that a generation of white people would distrust the entire genre. It took until Eminem emerged in the late 90s for hip-hop to find a wider audience. But even he admits, "let's do some math / if I was black / I would have sold half."

[halfmanhalfbronco]

53 minutes ago, SJSUMFA2013 said:

Same thing happened in hip-hop with Pac and biggie. Hip-hop could have evolved much faster if they had lived. Gangsta rap became revered and lasting, and hence bastardized by hacks trying to cash in, rather than a trend. There's no reason that "woke" rappers like Kendrick Lamar and chance the rapper needed to wait until this decade to start winning Grammys except that the east-west beef became a lionized part of the history and engrained the idea in people's heads that rap and gang-banging were synonymous. Neither Tupac nor biggie wanted to glorify their lifestyles but their deaths ensured just that. They also ensured that a generation of white people would distrust the entire genre. It took until Eminem emerged in the late 90s for hip-hop to find a wider audience. But even he admits, "let's do some math / if I was black / I would have sold half."

Your MWCboard game has been on point lately.

[SJSUMFA2013]

1 hour ago, halfmanhalfbronco said:

Your MWCboard game has been on point lately.

Topics have been in my wheelhouse and I'm in a good mood. I like this board