Where Credit's Due (or, Where Credit Dies)

The two men pictured above have much in common. Until Bush the younger, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan were the only 2-term Republican presidents other than Ulysses S. Grant. And the fact that the guy's name was Ulysses indicates how long ago that was.

Other things they had in common: they were, and remain, the two oldest presidents ever elected. They both served in World War II: Eisenhower was a 5-star general, responsible for the American invasion of Nazi-occupied France; Reagan made propaganda films in Hollywood.

As president, each of these men were given credit for certain things. The problem is that they did not deserve that credit. And the larger problem is that by giving them credit, we impale ourselves on our own delusions.

President Eisenhower was largely credited with ending the Korean War. How did he do so? Most American historians insist that he made peace by threatening to use nuclear weapons. The North Koreans and Chinese, sufficiently intimidated, then chose to sign a truce.

How do we know this is absurd? It implies that President Truman, who preceded Eisenhower, never made a similar threat. President Truman, of course, remains the only person in history to actually use nuclear weapons, so it is absurd in the extreme to assert that the North Koreans or Chinese were more intimidated by Eisenhower than they were by Truman.

So why did the Korean War really end? (It would be far more accurate to ask why the Korean War was paused, as it still remains in suspended animation which could break at any moment) The Korean War really ended because Stalin died.

Stalin, as Godfather of the Communist world, was able to use his enormous force of personality to insist that the North Korean and Chinese continue bleeding the Americans. When he died, his force of personality died with him, and his Asian colleagues swiftly called a truce, something Stalin had forbid during his lifetime.

The danger in the misreading described above is the lesson we learn from it. That erroneous lesson reads thusly: if you're trapped in a quagmire, just threaten nuclear annihilation and your enemy will quit. But what if they don't? Ever heard of Vietnam?

As for Ronald Reagan, he is largely credited with ending the Cold War. Mainstream historians tell us he did this by increasingly military spending to a level that the Communists simply could not compete with.

How do we know this is absurd? Because in seeking to bankrupt the Soviet Union, Reagan damn near bankrupted the United States. And when the Soviet Union did collapse, the militaries involved played absolutely no role whatsoever; it was a political process rather than a military one.

So why did the Cold War really end? Two reasons. Firstly, communism didn't work. Secondly, the Communist bloc finally had a ruler (Gorbachev) who allowed people to state the obvious: communism didn't work. As soon as people were given political choice, most of them chose a different political system.

Again, the danger in misreading the lesson describe above is what we "learned" from it. We learned that when we are confronted by an opposing force, we simply spend that force into the ground. But what happens when that opposing force is not even trying to outspend us?

Further, what happens when there always seems to be an opposing force that pops up after the last one was spent into dust? Then we keep spending. And what happens when we keep spending? We end up with a country in debt up to its eyeballs, most of that debt incurred by building weapons we could never use.

The danger with history is that people will use it to justify what they do. So if they misread history, and draw the wrong lessons, they will inherently make the wrong decisions in the present.

When we look back at the foreign policy of this country in the last 60 years, it boils down to two tenets, both of which are based on misreadings of history: threaten to use nukes and build thousands of nukes you could never use. What's the worst that could happen?