Dale wrote:


What social initiatives of FDR were derailed by WW2? Maybe the extension
of Social Security to Medicare and perhaps a full-blown National Health
Insurance scheme? I thought most of his social initiatives were aimed
at getting the economy back on its feet. The war did that pretty well.



Some have suggested that was why the war occurred. I think that is
probably false, but FDR was one clever and sneaky politico, so who knows?

A minor miscalulation But I'd still like to think that Johnson was as troubled
by the chant of "Hey, hey, LBJ- how many kids did you kill today?" as has been
suggested by some historians. LBJ is a fascinating figure.



He may well show that a person that knows Congress backwards and
forwards might not be a good choice for president; LBJ knew exactly how
to get pretty much any piece of legislation through Congress he wanted
to- via procurable promises, arm twisting, and deal making.
Strange presidents come out of Texas, and lead the nation in strange
directions.



(And in reaction to the botched mess that resulted from this approach, the
post-Vietnam military reorganized responsibilities -- notably, moving
important specialties entirely into the reserves -- specifically to make
it *impossible* to fight another war, even a small one, without mobilizing
the reserves.)



That doesn't seem to be working out too well with public opinion either.



Sooner or later, the president is going to use the word "draft", and
shortly thereafter, the Republican Party is going to sew his mouth shut.
I always was in favor of downsizing the military, but wanted to do it
via removing most of our troops from Europe and other non-critical
overseas deployments...doing it via making anyone in their right mind
refuse to volunteer for the armed services is a whole different approach
to the matter.
Still, whenever this Iraq mess is over, we should have once again
learned the Vietnam lesson about sticking our nose into things that
aren't a direct threat to the U.S., and that Sun Tzu's concept that the
most successful way to fight a war is to achieve one's desired ends
without resorting to combat was very wise indeed.
That lesson will last for a couple of decades, then we will start
incrementally talking ourselves into doing it again.

Pat