Though I have often been dumbfounded at the depth of ignorance displayed by political commentators of a certain stripe, I watched something so astounding in the course of my duties today that I still wonder if it mustn't have been meant as parody.

There was the usual run of the mill derision of our President, his party and all those of the "Loony Left."

Then came this argument.

Democrats were responsible for every war waged by the United States in the 20th Century. World War I was Wilson. World War II was FDR and Truman. Korea was Truman. Vietnam was Kennedy and then Johnson (and, they did allow, at the end Nixon). Clinton sent troops to Somalia and Kosovo. But it was only when George W. Bush sent troops to Iraq that people started raising a fuss about "preemptive war."

There is so much wrong with this that one barely knows where to begin. Surely, we might agree that Wilson and FDR didn't start either of the World Wars, and that they weren't "preemptive" in nature. U.S. involvement in the Korean Conflict, as anyone with a passing acquaintance with history should know, was as part of an international coalition of troops under the auspices of the United Nations - similar to the first Gulf War under George Herbert Walker Bush (which our commentators conveniently omitted).

Let's look at Vietnam. It is beyond dispute that President Kennedy escalated U.S. involvement, and that LBJ further escalated it (by magnitudes), but U.S. involvement there started during the Eisenhower Administration, of course, with nearly 1000 U.S. military "advisers" on the ground in Vietnam before JFK took office.



Let us not split hairs, though. It was, in the end, Johnson's war, and as we all know, and as our commentators suggest, no one raised a cry of dissent, at least no Democrat or "Liberal." Right?

What, in the Name of the Good Christ, do they think the 1968 riots in Chicago were about? Why did Lyndon Johnson, a man who had won one of the most decisive landslide election victories in American history just four years earlier, decide that he would be unable to hold his own party's nomination for another term in office?

If you are going to talk about history, gentlemen, at least do a little Googling or something. Maybe even read a book? I realize that some of you on the Right are a little afraid of facts and intellectual rigor, but I promise that at least some very basic knowledge of your subject won't hurt you.