LBJ made the decision to send in troops, so the buck stops at his desk.

Comparing Black Hawk Down to the subjugation of territory is silly. They weren’t an occupying army but Special Forces in helicopters sent to kidnap somebody (a person unimportant enough that nobody remembers his name). Also, Il Duce did not conquer Somalia, which had been an Italian territory since the 1880s. He did conquer Ethiopia, but the minor setbacks in the course of it claimed more lives than the U.S lost in Somalia.

For the Bay of Pigs, see Decision for Disaster by Grayston Lynch, one of the CIA planners. Basically, what happened is that State abused the interagency policy process to nibble away at a military plan which obviously would have worked (not counting the original, absurd, constraint of plausible deniability), until it turned into a plan which obviously wouldn’t work. Similarly, Curtis LeMay once characterized the US effort in Vietnam as “trying to dress and undress at the same time.” The US government can hardly be described as the personification of LBJ’s personal will.

It’s true that in Somalia the US didn’t even really have a definition of success. Kind of an extreme case. However, if you take the last success in subjugating that territory, Il Duce’s colonial effort, you can use that as the yardstick. Making the Italian army look effective is a pretty impressive demonstration of artificial ineptitude.

Arnold:

In regard to the truthfulness and impartiality of the work, the author will only say that, while acknowledging frankly that all his convictions and sympathies have been with the cause of liberty and loyalty, he has not, consciously, done injustice to any.

The great struggle between liberty and slavery in the United States, substantially terminated with the martyrdom of ABRAHAM LINCOLN. The blow of the assassin which struck down the great apostle of freedom, was the last, malignant, expiring effort of slavery. The shot which pierced the heart of Lovejoy at Alton, Illinois, and that which penetrated the brain of LINCOLN, were alike aimed by that institution. The eradication of slavery from the republic was made certain by the death of the Great Emancipator.

It seems a fit occasion to pause at the end of this great drama, to look back over the record of the conflict, to recall the leading events which have marked its history; to do proper honor and justice to the great actors, and, especially, to trace the life and career of the greatest hero of the drama, by whose wisdom, fidelity to principle, truth, singleness of purpose, and boldness, the triumph of freedom has been accomplished…

Lunt:

In writing this book, I have endeavored to trace, in a manner which I trust will be intelligible to the general reader, the interior course of the long controversy, sometimes active, and again much subdued, but never absolutely at rest, between the North and the South. It was my purpose to make known whatever the facts of the case should of themselves indicate, without any regard to party interests or prepossessions.

As the negro was, at the beginning, more or less conspicuously concerned in the question, and on considerations relating chiefly to the master rather than to the slave, either personally or morally ; so he is still left in an uncertain condition, after a war which has destroyed more than half a million of men who were fellow-citizens, and probably twice as many of those who were made the occasion of the contest. This contest also placed the free institutions of the country in a state of peril still furnishing grounds of just apprehension. I have discussed negro-slavery in its own special relations, and the future which apparently awaits the negro race itself in this country, without consciousness of any prejudice, and only so far as those points were inevitably connected with the order of the narrative.

If it should appear that the antislavery agitation, leading to such terrible public and private evils, was actually factitious in its origin and character, so far as its positively efficient agents have pursued it, and was, in reality, the fruit of a struggle for political power, instead of a moral or philanthropical demonstration, a very grave question is thus presented for the consideration of the American people…

and I thought Condon was the only one to accuse McCarthy.

When the American establishment really wants to fight a war, there is indeed (in Douglas MacArthur’s words) no substitute for victory. A small example in our time: Serbia. Compare the State Department line on Milosevic to the State Department line on Ahmadinejad, and you’ll see the difference.

Again, you were intentionally misleading the reader. A large section of Utley’s book, as I’ll be kind enough to presume you know, is devoted to describing the de facto embargo which State imposed. Quibbling over the details of whether this “lasted until the Korean war” is meaningless, because it was never an explicit policy – in fact, it was concealed behind a program of apparent aid, which State did its best to sabotage. Even if the point is relevant and even if it can be distinguished at all, it is a miniscule contradiction in a broadly synoptic picture.

Yet the uninformed reader (jury?) would be very likely to expect from your statement that Utley’s perspective of the US-China relationship refutes Tullock’s. Which in fact it confirms, in far more detail. Is this how they teach you to argue in law school? Have you tried it? Does it work? Lord, I hope not.

For one of many possible counter-”correctives” try Isaac Arnold’s _The History of Abraham Lincoln and the Overthrow of Slavery_–published in Chicago, I’ll have you know, in 1866. Were you in Chicago in 1866? And if not, what are your grounds for assuming that your perspective of events is accurate, and Arnold’s are not?

I haven’t read Arnold, but I’ve read a decent amount of 1860s antislavery propaganda and, on skimming, it strikes me as – well – typical. I appreciate the reference. I think the modern, skeptical reader would gain tremendously by reading both Arnold and Lunt. It would certainly be a much more productive experience than anything you can get by reading conflicting 20th-century accounts.

When evaluating conflicting testimony about a past I have not seen and cannot visit, I try to read both sides and see which strikes me as most credible. What, sir, do you do? I suspect you’d find it quite interesting to read both these books – the contrast in tone, especially, is notable.

A universe in which the fact that Welch accused A of being a communist agent is evidence that Welch did not also accuse B of also being a communist agent, or in which the fact that McCarthy accused A of being a communist agent is evidence that Welch did not also accuse A of being a communist agent must be a strange and interesting place, and I’d like to visit it.

I apologize – I was not attempting to impugn your credibility by mentioning that Welch accused Eisenhower. Obviously, this is the better-known accusation because it was more spectacular and less plausible. For anyone who could swallow Eisenhower the Communist, Marshall the Communist was a mere hors d’oeuvre.

I think the truth of the matter was best expressed by the diplomatic historian Carroll Quigley, who wrote that the McCarthyists (mainly Roy Cohn, J.B. Matthews, and the like – McCarthy himself was not a significant intellectual figure) made the mistake of attacking the American establishment, thinking that they were attacking a nest of enemy spies. (McCarthy’s tactics were in fact very similar to those the New Deal used, much more successfully of course, to purge the “isolationists,” with Nazis in the villain role.) The relationship between the Soviets and the WASP ruling class which gave us the New Deal was complicated, but the two are not to be equated, and the American side always considered itself the senior partner. Marshall and Eisenhower can certainly be described as New Deal political generals, and they knew what side their bread was buttered on.

Didn’t Woodrow Wilson also send American troops into Russia to aid the White forces?

Mencius: As anyone who has actually read Utley’s book knows, this is a deliberate distortion of it. Quite typical, I’m afraid.

Ooh! I’m “quite typical”, and apparently that’s a bad thing. The truth of my factual assertion, that Utley does _not_ describe any embargo on Chiang’s government lasting until the Korean war (as claimed by Tullock) does not appear to matter to Mencius. I made no claim to describe Utley’s work overall in that sentence, I merely pointed out an instance it which it disconfirms Tullock.

Me: Welch called Marshall a Communist agent. This has not been supported.

Mencius: Nor has it been refuted. History is about comparing possible pasts, each of which must be weighted equally. It is not a criminal proceeding, and the presumption of innocence does not enter into it. Everyone involved is dead.
Nor am I postulating that Welch is infallible. I am claiming that, in any dispute between the Barbara Tuchmans and the Robert Welches of history, it is your postulate that the Tuchmans are infallible. One white raven refutes the claim that all ravens are black.

I’ve never called Tuchman (or the “Tuchmans”, whoever they may be) infallible, and in fact you’re the one with a thing about Tuchman, as can be shown by the fact that I haven’t previously mentioned her.
Nor do I agree that possible pasts “must be weighted equally”. It is possible to imagine a past where Jimmy Carter, awakening on July 5, 1977, decides to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the USSR. Such a past is not worth spending much time thinking about in detail.
Finally, having seen an albino raven once, I’ve certainly never claimed that “all ravens are black.” I wish you luck in pursuing your argument on that subject with whoever’s disputing it with you–not me.

Me: The southern white supremacists were able to get their version of the US Civil War’s origins to be the standard account for a surprisingly long time.

Mencius: That’s because the southern white supremacists were right. For a corrective, try George Lunt’s Origin of the Late War – published in Boston, I’ll have you know, in 1866. Were you in Boston in 1866? And if not, what are your grounds for assuming that your perspective of events is accurate, and Lunt’s are not?

For one of many possible counter-”correctives” try Isaac Arnold’s _The History of Abraham Lincoln and the Overthrow of Slavery_–published in Chicago, I’ll have you know, in 1866. Were you in Chicago in 1866? And if not, what are your grounds for assuming that your perspective of events is accurate, and Arnold’s are not?

To answer the actual question behind the meaningless “Hey, I can find an old source I like, and which might intimidate someone completely unfamiliar with library research” game, I (like everyone alive today) have access to a lot of information available to almost nobody in 1866.

Mencius: Herbert Hoover was there, too. After the Great War, he was the man who fed Europe. And he didn’t much mind telling Europe what to do, neither. Whether Hoover allowed the American Relief Administration into a country pretty much decided whether its government stayed or fell. So yes, in fact, his opinion is indeed germane. But I see you know him only from the caricatures. Your condition is, again, not atypical.

I didn’t say Hoover’s opinion wasn’t germane, and I’m well aware of the outlines of his career (your default assumption that anyone who doesn’t agree with you is a fool is, to quote you, both “typical” and “not atypical.”) Stating a disinclination to accept one person as “the final arbiter” of a particular question is quite compatible with accepting that the person in question can have germane opinions.

Mencius: Also, it was Eisenhower whom Welch accused of being a Communist agent, in The Politician. I am not inclined to believe this about Ike, but there certainly could have been some kind of relationship with his brother Milton. Milton was an OWI man, and the OWI was red to the gills.
The figure who accused Marshall was, of course, McCarthy – although the speech, later distributed as a book (America’s Retreat from Victory), was actually ghostwritten.

A universe in which the fact that Welch accused A of being a communist agent is evidence that Welch did not also accuse B of also being a communist agent, or in which the fact that McCarthy accused A of being a communist agent is evidence that Welch did not also accuse A of being a communist agent must be a strange and interesting place, and I’d like to visit it.
In the real world, both Welch and McCarthy accused Marshall of being a communist agent, and Welch accused both McCarthy and Eisenhower. (As I recall, Welch’s statement that Eisenhower was a communist agent was deleted from _The Politician_ before publication–but it got wide publicity anyway).
“I defy _anybody_ who is not actually a Communist himself, to read all the known facts about his career and not decide that since at least sometime in the 1930s George Catlett Marshall has not been a conscious, deliberate agent of the Soviet conspiracy.” –Robert Welch, _The Politician_, p. 15 (1964 printing).

The figure who accused Marshall was, of course, McCarthy – although the speech, later distributed as a book (America’s Retreat from Victory), was actually ghostwritten. By J.B.Matthews, I believe, though I would not swear to this.

Both works are a lot of fun for the 21st-century reader. I recommend them highly, not because I guarantee that everything they say is true, but because their general hit rate is high enough to keep one in a pretty continuous state of suspense. Another fun book in this category, although later, is Curtis LeMay’s America Is In Danger. You can pretty much get all of this stuff on Amazon for a penny – so there’s just no reason not to.