The Post-Partisan Emporium

Unsettled History: The Useful Abuse of the "Holocaust" ALAN SABROSKY   Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. (George Santayana) Santayana’s maxim is probably one of the most widely quoted criticisms by scholars and practitioners alike of public policy – especially foreign policy – when it goes awry. This is especially true when the result is disaster at home or defeat abroad, the latter all too often producing the former. Sometimes leaders and their countries survive, other times one or both are ruined. Few out there even today are utterly devoid of a sense of history or driven lemming-like to court disaster, although I concede ever more these days come depressingly close. All forms of government have their weak points, and autocracies in the past have a decidedly mixed record of accomplishments. But it seems clear at least in the case of the United States, that the wider the franchise, the less competent the leaders, no matter what their ideology or pa

American Pravda: Remembering the  Liberty President Lyndon Johnson and World War III? RON UNZ   Audio Player 00:00 00:00 Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume. Concealing the Deliberate Israeli Attack I’m not exactly sure when I first heard of the  Liberty  incident of 1967. The story was certainly a dramatic one, the attack upon an almost defenseless American intelligence ship by Israel’s air and naval forces late in the Six Day War fought against several Arab states. Over 200 American servicemen were killed or wounded by Israeli machine-guns, rockets, napalm, and torpedos, representing our greatest naval loss of life since World War II. Only tremendous luck and the heroic actions of the sailors prevented the  Liberty  from being sunk with all hands lost. The Israeli government quickly claimed that the attack had been accidental, a consequence of mistaken identification and the fog of war, but none of the survivors ever believed that story, nor did many of America’s to