Pirate's Cove

Afternoon, y’all. Jebediah Murphy here, bringin’ you the truth. Thought I would let Teach get some milage out of Talk Like a Pirate Day. Now, it seems as if them thar critters at the Washington Post are starting a new feature called "The Fact Checker," by Michael Dobbs. In it’s short time at the WP, he has fact checked Osama, Mike Gavel-a 5th tier Democrat running for President, Sam Brownback, and now, Fred(?), based on this quote:

"If you look back over our history, it will not take you long to realize that our people have shed more blood for other people’s liberty than any other combination of nations in the history of the world." — Fred Thompson, stump speech in Iowa, September 6, 2007.

Perhaps it may be a bit over the top, but, Dobbs aparently finds it to be a major league whopper, giving it four Pinoccios, the worst possible rating.

A grandiose claim that is hard to justify no matter how you define "other people’s liberty." Let’s begin by looking at American casualties in foreign wars. (Domestic conflicts such as the Revolutionary War and the Civil War are excluded.)

Followed by a chart of US casualties.

While heavy, U.S. military casualties are still relatively low in comparison to the military casualties of its World War II and World War I allies. In World War II alone, the Soviet Union suffered at least eight million casualties, or ten times the number of U.S. casualties in all wars combined. According to Winston Churchill, the Red Army "tore the guts out of the Nazi war machine." Of course, it can be argued that Soviet soldiers were primarily fighting to free their homeland from Nazi occupation. After fighting their way to Berlin, the Soviet Union imposed its own dictatorship over eastern Europe. Even so, Soviet sacrifices clearly contributed greatly to the liberation of western Europe from Nazi domination. Soviet soldiers died for their own country and their own tyrannical regime, but they also spilled blood on behalf of their western allies.

Interesting. Dobbs needs to fact  check himself. He uses a quote from Churchill to justify what he says the Red Army was not doing. Yes, the Red Army fought in Eastern Europe. How many died fighting there, vs on their own territory? Considering that those countries they ran through were not given any more liberty then they Nazi’s were providing, and may, in some cases, been worse, Dobb’s arguement could be said to be wrong.

Britain is mentioned, and, though they certainly helped free Western Europe, with all due respect to them, they were fighting to keep their own country free.

Neither Britain, nor the United States was invaded or occupied in either of the two world wars. Britain entered World War I to fulfill its treaty obligations to France and Belgium and entered World War II to fulfill a guarantee to Poland, following the September 1939 attack by Nazi Germany. The United States entered World War I after German submarines began attacking American merchant ships in the Atlantic. It entered World War II following the attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

Thanks for the history lesson, Mike. Britain certainly outdid the USA in WWI to fight in Europe, with 658,700 dead, and 359,000 missing. But, again, it could be argued that they did it for their own preservation. That is not a knock on the British; being in Europe, could one expect something different? It would have been dumb if they hadn’t fought, because, as the other main power in Europe, they would be a prime target.

Thompson’s jingoistic assertion cannot be supported by the facts, barring some very tortuous definition of the phrase "other people’s liberty." We asked his campaign for factual support for the candidate’s claim, but they have not so far responded. We therefore award Fred Thompson four Pinocchios.

Seriously, can you believe this? What Fred(?) was using as a means of being proud of America’s ability to go and help other countries, Dobbs see’s as a whopper. Did Fred mean it as hyperbole, or as fact? We may not have had the deaths, but, we fought in Europe simply to help them out. The threat from the Kaiser and the Nazi’s was not very direct, and we basically were the cause of their defeat. Obviously, our entry into WWI, WWII (European Theater), Korea, Vietnam, Iraq twice, and Afghanistan were not totally selfless, but, who is the country promoting freedom the most around the world? Who went out and defeated the Soviet Union? The Libs may have loved the USSR, but, they were, no matter how you spin it, a serious threat to liberty world wide.

But, again, can you believe this? Why doesn’t Dobbs fact check something, you know, important? How about Shillary’s health care plan? Or her saying she never knew Hsu? Or anything of substance? Do you think we will see him ever fact check Hillary and give her a bad mark? Why not email Michael Dobbs, and ask him to cover something of importance. Will he have the sheer guts to go after Shillary?

Captain Ed (he’s a northerner, but, I reckon’ I can make an allowance)

The Post awards Thompson "four Pinocchios" for his statement. I’d award the Post about ten dunce caps for borderline illiteracy.

…The Post seems to have some trouble distinguishing imperial acquisition from liberty, a lost distinction that explains quite a bit of what appears on the pages of its newspaper.

Outside the Beltway

So, yes, the facts are more complicated than Thompson’s stump speech line; they always are. Americans have fought a lot of wars, none of them for a single purpose. Over the last century, though, all of them have had at least some substantial “other people’s liberty” component. Who else can make that claim?

Anyhow, if you want a real fact check site that is un-biased, check out Fact Check.org.

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