Timeline of Wars
This Timeline of the famous Wars in the History of the World. Important dates in a fast, comprehensive, chronological, or date order providing an actual sequence
Names and dates of famous conflicts and battles
Dates of Wars and battles in each century
Famous Wars in World History.
Donald Trump’s Big Lies at the Commander-In-Chief Forum
Contrary to some accounts, neither Hitler nor his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, took credit for successfully using what the French refer to as le grand mensonge: the Nazi leaders always claimed they were telling the truth. In Hitler’s mind, it was the Jews of Vienna who spread the original Big Lie—about Germany’s conduct in the First World War. Goebbels later blamed the English, saying they “follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it.”
.. On September 11, 2002, he appeared on “The Howard Stern Show,” where the host asked him if he was “for invading Iraq.” Trump replied, “Yeah, I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly.” This wasn’t the most fulsome of endorsements, it is true. But it clearly indicated that Trump backed sending in troops to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
.. Depending on how charitable one feels, Trump’s blatant disregard for the factual record could be described as chutzpah, self-delusion, or the default reaction of someone to whom lying has become, in the words of his ghostwriter Tony Schwartz, “second nature.”
.. by his demanding standards, as a medium lie, rather than a big one. It is the sort of thing he throws out every so often—a bit like his claims that President Obama founded isis, or that “thousands and thousands” of people in Jersey City cheered the collapse of the Twin Towers. Trump must know such things didn’t happen. But, in his world, the truth’s value is instrumental, rather than intrinsic. “He lied strategically,” Schwartz told Mayer. “He had a complete lack of conscience about it.”
.. When he utters some outrageous falsehood, as he does almost every day, the reaction in some quarters is that it is just Trump being Trump. He’s the P. T. Barnum of the modern age, and he’s been telling stretchers for decades. What else can you expect?
Do You Care More About a Dog Than a Refugee?
“Surely the George W. Bush experience taught us something.”
Let me push back. I opposed the Iraq war, but to me the public seems to have absorbed the wrong lesson — that military intervention never works, rather than the more complex lesson that it is a blunt and expensive tool with a very mixed record.
.. Yes, the Iraq war was a disaster, but the no-fly zone in northern Iraq after the first gulf war was a huge success. Vietnam was a monumental catastrophe, but the British intervention in Sierra Leone in 2000 was a spectacular success. Afghanistan remains a mess, but airstrikes helped end genocide in the Balkans. U.S. support for Saudi bombing in Yemen is counterproductive, but Bill Clinton has said that his worst foreign policy mistake was not halting the Rwandan genocide.
.. I wonder what would happen if Aleppo were full of golden retrievers, if we could see barrel bombs maiming helpless, innocent puppies. Would we still harden our hearts and “otherize” the victims? Would we still say “it’s an Arab problem; let the Arabs solve it”?
Trump’s Vietnam draft past sheds light on ‘sacrifice’ debate
In truth, there were no clear-cut, moral answers for young men faced with the Vietnam draft in the 1960s. But one thing was certain: If you didn’t go, someone else like a Richard would effectively take your place.
It was never so openly transactional as the Civil War, when a future American president, Grover Cleveland, paid a Polish immigrant seaman to take his place in the ranks. But the end result was not so different. Time and again, working-class, high school graduates were sucked into the fighting, while the wealthy and more educated found a way to stay out.
.. the inequities of the Vietnam draft were a harbinger of the much larger divide now between an educated elite in this country and those workers left behind in the more high-tech and globalized economy.
.. “Vietnam represents a class transition,” Kevin Phillips, the conservative political analyst and historian, told The Wall Street Journal at the time. “It began with the elites who were sure they could pull it out. It ended with a younger version of the McGeorge Bundys and Robert McNamaras walking away from it.”