Outrageous!

I picked this up from Obnoxiousfumes.com who in turn found it mentioned on another blog.

Hardball with Chris Matthews, Oct 18

I won't pull any captions out of context and leave the reading you to, but as a historian I'm appalled at the lack of restraint exhibited by our former President here. Surely a student of the Revolutionary War would be able to make intelligent comparison and proper analogy when comparing one war and time period to another. But, I suppose the exigencies of politics and dogma win out in any struggle for the pursuit of truth.

I will take a few of the statements made and correct them, for if you watched this interview I hope you at least scratched your head and said, "that just don't sound right". If you didn't, if you nodded your head up and down and lapped up the astounding statements made and accepted them as truth, then I will have to say your understanding of American history (let alone world history) is very shallow.

I will say this, however, Carter was not on Hardball because he was a historian, otherwise one would hope his statements would have been more accurate and his use of history not so mind boggling inaccurate.

Carters statement about the British being misled is wrong on so many levels. It presumes that the British, as a people, had a choice in what the Crown chose to do or not to do, as if the Brit of the revolution was just like the Brit of today. I have to believe that Carter knows the score here, who but only the most bored and dense grade schooler doesn't know that England was ruled by a monarch, a king, a man who held sole power to lead the direction of the country. But that wasn't his point; he used a poor analogy to make his political point. We were a colony, Mr. Former President, a colony in rebellion. We were still not much different from the people “across the pond”, we had not "evolved" egregiously from the people we would then be fighting against.

Carter then launches into our war in Iraq in an attempt to liken it to the British fighting the British in our own war. Ok, not only are the figures of civilian casualties thrown out and increased for effect (there were civilian casualties, but tens of thousands? I've followed the war and I've followed our occupation and unless my mental calculator is broken, I'm sure I would remember 30 to 50 thousand civilian dead). Then he likens our presence in Iraq to the enforcers of a foreign concept of rule. The British where not present in the colonies to enforce a foreign concept, they were holding on to what was being ripped from them.

Now, I don't know what histories Matthews has been reading, but he attempts to lay "democratization of other societies" upon President Bush as if Bush is the sole inventor of this program. The Philippines and Cuba come to mind from our earlier actions since before Bush was ever alive!

Then finally begins the descriptions of the Revolutionary War and another twist in revisionist history, nationalism. It isn't too hard to see where Matthews and Carter are leading to in this pseudo discussion couched in our own history. Not only is this attempt to link the "minutemen" of our own Revolution to the insurgency in Iraq but also a queer maligning of our own "patriotism". Iraqi insurgents: Sadrists - those followers of Mohammed Sadr in his bid to force his way into Iraqi politics and the foreign Al Queda fighters.

Now, a myth which is being further promulgated here is the militia. Every township had a militia; it was for Indian defense and local protection. The militia met when called upon or on a schedule. They were called upon to augment regular forces and saw service off and on during the French and Indian Wars and the Revolution. The militia’s finest hour, Lexington green. Militia companies formed and met and harassed the British regular forces and won the war! No, they dispersed and the British went where they willed. Although used throughout the war to augment, they never filled the role that history and our mythos has given them. Did they answer the call? Mostly, when it suited their needs and they could be drawn away from home. It was the Continental Regulars who stood the test and fought the type of warfare the British were used to. It was they who stood the eventually won us the war, with the final intervention of the French. Carter made sure to put this in, in a snotty sort of way no doubt. French ships and troops arrived just in time for us to deliver the final blow to the British. Let's not get all foggy eyed and sing our favorite French ditty. France intervened for one reason: when we were winning and to deal with their arch nemesis on the European continent, Britain. It would be four long years of struggle before any French troops set foot on our soil.

Carter's last statement caps the "let's embrace the French" and prove to the world that we owe them our country. The French showed up after Washington had already pushed Cornwallis into the fortifications of Yorktown. The French were there for the knockout blow and cannot be slighted for that. But to infer that the French were all that stood in the way of our independence or continuance of being a British colony, I'm sorry but the record does not support the role Carter and Matthews wish to give the French, another Monarchy bent on hegemony in Europe at the time.