From: "George Z. Bush"

I was on active duty during WWII and the Korean War and into the end of the
60s,
and am trying to rely on my failing memory. Although I don't recall that we
were anything but fearful and defensive about Soviet expansionism during the
60s.....in that context, you might very well be right about the Domino
Theory's
validity in those days. However, we also did not consider that the Soviet
Union, an artificial conglomeration of ethnic groups and areas, was largely
eviscerated during WWII and probably possessed far less resources in the
decade
following the end of the war than we gave them credit for. After applying
what
they did have to rebuilding their war ravaged nation and its armed forces, I
doubt that they had very much left that might have been available for
fomenting
expansionist adventures around the world. In that sense, it's just possible
that the Domino Theory had a fatal leak in it. I don't guess we'll ever
know.

As General of the Army Douglas MacArthur said in 1957, "Our government has
kept
us in a perpetual state of fear--kept us in a continuous stampede of
patriotic
fervor--with the cry of grave national emergency.... Always there has been
some
terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by
furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters
seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real."
In those days it was the Democrats who were among the fiercest anti-communist
warriors and MacArthur was only echoing the broad views of Eisenhower, who
shortly would be warning the nation of the dangers of the
"military-industrial
complex," while the 1960 Democratic presidential candidate would attack the
Republicans as being soft on defense, claiming their laxness in the face of
the
Communist threat had lead to a "missle gap."
Once in power again and having suffered repeated blows by reality, the
Democrats began to sound like Republicans of yore, with, for example, Ivan
Selin, Head of Strategic Forces Division in the Office of the Assistant
Secretary of Defense in the Johnson Administration telling a visitor in 1966,
"Welcome to the world of strategic analysis, where we program weapons that
don't work to meet threats that don't exist."


Chris Mark


There is truth in that logic but how do you account for threats that were
stopped? What if our internal security was robust enough to prevent 9/11 from
even being initiated? Would you say that that level of security measures were
unnecessary? You wouldn't know because in that scenario the attack never
happened. How do you determine the real threat to defend against with 100%
accuracy every time?

Unfortunately national security effectiveness is as easy to quantify as lives
saved or cost avoided because of threat warnings. Much easier to count lives
lost and dollars spent because of possibly flawed strategy or doctrine then
ctiticize in hindsight

Steve.