I think there isn't any such guarantee, myself.
I'm a a very leftwing Democrat today, but I remember as an 18-year old seeing Lyndon Johnson radically escalating US military actions in Vietnam, based on total lies about US reasons for involvement in that war.
I also have since read, from fairly respectable historicans, that Johnson probably didn't even believe in the Vietnam War very much. It looks to some scholars as if Johnson plunged into what looked like a hopeless conflict in SE Asia mostly because he didn't want to be pilloried by the Republicans as "pro-Communist" or "weak."
Therefore I don't see any good reason to believe that Democratic presidents will always be more peaceful, or more rational, or more moral in their foreign policy choices than Republicans.
But what do other people in YA Politics think? Stepping back from the controversial presidency of Barack Obama, do you see liberal Democrats as being less committed to war & imperial rule than conservative Republicans, or do you see Republicans actually believe less imperialistic, or do you think the two parties are roughly equivalent on this issue?
Please also explain your answer, if you feel like it.
Note to Nancy: I know what you mean about Eisenhower.
However, in the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg also discussed Truman's decision not to recognize an independent Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, and to support a return of French colonial occupation forces to Vietnam instead. Eisenhower pursued a strongly anti-communist policy, but he didn't do so in a vacuum.
2nd note to Nancy: thanks for the ad hominem put-down, but I'm 63. I was 8 years old at the time of Dienbienphu and 10 when the Geneva Accords were signed.
Admittedly I was pretty clueless about what Eisenhower was doing when I was a child, and this chapter in history was never covered in my schooling -- it was too recent & too controversial to make it into elementary or high school textbooks in the 1950s and early 1960s.
But I've since read accounts of Eisenhower's foreign policy stance regarding Vietnam. Although I do appreciate the insult. How old are you, doll?
I'm a a very leftwing Democrat today, but I remember as an 18-year old seeing Lyndon Johnson radically escalating US military actions in Vietnam, based on total lies about US reasons for involvement in that war.
I also have since read, from fairly respectable historicans, that Johnson probably didn't even believe in the Vietnam War very much. It looks to some scholars as if Johnson plunged into what looked like a hopeless conflict in SE Asia mostly because he didn't want to be pilloried by the Republicans as "pro-Communist" or "weak."
Therefore I don't see any good reason to believe that Democratic presidents will always be more peaceful, or more rational, or more moral in their foreign policy choices than Republicans.
But what do other people in YA Politics think? Stepping back from the controversial presidency of Barack Obama, do you see liberal Democrats as being less committed to war & imperial rule than conservative Republicans, or do you see Republicans actually believe less imperialistic, or do you think the two parties are roughly equivalent on this issue?
Please also explain your answer, if you feel like it.
Note to Nancy: I know what you mean about Eisenhower.
However, in the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg also discussed Truman's decision not to recognize an independent Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, and to support a return of French colonial occupation forces to Vietnam instead. Eisenhower pursued a strongly anti-communist policy, but he didn't do so in a vacuum.
2nd note to Nancy: thanks for the ad hominem put-down, but I'm 63. I was 8 years old at the time of Dienbienphu and 10 when the Geneva Accords were signed.
Admittedly I was pretty clueless about what Eisenhower was doing when I was a child, and this chapter in history was never covered in my schooling -- it was too recent & too controversial to make it into elementary or high school textbooks in the 1950s and early 1960s.
But I've since read accounts of Eisenhower's foreign policy stance regarding Vietnam. Although I do appreciate the insult. How old are you, doll?