On Moral Superiority

Now read the parent article, which praises an earlier United States - one that had not yet lost its 'moral authority', which primarily consisted of its superior freedom and civil liberties.

If the author's logic is correct, the United States could reduce terrorism by regaining and retaining its moral authority. Yet both the Danish attack and the fatwa against Rushdie were specifically directed against people exercising their civil liberties, the same civil liberties that the author argues were an essential component of the American 'moral authority' that ultimately undermined the USSR.

This is why the author's article is an anti-American screed. However repugnant we might find Abu Ghirab, and whatever our opinions about the war in Iraq, these events are not the root cause of Islamic terrorism in the West.

You'd think nuking one city would have been enough for that...

The Americans didn't have to nuke any cities to test the nuclear bomb, they had already measured it's destructive capacity in the dessert. There is a belief among some historians that dropping the bomb was a way to impress the USSR and this idea does have merit.

As for the second bomb, the US only dropped the second one when the first one failed to elicit the response they desired. Japanese scientists were actually further along in designing their own weapon than the Nazi's were. They had a notion that the bomb was incredibly expensive to make and were gambling that the US couldn't make another.

Is there any evidence of that? Any official communication inside the Japanese government?

Whoa, Lyndon B. Johnson? You'd have to have severe blinders on to like him, he's probably the worst President since the post-WWII era. Increased war, crime, corruption, poverty (ironically), dysfunction, bureaucracy... dude combines the worst aspects of both parties.

He massively screwed our international relations in a very corrupt fashion to increase his votes among unions. This wasn't public until after his presidency:

> In retrospect, audio tapes from the Johnson White House, revealed a quid pro quo unrelated to chicken. In January 1964, President Johnson attempted to convince United Auto Workers's president Walter Reuther not to initiate a strike just prior the 1964 election and to support the president's civil rights platform. Reuther in turn wanted Johnson to respond to Volkswagen's increased shipments to the United States.[39] The Chicken Tax directly curtailed importation of German-built Volkswagen Type 2 vans in configurations that qualified them as light trucks—that is, commercial vans and pickups.[39] "In 1964 U.S. imports of "automobile trucks" from West Germany declined to a value of $5.7 million—about one-third the value imported in the previous year. Soon after, Volkswagen cargo vans and pickup trucks, the intended targets, "practically disappeared from the U.S. market."[38]

Vietnam, of course.

Immigration Act of '65, which had a good spirit but terrible bureaucratic implementation and very poorly thought out.

Great Society - all of which pretty much backfired. You know when you hear rappers say "I'm from the projects", meaning really dangerous crime-ridden drugged out zones? Yeah, that was LBJ's "Great Housing Projects" - this destroyed black communities, reduced black ownership of business, and coincided with massive increases in violent black on black crime, black on white crime, and addictive drug use.

Gun control.

Riots.

"Hey hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" about Vietnam.

"At Kennedy's death, there were 16,000 American military advisors in Vietnam. As President, Lyndon Johnson immediately reversed his predecessor's order to withdraw 1,000 military personnel by the end of 1963... Johnson expanded the numbers and roles of the American military following the Gulf of Tonkin Incident ... The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave the President the exclusive right to use military force without consulting the Senate, was based on a false pretext, as Johnson later admitted.[62] It was Johnson who began America's direct involvement in the ground war in Vietnam. By 1968, over 550,000 American soldiers were inside Vietnam."

Should I keep going? Seriously, who was worse than LBJ? Carter or G.W.? Not even close. LBJ was the worst of Carter and GW combined. As a result of his policies, America's budgets, politics, immigration policy, international relations, military all got screwed up, massively increased corruption and bureaucracy, and increased poverty violence and drug use in black communities. He gets credit for the Civil Rights Act, but it was already done under Kennedy's watch at that point.

Clearly the worst President in the post-WWII era. How anyone could think he did anything right is beyond me. You'd have to believe in what he said was his goal as opposed to the real outcomes.

besides, could you name "western country" not part of the "coalition of the willing" that has seen similar increase in terrorist attacks?