The greatest president
 

Here's a link to an interesting Wikipedia article on how various groups have ranked the American presidents:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histori...tes_Presidents

About halfway down the page, they have a 1982 ranking of presidents by both conservative and liberal historians. What's interesting is how similar the rankings are. I suspect the only change since that time would be that conservatives would probably include Reagan in the top 10. Both lists rank Truman in the top 10, but I would never include him solely because he used atomic bombs, which was a mistake of incalculable proportion.

Re: The greatest president
 

My top 5 match the list, with the exception of Washington being # 2 on ANY poll - that's insane. Reagan's standing has been exaggerated because he happenned to be in the right place at the right time. "Outspending" your enemy to collapse, while a better option than war, was a costly and easy strategy.

Re: The greatest president
 

Yeah they should have invaded the Japanese mainland instead.

Re: The greatest president
 

WWII:
We fought to win in those days.

Murtha, Cindy, Fonda, and the rest of Hollywood would all have gone to prison in 1942.

If Japan had "The Bomb" before we did California wouldn't exist today.

The Japanese of the Twenties Thirties and Forties were a very Brutal Cruel People, they wanted a war, we gave them one.

Re: The greatest president
 

for all our quarrels, i can't say i disagree with this post above...

which is why i summarily dismiss Con men's endless WW2 parallel's, across the board...

Japan was a true imminent threat... Iraq was a paper tiger from 1991 forward... there's no two streets about it... inspections and sanctions had them completely in check... if you disagree, read a book about post Gulf War Iraq...

Re: The greatest president
 

Here's a good article on the subject:

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0806-25.htm

At the very least, we could have first demonstrated the power of the bomb on uninhabited islands.

My objection to dropping the atom bomb is not only moral, it has made the bomb a legitimate weapon in war. When someone else finally uses the bomb, no one will believe us if we try to take the moral high ground.

Re: The greatest president
 

It never fails. Iraq and/or bush hate has to find it's way into every thread. It really is amazing how this always happens.

Re: The greatest president
 

Yeah, afterall, we've been dropping in every war since.

What Patters doesn't understand, of course because he knows history and I don't, is that the Japs didn't plan on surrendering after we dropped the first bomb. The Japanese were serious savage primitives when it came to war. They literally faught to the death, as they viewed surrender as being utterly shameful. On the islands battles like Okinawa and Iwo Jima, we had to bury them alive in the caves they were shooting out of. In Indo-China the atrocities they committed, on a massive scale mind you, were akin to, or worse than those of the Nazi's against the Jews. Blowing up a rock in the middle of the sea, and asking the Japs to surrender, would not have worked. The only thing savage primitives understand is raw force.

Re: The greatest president
 

Your a victim of WWII propaganda. What your saying the line that Americans promoted during the years following the war. It sounds like the last thing you read on the subject was in high school, if then. By the time we dropped the bomb, the Japanese fleet was destroyed; Stalin had agreed to help us; and, though the military was pro war, there was a peace movement in Japan, and the emporer was vacillating on the issue. Many people, including Eisenhower and Nimitz, felt it was unnecessary to drop the bomb. While we haven't used the bomb since, it's no secret that Bush has talked of using bunker busting nuclear bombs, and our enemies may feel as you feel about Japan -- the only way to get the U.S. war hawks to surrender is to use nuclear weapons.

Re: The greatest president
 

No Patters you are a victim of left wing progressive revisionist history bull****. There was no peace movement in Japan!