Dirty Dishes	Dirty Dishes Archive

Dawn's mother out-of-law recently lent Dawn Edmund Morris's The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt.

Dawn commented that students of American history might note that, excepting the current occupant of the White House, Teddy was the last President who actually wanted a war. Indeed, Roosevelt also peddled-- also abetted by a contemptibly complicit press-- his jingoistic bellicosity to the public with fabricated "faulty intelligence"-- remember the Maine?

And the Spanish American War, just like the current debacle, had a sliver of legitimacy (a Cuba free of Spanish overlords, an Afghanistan free of the Taliban) along with an enormous helping of unrelated imperial expansionism (military bases in the Philippines, military bases in Iraq). And both involved the slaughter of tens of thousands of brown-skinned people on the pretext of civilizing (read, "christianizing") their land. (Spanish Catholic inroads in the Philippines left the populace almost as suspect as had they remained full-fledged heathens.)

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While the comparison makes for tidy bookends to the American Empire, Dawn realizes, after completing the lent tome (along with Morris's follow-up, Theodore Rex), that it is terribly unfair to Roosevelt. TR wrote more books than W appears to have ever read. TR volunteered for dangerous military service and pulled strings to get to the front lines, while W got Poppy to make sure Vietnam did not interrupt his partying and even skipped out on his faux National Guard service (because he was afraid of what substances would show up in his physical's urinalysis?). And, of course, TR occasionally challenged corporate monopolies whereas W has overseen a massive redistribution of wealth from working people to the 21st century's new robber barons.

Dawn apologizes to Mr. Roosevelt.