"I think one reason a person becomes a psychiatrist is to try to understand their own demons. It's a trade that attracts the troubled minds."
Posted by david f

Best wisdom I've read today. The trouble is, they are seeking the opportunity to understand their own demons using other human lives as subjects, rather than their own. I was a damned fool to change from a law degree to a psycho degree under the misguided intention of stopping the crime before it happened. I should have stuck with the law degree, in hindsight. I hope that I can say enough with that without causing further reactive excuses from the formally quali=fied mentally unstable.

Just to say, that is a very wise post and I wish I had known before I ever enrolled in psycho school without the necessary cognitive prerequisites, what it led to, which was akin to using others for one's own mental fears and 'disorders', as they like to call them.

csteele wrote: The leaders we should admire are the ones that do their utmost to prevent the cost of war being inflicted on theirs and other nations.

Those are the ones I admire. We may never even know when they have prevented war. I know that Dulles and others tried to get Eisenhower to get more involved in Vietnam. He was wise enough not to do so. Kennedy and Johnson were not as wise.

Dear davidf,

Republican Eisenhower for me was the one who started the rot in American foreign affairs with Operation Ajax. Democrat Truman had refused to help the British overthrow Iran's democratically elected government of Moussadeq but within months of Eisenhower assuming office he had given the green light.

Moussadeq had wanted to nationalise the Anglo-Iranian oil company because the profits where being split 85-15 Britain's way, added to which the the poms were withholding accounts of the company.

This was the first major operation of the CIA to overthrow a foreign government and sent the behaviour of US down an interventionist path they are still committed to.

The result was decades under a dictator with a vicious secret police force and decades more under a less than savoury revolutionary government which Iranians saw as the only option to the Shah.

Add that to the US supplying of their pit-bull Saddam Hussein to conduct one of the late 20th century's nastiest wars against Iran and it is no wonder they are still so pissed off with the US.

So I'm afraid I'm going to take Truman over your man any day.

Dear csteele,

My man happens to be Truman who I voted for in 1948. I voted for Eisenhower's opponent, Adlai Stevenson, in 1952 and 1956. Both presidents had their flaws and good points. My appreciation of Eisenhower’s keeping the US from getting more involved in Vietnam does not constitute an endorsement of CIA actions in Iran.

Truman ushered in the Cold War with loyalty oaths and witch hunts.

The CIA coup did not send the behaviour of US down an interventionist path. They were already on that path. Truman supported the Coup of 21 April 1967 by the Greek Colonels. Just weeks before the scheduled elections, a group of right-wing army officers led by Brigadier Stylianos Pattakos and Colonels George Papadopoulos and Nikolaos Makarezos and backed by a shadowy Revolutionary Council, seized power in a coup d'etat following the Prometheus plan which was a Nato plan prepared for the event of serious internal disorders. Their official justification for the coup was that a "communist conspiracy" had infiltrated the bureaucracy, the academia, the press, and even the military, to such an extent that drastic action was needed to protect the country from a takeover.

I opposed Truman’s Cold War actions. In the election of 1948 there were four main parties. There were the racist Dixiecrats, Truman Democrats, the Progressive Party which was for peace and an end to the Cold War and the Republicans who were pushing for the US to get into a war in Asia by supporting Chiang Kai-Shek against the Communists. I supported the Progressive Party, but it became increasingly clear that they were dominated by Stalinists. Rather than being for peace they wanted nothing in the way of the ambitions of Stalin.

The Dixiecrats and Progressive Party had both split off from the Democrats. I could no longer support the Progressives. Truman was the best alternative. He was opposed to racism and, in spite of the loyalty oaths, was opposing McCarthyism. He was the least bad alternative and still looks so in hindsight.

Dear davidf,

I had understood the Truman Doctrine and its policy of containment but I had never imagined he supported the actual 67 coup. Was this something he said publically at the time?

I suppose it was still a few years before his death. I know his memoirs were very popular and perhaps there is some reference there.

Dear csteele,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truman_Doctrine contains the following:

“The military junta of Greece, though criticized worldwide for its human rights record, was supported by the American government during its seven year rule. This caused anti-American sentiment in Greece. Some forty years after the harsh oppressions under military rule, U.S. President Bill Clinton issued an apology, largely unreported by the Western media, for the United States' past support of the totalitarian government.”

I remember the period well. I was involved with a beautiful Greek lady who, along with her family, supported the junta. The last time I saw her we sipped champagne on a polar bear skin in front of a roaring fire at her country estate. When I looked at her birds would flutter in the back of my eyeballs. However, I thought of the junta and never saw her again.