Fact Checker Flailing
In my e-mail this morning was a press release promoting the Washington Post’s new “Fact Checker” feature. It’s touted as the “Ultimate Lie Detector Test for the 2008 Presidential Campaign.” But first day of operation it failed when it came to Fred Thompson. Michael Dobbs responds to Fred’s claims that “If you look back over our history, it will not take you long to realize that our people have shed more blood for other people’s liberty than any other combination of nations in the history of the world.”
Thompson’s jingoistic assertion cannot be supported by the facts, barring some very tortuous definition of the phrase “other people’s liberty.” We asked his campaign for factual support for the candidate’s claim, but they have not so far responded. We therefore award Fred Thompson four Pinocchios.
That’s harsh. Dobbs’ problem is he runs smack dab into the blogosphere.
First, there’s Jules Crittenden:
It is distasteful to measure the sacrifices of Soviet, Commonwealth and American soldiers against each other against such evils as they faced in World War II, as the Washington Post has bizarrely chosen to do in a feature of the sort normally devoted to candidates’ campaign promises, attacks and platforms. This kind of bloody bean-counting, I’ll hazard, in no way reflects the intent of Thompson’s remark, or ultimately, its bare facts. The United States has led the world, sometimes reluctantly, usually in response to outrages, always in its undeniable self-interest, in offering up its youth for the liberation of others. For a free world. Going in with the intention of freeing nations, and walking away as soon as possible, leaving democracies in its wake, encouraging others to do the same. The United States wrote the book and set the gold standard. Europe, twice, plus a lengthy guard and rebuilding effort. Asia, repeatedly since 1941, with similar guard and reconstruction. Now the Middle East. The world is a better place as a result of the purposeful actions of the United States and the sacrifice of our soldiers to that end.
All history is muddy, as the Washington Post itself seems to suggest as it delves ridiculously into the contests of empires in the time of Alexander and Napoleon. You can argue about the motives and effects of what the United States has done in any particular war or campaign. People do, and the Washington Post dabbles here. But this kind of snarking by the anonymous Claim/Fact lickspittles of the Washington Post says more about their distorted view of history and current events than it does about Thompson. And it disparages the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers in the course of the last century.
Next to slap the Post around is Ed Morrissey:
It’s a ludicrous, almost ghoulish argument in the face of what followed World War II in Europe. It’s worthy of Walter Duranty, the disgraced Soviet apologist of the 1930s New York Times.
Then there’s James Joyner whose nuance angle still smacks the newspaper:
So, yes, the facts are more complicated than Thompson’s stump speech line; they always are. Americans have fought a lot of wars, none of them for a single purpose. Over the last century, though, all of them have had at least some substantial “other people’s liberty” component. Who else can make that claim?
“Thompson’s Wars“
