Wingnut Historicalitiness

It’s bad enough they lie and smear opponents, but what did history ever do to Wingnuts?

Two examples in today’s droppings from Right Blogostan.

First, via Oliver Willis, RedState snarky ignoramus Erick Erickson attacks Obama’s statement about no one today doubted that the US would have a moral obligation to intervene against Germany to prevent the extermination of Europe’s Jews:

Barack Obama suggests we need to consider moral issues in intervening with combat forces. He mentions intervening in the Holocaust and how we should have done that.

Um Senator, we did intervene in the Holocaust. It was called World War II.

Except that we didn’t intervene in World War II to prevent the Holocaust. We entered World War II against Nazi Germany as the consequence of Germany’s declaration of war against the United States after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. And while the persecution of Jews was well established in Germany, the “Final Solution” — the extermination of Europe’s Jews — was introduced as a comprehensive policy of the Nazi state at the Wansee Conference held in January 1942. Which was, of course, after we entered the war, although the precursors to the Final Solution can be found in the actions of the Einsatzgruppen directed against Jews, Communists, Gypsies and intelligentisia in occupied Soviet Union towards the end of 1941, but had nothing to do with US entry into the war, because their actions weren’t known to the West.

Then we have Dennis Prager, who revises history so that we started the Korean War by attacking North Korea:

Q: Critics of the war in Iraq argue that prior to the invasion of Iraq, America had never attacked a country that had no plans to attack it. How then do you explain the Korean War?

On my radio show, I have asked this question of some of the most celebrated names among liberal intellectuals, and they had little or nothing to say.

That is too bad because America invaded a country that had absolutely no intention, let alone ability, to attack the United States. The United States attacked Korea — and sacrificed over 30,000 American lives — solely in order to prevent Korea from becoming a totalitarian Communist state. We succeeded in the southern half, and over 50 years later, North Korea remains essentially a gigantic concentration camp.

Which sort of glosses over the fact that the Korean War started when North Korea launched a massive invasion of South Korea, where US forces were already stationed, in an offensive which drove nearly the entire length of the Korean Peninsula, encircling then attacking reinforced US forces in a small perimeter near the South Korean port of Pusan. And further glosses over the fact that MacArthur’s later decision to proceed past the 38th parallel into the heart of North Korea proved to be one of the greatest military blunders of all time, provoking Chinese intervention and a rout of the MacArthur-led forces near the Sino-Korean border.