12 of the Most Inhumane American Presidents{long read}

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/12-most-inhumane-american-presidents?page=0%2C2



***SNIP

The Worst President: Richard Nixon

The US-directed Cambodian genocide, leading to the Khmer Rouge genocide.

The latter half of the Phoenix Program of mass torture.

Overthrow of the Chilean government.

Chemical warfare by Agent Orange and napalm in the US-Vietnam War.
Ignored Bengali genocide.

Kurdish rebels killed by Nixon’s betrayal.

Mass deaths in Operation Condor.

Mass deaths by ideological blindness in the US-Vietnam War.

Pardoning mass murderer Lt. Calley.

Mitigated by: Disarmament treaties with the USSR, biological and chemical weapons ban., trade with China, continuing anti-poverty programs begun by Johnson.
Second Worst: Ronald Reagan

Mass deaths by collaborating with genocide in Guatemala, US sponsored terrorism in Nicaragua, supporting repression in El Salvador and Honduras, US bombing El Salvador, and invasion of Grenada.

Chemical warfare, Plan Colombia spraying of herbicide glyphosate.

Selling biological weapons material to Saddam Hussein.

Mitigated by: Alzheimer’s last two years in office.

Third Worst: Andrew Jackson

Genocide against the Five Tribes. Slave trader.

Fourth Worst: James Buchanan

Ignored California Indian genocide. Incompetence worsening the Civil War.

Fifth Worst: James Polk

Making California Indian genocide possible. Provoking the US-Mexico War. Expanded slavery and partly contributed to eventual Civil War. Slave trader.

Sixth Worst: Millard Fillmore

Ignored California Indian genocide. Being a presidential candidate for Know Nothing terrorism.

***everyone will have their own take

[Art_from_Ark]

1. Buchanan might have been incompetent

but he was not President during the Civil War.

And the Somali invasion was instituted by Clinton's predecessor a month before Clinton took office.

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. No, he was president during the secession crisis.

He allowed 200,000 rifles to be shipped to Southern arsenals and did essentially nothing to enforce federal authority in the face of secession when decisive action may have counted for much. (His failure to do anything at all regarding secession is the reason he generally ranks as the worst president ever.)

[Art_from_Ark]

8. What, exactly, COULD he have done?

There was no causus belli until the people of Charleston fired upon Fort Sumter, after Lincoln took office.

[Bucky]

3. I'd put you knoW Who in 2nd place, and possibly bump Buchanan up above Reagan

Every president from Washington to Wilson should eat a little shit over Indian genocides. It wasn't until the 1920s that the country gained any enlightenment about how to deal with the people we displaced to make our democracy.

Dubya starting a war based on lies is bad on a level that mocks the sins of the Indian killers. Even the lies Polk used to start the US-Mexican war at least aligned with the general interests and desires of the American voters at the time. It was a land grab, of course, but one that the public favored (with some exceptions). Bush's oil grab, in contrast, spilled the blood of poor Americans servicing the profits of a narrow class of wealthy Americans. At least the aristocrats in the 1840s fought alongside their men.

[xchrom]

4. i Wonder Who you mean? nt

[Spider Jerusalem]

5. ...

I don't really see that there's a compelling case to be made that bad things become okay if they "align with the general interests and desires of voters at the time". Especially not when some significant part of the motivation was to expand the territory available for cotton planting and the expansion of slavery; Texans' desire to keep their slaves in the face of Mexican abolition having been one of the proximate causes of Texan independence in the first place.

And as far as "aligned with the interests and desires of voters at the time", a majority supported the invasion of Iraq:

[Bucky]

7. From the 21st Century POV, it's easy to say slavery and territorial conquest are wrong

But in the 19th Century America was a democracy and the majority supported national expansion and were at the least willing to turn a blind eye to slavery. I don't say these things weren't evil, obviously. But the will of the people was an informed thing. I don't think it's at all comparable to the orchestrated lies and deceit that misinformed the American public into supporting an invasion of Iraq.

There was at least a compelling national interest in the conquest of Texas and California. The US had a vested interest in dominating the central continent. Mexico inherited these lands when it revolted from Spain, but Spain had conquered them from the Indians. Mexico's claim was established on paper, but the lands themselves were largely uncultivated. One reason the Mexican government had invited American settlers into Texas was because Mexicans themselves were not filling up the land and producing profits and tax revenues off the land.

Leaving the territory unconquered from the Apaches and Comanches left the more populated portions of Mexico exposed to Indian raids. Mexican polity also saw Anglo farmer-planters are more economically profitable than native Mexicans. So the intent was to generate taxes and create a buffer state between the free Indians of the north. This, in other words, was a geopolitical power vacuum. There was a legitimate fear of British or other European powers filling up that vacuum. Mexico was highly unlikely to strategically hold onto that vast amount of land for long.

I explain here, but I do not excuse. I'm simply saying that these things happened for reasons other than "Americans are just land hungry" and the failure to conquer the Southwest from Mexico would probably have resulted in new Canada-like states between the US and Mexico that would have competed for control of the continent--producing a significant change in how history played out in the 19th and 20th centuries. A third US-British war for mastery of the continent would have been the most likely outcome by some point in the mid 19th century.

Now, compared to the strategic imperative of dominating our natural borders, Iraq was a strictly unnecessary war. It weakened the US diplomatically, diverted us from the mission in Afghanistan in some pretty critical years, and produced nothing but regional instability and more uncertainty in global oil markets (when we should've been weening ourselves off oil). The trade up was only that it was American companies that did most of the drilling instead of whoever cut a dirty deal with Saddam's government. The oil itself is mostly going to Europe and eastern Asia. The US gets very little oil from the Persian Gulf; we just wanted drilling rights. There was no strategic imperative driving Bush's lies. Polk's lies helped achieved national security objectives instead of phantom profits for Halliburton.

[joshcryer]

6. 7th: Clinton: Ignored Rwandan genocide.

Many DUers would be elated by that, fyi.

[jmowreader]

9. The order's all wrong

GWB first, then Reagan and THEN Nixon.