Jimmy Carter - Revolutionary War was Unnecessary

Okay - Jimmy Carter says that the British Government should
have been more 'sensitive' to Americans and their needs and
then there would have been no war. He shows Canada, India
and Australia as having gotten their freedom for free and in a
peaceful way.

I say that the reason that Canada, India and Australia had a
easier time of independance was because America fought
the British and that England was afraid of more wars.

Also, there was no way that England was going to be more
'sensitive' to America and our needs. The king wanted his
tax money and he wanted no representation from America.
This wasn't going to change no matter how much talking
happened (and the talking DID go on).

I understand some of the comparisons he's trying to make -
but I disagree with him saying that the Revolutionary war
was unnecessary. Also - Jimmy Carter seems to have forgotten
that Saddam murdered hundreds of thousands of his people and
had rape rooms and was stealing billions of $$ from the Iraqis
with the corrupt UN Oil for Food program. That has to factor in.
I don't think that the Coalition of the Willing was 'forcing their
will' on the Iraqis when they stopped this.

***********************************************
www.msnbc.msn.com...

Excerpt of transcript from Hardball -

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you the question about�this is going to cause some trouble with people�but as an historian now and studying the Revolutionary War as it was fought out in the South in those last years of the War, insurgency against a powerful British force, do you see any parallels between the fighting that we did on our side and the fighting that is going on in Iraq today?

CARTER: Well, one parallel is that the Revolutionary War, more than any other war up until recently, has been the most bloody war we�ve fought. I think another parallel is that in some ways the Revolutionary War could have been avoided. It was an unnecessary war.

Had the British Parliament been a little more sensitive to the colonial�s really legitimate complaints and requests the war could have been avoided completely, and of course now we would have been a free country now as is Canada and India and Australia, having gotten our independence in a nonviolent way.

I think in many ways the British were very misled in going to war against America and in trying to enforce their will on people who were quite different from them at the time


[edit on 10/20/2004 by FlyersFan]

Well, Carter seems to be slipping into dementia. His point is that there was no reason for the British to send to troops to reign in the American Colonialists, but if they had not would our Constitution and system of government emerged some twenty or eighty or a hundred years later? I think not.

This is one situation in which things happened just as they should have. It was the right war at the right time. When you think of the collectivity of men who lived in America at that time who were able to create such an elegant document and government, it is nothing less than miraculous.

We who live now should be very grateful that Britain did declare war on the Colonialists.

Isn't Carter saying what the Founding Fathers themselves said? That from 1770 to 1776 they exhausted all the negociation tactics they had and were actually forced into a war that need not have happened had the British not been so obtuse?

I don't think any American - Carter included - would ever regret that the War of Independence took place. I think, however, that any Founding Father would have thought, before the 1770's, that remaining in the British Empire if at all possible was still the best and least costly option.

I take "unnecessary" to mean "avoidable".

Originally posted by Otts
Isn't Carter saying what the Founding Fathers themselves said? That from 1770 to 1776 they exhausted all the negociation tactics they had and were actually forced into a war that need not have happened had the British not been so obtuse?

I don't think any American - Carter included - would ever regret that the War of Independence took place. I think, however, that any Founding Father would have thought, before the 1770's, that remaining in the British Empire if at all possible was still the best and least costly option.

I take "unnecessary" to mean "avoidable".

The founding fathers were what you call, "reluctant revolutionaries" they didn't want to go to war with their mother country, but after unsuccessfully trying time and time again to make a peaceful solution, they were left no other route. Carter seems to understand this aspect, if he didn't I'd get him a CAT scan.

However, I feel that trying to tell the British, today, that 300 years ago they should have done X and not Y, is simply moronic.

Originally posted by Otts
I take "unnecessary" to mean "avoidable".

I agree. Just another overreaction headline.