Say Anything Blog

The Washington Post is fact checking this claim from Fred Thompson:

You know, you look back over our history, and it doesn’t 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.

The Post gets all “yeah, right” with this rebuttal:

A grandiose claim that is hard to justify no matter how you define “other people’s liberty.”

[...]

The number of overall U.S. military casualties, while high, is still relatively low in comparison to those of its World War I and World War II allies. In World War II alone, the Soviet Union suffered at least 8 million casualties, or more than 10 times the number of U.S. casualties for all wars combined. According to Winston Churchill, the Red Army “tore the guts out of the Nazi war machine.” It can be argued that Soviet troops were primarily fighting to free their homeland from Nazi occupation. After fighting its way to Berlin, the Soviet Union imposed its own dictatorship over Eastern Europe.

The problem?  How can anyone argue with a straight face that the Soviets were fighting for “other people’s liberty.” The Soviet Union was a communist dictatorship.  Yes, the fought the Nazis, but giving them credit for acting in their own self interest (so that they could perpetuate their dictatorship in the USSR instead of the Nazis setting up their own) is a total whitewash of the horrendous deeds of that regime.

But it does turn out that Thompson is wrong.  The British Commonwealth apparently gave up 1.7 million lives in World Wars I and II.  That’s more than America has lost in all of it’s foreign wars combined.  But does that error really justify this snide conclusion from the Post?

Thompson’s jingoistic assertion cannot be supported by facts, barring some tortuous definition of the phrase “other people’s liberty.” We asked his presidential campaign for factual support for the claim, but it did not respond. We therefore award Thompson four Pinocchios.

Tortuous definition of other people’s liberty?  I don’t think it’s so “tortuous” to suggest that the Soviets fought for their own self-interest and the extension of communist totalitarianism everywhere.

Meanwhile, Hillary is trotting around the country telling people a big lie about her new socialized medicine program which she claims isn’t really socialized or even government-run.  But the Post would rather go after Thompson about obscure military history facts.

Guess they think they have their priorities straight.

Update: James Joyner adds:

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?

Nobody comes to my mind.