The Liberty Papers

It was ninety years ago today that Woodrow Wilson set America down a path that, arguably, has led to the situation we are in today:

Ninety years ago today, on April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson delivered the most important speech of his career. Elected in 1912 with a mere plurality of the vote, he had spent most of his Presidency on domestic legislation and had campaigned for reelection on a peace platform. On April 2, however, he prepared to dramatically change the course of his administration—and of world affairs.

Starting on February 1, 1917, Germany had refused to limit its submarine warfare in the Atlantic, and American ships had fallen prey to German U-boats despite Washington’s official neutrality in the Great War. This represented an ongoing provocation to the Wilson administration, and it grew into a casus belli when the United States also discovered evidence of a German plot to aggravate tensions between Mexico and its neighbor to the north. By the beginning of April, Wilson had been forced down a path he never wanted to take. In his speech to Congress 90 years ago today, he told the nation that he planned to take the country to war, and he declared, “The world must be made safe for democracy.”

And thus began what arguably America’s most unnecessary war, and the war from which an entire century of problems — from World War II to Soviet Communism and all of it’s progeny — resulted.

The truth, of course, is that the United States was openly pro-British long before 1917 notwithstanding it’s proclaimed neutrality, and that we were running weapons to Europe with impunity. Given that, it wasn’t too surprising that German submarines started targeting American shipping.

As if Wilson’s adventurism getting us into World War I wasn’t bad enough, once it was over, he took it upon himself to single-handedly remake the map of Europe in a way that paid little attention to ethnic and political realities. The result, only 20 years later, was a World War even more terrible than the first.

America is currently engaged in another war, this time to make the Middle East safe for democracy. Before we continue to commit ourselves to it, we should learn some lessons from history.