Regarding H.W. Brands’s Sept. 18 op-ed, “FDR’s defeat of Lindbergh was lasting — but not permanent”:
Contrary to Mr. Brands’s account, the United States exchanged liberty for empire as early as the Spanish-American War in 1898. It occupied Cuba, crushed Philippine aspirations of self-determination and acquired Puerto Rico. This was followed by military interventions in Panama, Mexico, Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Congress became a poodle to the presidency.
Even before the balloting in 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had bypassed Congress in striking the bases-for-destroyers deal with Britain, deploying troops in other countries.
Empires require Caesars who are willing to brandish limitless power. Congress is too slow and transparent, and it rarely wades into foreign policy other than periodic partisan hectoring. I assisted Reps. Walter B. Jones Jr. (R-N.C.) and Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) in introducing resolutions to make unconstitutional presidential wars an impeachable offense. But, co-sponsors were as rare as unicorns. Until and unless our political culture renounces empire in favor of liberty as the summum bonum of the nation, urging Congress to exercise its constitutionally enshrined prerogatives over foreign policy is nothing more than a triumph of hope over experiences.
Bruce Fein, Washington
The writer was associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration.
H.W. Brands employs some remarkably opaque language in characterizing Charles Lindbergh’s isolationist views in the 1930s and ’40s.
Lindbergh didn’t simply reflect “a stubborn respect for German order and occasional trafficking in stereotypes.” To the contrary, he indulged in barely disguised antisemitism and apologetics for Nazi Germany throughout his campaign against involvement in the war.
In September 1941, for example, Lindbergh identified three “groups” that were agitating for war: “the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt administration.” His speech caused an uproar, even among his supporters in the militantly isolationist America First Committee. Lindbergh never recanted those sentiments, even after the postwar revelations of the Holocaust, in part because he never relinquished the race-based views that were always an unacknowledged subtext to his isolationism.
Howard Cincotta, Falls Church
H.W. Brands, a renowned historian, missed the point in his Sept. 18 commentary. Why have recent presidents taken the responsibility, acting rightly or wrongly, for international decisions and mandates? Since Bill Clinton’s presidency, Congress has been a dysfunctional body, incapable of making actual decisions. The Republican-controlled House could not even internally elect a speaker without a multitude of votes and the removal of two who had tried working across the aisle.
If we depended on Congress to decide whether we should or shouldn’t support Ukraine, we would still be deciding. Our Congress cannot pass laws when even a bill’s own author votes no. Unfortunately, this leaves us depending totally on our president to make critical decisions. This has led us to the brink of the autocracy Charles Lindbergh warned us about.
Our Founders mandated three branches of government to govern us. Congress as it is today is not holding up its end of the bargain.
Howard Pedolsky, Rockville