This Was No Isolated Incident
This was no isolated incident
The July 17 editorial, “How to read J.D. Vance,” fashionably stigmatized Sen. Robert A. Taft of Ohio as an “isolationist.” Taft, though cautious about direct involvement in foreign conflicts, was not an isolationist but a realist. His was the decisive Republican voice supporting the relaxation of the Neutrality Act of 1935, allowing Britain to buy arms from the United States in the first two years of World War II. He initially opposed the grant of sweeping presidential lend-lease powers but favored loans on generous terms to Britain, Canada and Greece. He was prepared to support a declaration of war when North Korea invaded South Korea, but he opposed the war when a declaration was not sought. The failure to do so was the precedent for “presidential wars” in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, in which lack of public support gave rise to unhappy results. His skepticism as to the likelihood of a Soviet attack on Western Europe in the 1950s was confirmed when Soviet archives were opened after the U.S.S.R. collapsed.
A desire to criticize the realist Vance does not justify name-calling at Taft.
George Liebmann, Baltimore
The writer is author of “The Tafts.”
Posted in: Judiciary and Legal Issues, Miscellaneous