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Thank you all for your very interesting comments. I'm not going through them one by one, but I will pick out several. First doctormidnight, a good name for someone in the dark BTW, and yes, I have heard of ICBMs, but the whole hope was that any missile exchange would take place within Europe, they would take out West Germany we would knock out Poland or somewhere, then perhaps the UK or France would go and we would respond with a strike on say Hungary. By that time and the evidence of what could happen, the theory was that the US and USSR would come to an agreed halt before resorting to ICBMs. It is well documented. And yes I've read aThe Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Wm S Shirer, so what, do you think that contains all the knowledge and wisdom regarding WW2? It is one of many thousands of books on that topic.You say "Britain and France could have easily averted a war is they had bothered to take a moral stance before Hitler started massacreing people in Czechoslovakia," And the US couldn't? Surely the US wouldn't stand by and watch something as evil as Nazism spread? OK, it did, until it was bombed into changing its mind. Observer, the 99 year lend -lease on military properties I think is answered by what I said to doctormidnight and the intent to wage war in Europe. I have never criticised that policy, this whole thread has managed to be diverted from my original post which was about nations acting in their own interest, quite rightly, but disguising that intent with moral arguments. I mentioned Iraq because the thread was about that topic and drew examples from history, WW2 and the cold war to show how self interest operated. I never believed that the US acted wrongly, its duty was self interest, as is every nations. I see nothing wrong with the US entering the war late, but I do object to trying to claim some moral high ground for WW2. It was bombed into it, if that hadn't have happened, the US may never have entered the war, and again I can't see anything wrong with that, if it was in America's interest not to enter. Instead of using WW2 and the Cold War I could equally have used the British in India as an example. They were there for two main reasons, to pillage as much as possible and have a political and military presence in the whole area and also importantly to get there before any other european nation did who would then have an edge. Now yes, they did build a fine railway system (still the world's best), educate many Indians (sent them to London) and give them responsible jobs, stopped tribal warfare, fed the population during droughts, converted the heathen, brought medicine, fairer government, BUT the primary objective was to pillage. I recognise that, even though some benefits did amass to the locals. In short, Britain put a moral explanation forward for their real reason for being there. Now if you replace Britain with the US in India, Shelly and many others like him would be arguing angrily that the US was there just to benefit the Indians, that we introduced sound government, hospitals, stopped widows throwing themselves onto their husband's funeral pyres etc. etc. They would completely deny any self interest. Al, what can I say, your grasp of history is so slight. The US was never at war with Germany before Pearl Harbour, you know as well as I do when war was declared. America was gradually expanding prior to WW1 as a power, but still lagged behind Britain for one. One salient reason for that was the size of the US fleet at that time, without major shipping you remain in effect a backwater. I believe it took until 1926 for an agreement to be reached with France and Britain about what size their respective fleets should be. I too am an historian, with a masters degree, so I'm not easily overwhelmed by your claim. I do think you need to do more research though. May I again emphasis that i was not attacking the US, I could have used almost any country, but what I was attempting was to reveal the hypocracy which clings to actions governemnts take when they have to dress up their real intent with some kind of moral reasoning, as britain and the US are doing right now over their claim that they are going to war with Iraq to help ease the plight of the oppressed people there.
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