Captain's Quarters -

Daniel Pipe's father, who escaped from the Nazi's. Is such a wonderful gentlemen. He was a professor at Harvard. And, actually was called in to work in Reagan's first administration.

And, he wrote a wonderful book! Title escapes me, now.

But he wrote about a trip he took to Moscow, around 1992. The time of the Rodney King Riots.

The KGB thought this would be wonderful TV for the russians, so they showed it, wall-to-wall.

Now, up until that point the russian people had no access to us at all. And, they were told they were better off than people in the USA.

Of course, we knew their shelves were empty. But, they did not know about US.

Ya know? The russians lowered the volume, just to look at the pictures. And, they couldn't believe their eyes. Blacks were wearing NEW JEANS. NEW SNEAKERS! And, they had cars! And, there were stores, here, with enough TV's, that the people could go in and form long lines as each and every TV, stolen, made its debut on camera!

That was the first time the truth dawned on lots of russians. They just didn't know. The truth was hidden.

Then, Pipes, Senior, made another observation. He was on the subway, leaving Moscow; when the train arrived in the station, and the doors wouldn't open. No one got up to help the few who wanted to exit. Broken doors? They had to sit down and move onward with the train.

So, here's the comment:

If you were in NYC, on the subway, at that happened, strangers would come up and grab the doors at the center. STicking their fingers around the rubber; and from both sides people would pull. Until the doors gave way. And, opened for passengers to exit.

Pipes added, for strangers to get up and help; something we in the West take for granted, is not how it is in russia! There no one trusts another! PERIOD.

Oh, and Pipes went on to say, that if you were on a train in Tel Aviv, and that happened? The Israelis would remove the doors from their hinges!

Again, strangers to the rescue.

Way more than the spilling of blood.

But the russians have had this spirit beaten out of them.

Actually, in the strictest technical sense, the United States stayed out of both world wars until acts of aggression were launched against them. It was then and only then that the prominent isolationist movement in the congress and the country could be overcome.

Congress did not declare war on Germany in 1941, Hitler declared against America in response to the US declaration against Japan.

For the United States as well, freedom and liberty were secondary concerns. Americans just happen to be more responsive to rhetoric about the defense of liberty than anyone else.

Not that that's necessarily a bad thing...

Captain:

Hear, hear.

The United States is the first imperial power in the history of the world that didn't want to build an empire. All we have ever asked of the nations we have fought in is enough land to bury our honored dead.

Colin Powell said it. You have said it. The moonbats don't want to believe it, but it's out there for everyone to see. The only ones who don't want to admit it have their own political axe to grind.

Our military is the equal of everyone else's combined. We could, if we wanted to, conquer the world without breaking a sweat.

I sincerely doubt that our detractors in the Middle East and Europe would be able to resist the temptation to conquer the world, if they had the same power. Perhaps we should be grateful that they don't.

In the meantime.... They *really* need to read up on the Jacksonians. Hamiltonians, Wilsonians, and Jeffersonians have been in control for the past few years.... but the Jacksonians are beginning to awaken. *No*body wants to piss off the Jacksonians. I greatly fear that may be happening.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2751/is_1999_Winter/ai_58381618/print

Things will get very interesting (in the Chinese sense) if that happens.

Thompson makes an insipid argument. Ed's defense is also insipid and misleading. The United States entered the war in 1941 because its Pacific Fleet was attacked and because Germany declared war on the United States. Britain and France declared war on Germany in 1939... not because they were attacked, but because they elected to combat Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland.

There are better ways to promote the contributions of the United States to freedom and democracy which do not insult those nations who fought longer and at a greater cost than the United States during WWII. Thompson is an arsehole for coming out with such pathetic schoolyard rhetoric.

"We could, if we wanted to, conquer the world without breaking a sweat."

Er... no we can't.

Great post.

It is a great source of continued deppression that "one of our premiere news sources" can consistantly be so inaccurate and publish such absurd tripe.
Little wonder that MSM irrelevance is one of the greatest growth opportunities in the US.
However, if you think they are bad, try the European press- and they continue to be Mainstream.

lexhamfox.... I'm sorry, but you might want to consider Jacksonian viewpoints.

The Jacksonian answer to Iranian saber-rattling would be to send the Marines in to paint the lines for the parking lot on the radioactive glass that would be all that remained of Tehran.

Read the essay I linked. *That* is why I suggest that they don't want to awaken the Jacksonians.

And you might want to check _Jane's_. The USN is the equal of every other navy in the world, put together. The US Army defeated the 4th largest army in the world in 1991, and steamrolled over what was left of it in 2003. Are you suggesting that any other military force in the world could make them break a sweat?

Nations are dragged into wars for many reasons, and freeing other peoples is seldom if ever primary - did the French liberate the American colonies from tyrannical British rule or did they see the American Revolution as a cheap way to tie up the British for a while?

The British involvement in WW1 had its roots generally in a traditional policy of backing weaker Continental powers against the stronger, and specifically in the Edwardian embrace of France vis-a-vis Germany, but the proximate cause of their entry into the war was the German seizure of Belgium enroute to the French side door - so, prima facie, British involvement in WW1 was one of freeing others.

An involvement for which they bled, and bled, and bled.

While history numbers Great Britain among the victors in both World Wars, and while they lost a smaller percentage of their population to war than France or Germany, they were uniquely exhausted by the effort and one result was the dismemberment of the empire.

The US has never sent its soldiers off to die in the numbers the Russians, or the Germans, or the French, or the British did in WW1. Only the Civil War comes close. Our involvement in WW1 was brief, and nowhere in WW2 outside the Eastern Front did casualties approach WW1 levels.

I, shockingly, agree with lexhamfox here. Thompsons statement is juvenile and unproductive.
The contributions by other nations in terms of blood sweat and treasure are considerable. It's not constructive to wave the banner of sacrifice as if we have a monopoly on it.

The US has much to be proud of in advancing freedoms ideal (our Constitution being our gift to mankind) yet we've also done our share of damage in the name of big business interests.

I would suggest to Steffan that before he claims that the US Navy is unbeatable, I would suggest he consider that a major naval standoff between two technologically advanced foes has never occured. The only example we have is the Falklands war, and all you have to do is look at the damage the Brits incurred at the hands of a vastly inferior Argentinian air force (the Argentinian pilots performed with incredible skill and bravery).

I would submit that a naval battle between the US and China or Russia would be a blood bath in which neither side would win. A ship is the last place I would want to be in an era of cruise missiles and long range tactical weaponry.

Hitler and Tojo started wars against the USA. The USA finished the wars. USA finished off the USSR. Only the USA could have done what it did. As for WaPo, well facts have never stood in the way of a WaPo story.

Arguments about what the US military could or could not do MUST take the popular will into account. I shudder to think of what would happen if, over fifteen years, the will of the American people was concentrated on such a project. Doubtless we would overextend ourselves, but it would probably be in ruling, not in fighting. The cost to the world would be enormous, not the least in the loss of aid that flows from the USA daily through both public and private channels.

The basic argument here about American "blood and treasure" being spilled for others can be argued. But there is a very strong case for Fred Thompson's thesis. Soviet Russia rebuild eastern Europe as a bunch of closely monitored satellites. The USA helped to rebuild the shattered states of western Europe, and suffered the machinations of DeGaulle without sending tanks to Paris. And the foriegn aid that flows from private sources via the Red Cross, churches, and hundreds of other groups testifies to the spirit in which America reaches out to the world. A duty and an obligation to the less fortunate, you say? But the very fact of that belief makes my point--and buttresses Thompson's.

Why did the Japanese attack us? Why did Hitler declare war? Don’t you think “we” could have “made a deal” with the Japanese and Hitler…instead of going to war? Maybe we could have told the Japanese to go ahead with their killing/raping of the Chinese and other Asians. Tell them we’ll turn our backs as long as they promise to continue trading with us after they expand their empire…same with Hitler. Let him have France/Western Europe. Let him continue to fight the Russian commies…as long as he’ll trade with us when he’s done? Assuming he would have defeated the Russians (likely but not a foregone conclusion) if he didn’t hold up his end of the bargain wouldn’t we just have had an extended “Cold War” against the Nazi instead of the commies? Sure there would have been millions more of the Europeans who would have suffered under the boot of communism, but maybe that would have helped us more today? Many of the "former communists" are more friendly to us now than are the Western Europeans who we helped keep free of the yoke.

As for “conquering the world” Hugh Beaumont is more correct than others. Deciding who “won” a war is always a matter of perspective and depends on when you want to say the war is “over”. When was WWII over? Weren’t the “Cold War”…the Korean War …Vietnam War somehow connected? How ‘bout WWI “causing” WWII?

Most people would agree with this idea when applied to the current “conflict” in Iraq…but depending on your time perspective, it also applies to the “Great Wars”. History is an iterative process. It’s happening all the time!

Even if we “nuked the world”…would we have “won” the war? Would we occupy the conquered territory – most of it would NOT be radioactive? Or just leave it to fester…and go back and nuke them again every once in a while to keep them from coming back for revenge? Pick just about any two or three European countries. I would submit that the U.S. could absolutely NOT win a war against them if they were allied against us…Regardless of how much of a mismatch you see in the military machines of the countries involved.

Why even ask the question? It’s all academic since the vast majority of Americans don’t want to conqueror anyone. Most don’t even want to fight the ME lunatics. Would rather make a deal with them to leave us alone. Unfortunately, I don’t think that will work though…less so than it MAY have worked with the Japanese/Hitler.

Being a Canook, LexHam always cracks me up with his babble….probably thinks the U.S. is evil because “we” invaded Canada in the 1812 conflict…they beat us back. I’d submit that they could do it again. Even though a couple well armed Cub Scout packs could probably give the Armed Forces of Canada a run for their money…I don’t think we could conqueror Canada if we went to war with them tomorrow. How long would we have to occupy their huge land area before they were pacified enough to not keep fighting back? What do you think the rest of the world would do if we invaded Canada? Do you think they’d help or oppose?

No shipmates. You should take your Q from the majority of Americans who don’t want to conquer anyone. How about we just focus on the conflict we’re already up to our eyebrows in? Maybe we can shape history just enough to make it favor us a little more the next time around?

Let's see...

WWI: Were we attacked? Sort of, but the loss of American lives in the sinking of the Lusitania hardly justified us entering that war. Anybody remember the words for the song "Over There"?

WWII: Were we attacked? Yes, but did we really need to respond in the manner that we did? As Paleocon Pat Buchanan has noted, we surely could've let Europe stew in its own juices. Yet the first thing we did after being attacked by Japan was to send our best men and equipment to fight the Germans. What was that all about? Did the bluster of a German declaration of war really necessitate our involvement? It's not like they were ever going to invade and conquer us. Heck, we were fighting the Germans (illegally) before Pearl Harbor - American destroyers were escorting British ships and attacking German submarines in 1940. Also, the Japanese were hardly in any position to invade and conquer us. Maybe take Wake Island, maybe even Hawaii, but were they really so important that we had to fight the war in the Pacific? Nope.

Korea: Clearly a war for American empire.

Vietnam: Ditto.

1st Gulf War: A war for oil, except George H. W. was so stupid he forgot and gave Kuwait their country back.

Somalia: More empire building.

Bosnia: Empire.

If you look at the big picture you'll see that America's wartime endeavors during the 20th century have largely been altruistic. It sounds like we have a few posters here over educated in historical revisionism. They are wrong, Fred and the Captain are right.

I think possibly the Senator was thinking of more recent conflicts.

Every war up to and including WW II was about each participant's own self-interest and therefore not part of his equation. Until then nobody fought primarily for other people's liberty, each country fought to protect or advance its own territory and interests or solely to defend itself. The "freeing" of other people was only an incidental benefit if it happened at all.

But in the period after WW II his statement is at least arguably accurate. We've fought in Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War and now Iraq for reasons that do seem to have at least as much to do with other people's liberty as they do with our own self-interest. And while other countries have participated in the cause, they haven't lost as many people as we have.

The Washington Post? Biased against Republicans? Who woulda thunk it!

This entire line of debate, beginning most prominently with the Post, is silly, because it's an argument about motives. That said, I've actually heard Democrats ask why there's any difference between Iranians helping insurgents to attack Americans in Iraq and the U.S. helping Afghans to fight the Soviet invaders! That's how debased they've become.

Fundamentally, we are a "shining city on a hill". Have we acted contrary to that principle at times? Absolutely. Does the struggle to reach that ideal continue? Absolutely.

Colin Powell said much the same thing as Fred Thompson and they were both right.

If not for the US, would there even be a South Korea today? That might have been a UN effort, but it was the United States who risked its standing army.

Yes, we got involved in WW2 after we were attacked, but the Japanese and the Nazis came after the US because we refused to abandon our allies or our principles.

And when that war was over we rebuilt the countries we defeated and left them with democratic forms of government.

Some time ago I read a letter from an old Polish man who said he liked Americans because they had come to the aid of Poland so many times. The first time he remembered in the humanitarian efforts of the US led by Herbert Hoover during WW1. That was the first time any nation had gone out of its way to provide aid for millions of people not its citizens.

And the end of WW2 the US came up with the Marshall Plan, on the other hand the Soviets were willing to risk war with the US to stop the Berlin Airlift because they were not done punishing the Germans.

Big difference.

I think Thompson is guilty of a bit of an overstatement, but his basic thesis rings true: Americans have not typically gone to war for national self-aggrandizement and empire-building since 1847. Our record in the past century has generally been good: we haven't gone around invading people to steal their territory but rather have either liberated them from an invader (France, Kuwait) or tried to help them defend themselves (South Korea, South Vietnam). Has our record been 100% altruistic? Of course not, but I think we can look with pride at what we did in Europe after World War II and I think we WILL be able to look back with pride at what we've done in A-stan and Iraq. I find it ironic that the same people who throw mud on our record (i.e. libs) are the same ones who think that, to the extent we should have done ANYTHING in Iraq, we should have simply knocked off Saddam and let the chips fall where they may instead of trying to rebuild the country into something better for its people (and, in fairness, us).

What the WaPo misses (either willfully or through stupidity; it could be either with them) is Fred's assertion that Americans have died for liberty. Soviet soldiers, though FAR more of them died than GI's fighting Hitler, were NOT fighting for anybody's liberty. The same cannot be said about the British Commonwealth nations, however, and we would do well to recognize the contributions made to the cause of liberty in the 20th century by the British, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, Rhodesians, etc, etc.

swabjockey,

I often muse about our neighbors to the north and their military prowess. The Canadians are usually a most unwarlike people, but if history is any guide, they are among the last people you need to get riled up. This is why I'm so glad that they are on our side in A-stan.

Yes, Woodrow Wilson had the Nation suffer many ships sunk, before the Lusitania. He had also heard of the Armenian Genocide going on from his own Ambassador in the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morganthau in 1915. President Wilson refused to even think of attacking the Ottoman's and was warned by many in Congress and by Theodore Roosevelt that if America did not confront the allies of those that attacked us, we would have NO say in the post-war world. It is not enough to have many grand and grandiose ideas of ethnic homelands and 'just peace' if you are not willing to fight for it across the board. Why did France and Great Britain end up dictating the various peace treaties? Because President Wilson would not do the one thing that would put the US at the 'adult' table of world affairs: fight those that had allied with an enemy that attacked us.

He was one that established that TRADE would bring LIBERTY to the Middle East. We have heard that mantra again and again and again throughout the last 90 years and, looking out at a world that not only has material goods but that has low cost organizations waging predatory warfare unaccountably on all Nations, I really do question why mere physical goods are supposed to promote liberty. That has not worked for 90 years in the Middle East and for over 30 years in China. People who are not free and have no liberty do not own goods they buy: they are baubles that those in authority can take away as they please. The foundation of liberty is understanding one's inalienable rights and then putting one's hard work to just ends as one sees fit to make a better world for yourself and others. That creates *trade* and economies. President Wilson did not want to endanger US oil companies or manufacturing in Ottoman Turkey, and saw no reason why an ally of Germany, supporting and supplying her, would need to be attacked.

In a short ten years America altered her course in regards to government, representation and in foreign policy, shifting off a path of promoting liberty and freedom even if it *did* cost us trade. That is because the value of trade with free people is beyond any material gain or profit from an authoritarian or dictatorial society that provides little or no freedom to her people. This fine multi-culti, no nation can do no wrong world we are in *today* finds its start with President Wilson unwilling to go by the US concept of liberty and freedom making people free FIRST.

For all of his grand and grandiose words of 14 points and working to end the 'scourge of war' he refused to recognize that war is how we keep Nations accountable in this law of nations system. By trying to not fight bad wars or ugly wars, we are now left with the worst wars of all to fight to sustain ourselves and civilization, while many Nations are turning their back on that. And many cheer on that day when Nations fall and the unelected rule over them. That comes from the Transnationalists of the Left, Right and Terrorist persuasions.

America, unless we forget, was built on a Revolution in the affairs of mankind. We are a Nation and recognize that via the law of nations, which was understood even before this Nation was born. The Revolution was that liberty and freedom could be made within a Nation and held by its People via democratic means in a republic. That Revolution was started in 1776 for Liberty and Freedom, so that all of mankind could see the value in having those things and understanding that they, too, can be free. The greatest concept America hands out is: if you want it done, do it yourself. Put your Liberty to work for your ethics, morals and conscience and build that better world around you. Preach if you feel the need, but then put your hard work where your mouth is to demonstrate your values are worth working towards. To those that go out on these lovely marches and demonstrations: what else are you doing to create a 'better world'? If you complain about Darfur, then why do you not organize and seek imprimatur of a friendly Nation and go over there and FIX IT by force of arms against the predators feasting upon the innocent? For all the millions spent on 'awareness campaigns' you could have put hundreds if not thousands of troops on the ground to fight to protect the people there. The US as a Nation is busy right now, trying to figure out why we have a clueless and incompetent set of elected officials who can't figure out what it means to have a Nation state. But *you* can uphold that by showing *your* willingness to fight for the right of others to be free from oppression and you might even get the highest backing of our Nation in that. Well do we have the power to hand out Letters of Marque and Reprisal to citizens facing the ills of the Nation and the world and opposing them.

Americans have done that before in long lists of conflicts: fighting Japan before the entry of the US by volunteering to go to China, fighting in the Spanish civil war, even fighting in the Greek Civil war when she sought freedom from the Ottomans. Regular Americans may not agree with the ideals of those who went, but the question of the backing for those is absolute and applauded. They did not wait for government to tell them what was right to help spread liberty and freedom: they did it. Americans gave and heartily to the Armenians undergoing 'ethnic cleansing' in the late 19th century and Clara Barton stepped foot in the Ottoman Empire and got our donated goods THROUGH the bureaucracy and the Empire so she could tell of those horrors at first hand. Our government dithered,Americans acted. Clara Barton was awarded a medal by the Ottomans for doing that, because of her beliefs and courage in opposition and winning through their obstinacy.

Spare me your 'government action' when our ancestors have shown the way to uphold our beliefs in foreign lands, and often pay the ultimate price in tending to the sick, the needy and educating the poor. That era started to end when *trade* was put in front of working for liberty and freedom. America was unwilling to pay the price in 1917 for a more just world... is it any wonder it became less and less just as time went on?

Cap'n,

Considering we didn't enter WWII until we were attacked by Japan and that there was real fear that if England and all of Europe fell to the Nazis, that the US would be next in Hitler's eye-sights. We entered the war out of self-interest, just as the Soviets did. I'm sure others have noted this, I haven't read the other posts yet.

And Ed, the Post notes the same exact arguments you make against it. It's a perfectly reasonable piece with an unreasonable reaction by yourself.

The unidentified writer

Michael Dobbs, as identified at the top of the page.

How are you linking to that page? The front page of the Post's Web site links here.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/

quickjustice: Fundamentally, we are a "shining city on a hill". Have we acted contrary to that principle at times? Absolutely. Does the struggle to reach that ideal continue? Absolutely.

I think this demonstrates a sort of "glass half empty / glass half full" view of America, our role in the world, and our history. Thompson and many of the commenters here have a very favorable view of our country; we are a "shining city on the hill" despite sins of ommission and sins of commission we have committed in the past. Those of us who have this view naturally bristle when the motives and history of the United States are questioned or sneered at. We are proud of our country's history and contribution to the world.

There are others, however, who do NOT have this view. To them (need it be said that most of them are liberals?), the US is at best just another country and at worst one of the most evil, wicked, malevolent, selfish, genocidal, imperialistic, oppressive, hypocritical, greedy, destructive nations to ever blight the face of the earth. The idea that America would EVER do anything "good" much less altruistic is incomprehensible to people like this. Naturally, they bristle when the motives and history of the United States are praised or championed. They scoff at our country's history and contribution to the world.

Terrye: And the end of WW2 the US came up with the Marshall Plan, on the other hand the Soviets were willing to risk war with the US to stop the Berlin Airlift because they were not done punishing the Germans.

Big difference.

Very well said.

Wash Compost is a division of Clinton Inc. and the DNC. Naturally , any comments made by Fred will be intentionally distorted and misreported to help achieve there socialist world order. Just look at all those wonderful intentional misreported quotes of Greenspan.The Compost intentionally lied and sent out Press releases which were flat out lies on what what he said said about Iraq,Iraq oil, the housing market etc.. , The facts do not get in the way of the Wash Compost desire to push the DNC/ Clinton Inc talking points and trash Bush.For the next two years,the Compost, Slimes, and the ABC networks will throw out every lie and distorted quote they got about Fred or Rudy to get there Queen Hilary crowned !

Tom,

First, you can see where I linked, and when I wrote this, it had no byline. It was in their news section, not the blog.

Japan attacked us, and where did we first strike? North Africa.

Why did Japan attack us? Because we were embargoing oil, due to their brutal occupation of China. We started an economic war against them in an attempt to force them out of their conquests in the Pacific Rim.

Are you seriously going to argue that the Soviets died for the freedom and liberty of people other than themselves? Really? That's a "reasonable" position?

And about my "unreasonable" response -- is Michael Dobbs a college student whose innocence you need to defend? Because this routine is getting old.

No country on the planet has fought longer and harder for freedom and democracy than the United States. In WWII, the Soviet Union was fighting to replace one totalitarian regime with another.

It is refreshing to see some posters recognise other countries sacrifice's in ww1/2.
The usual 'we saved your asses' and 'if it wasn't for us you would be speaking german' has caused saddness and disbelief from our(u.k) old soldiers.
They believe that the hero's are those that were left behind,whatever the nationality.
Some in the U.S then seem to think that because we 'saved' you that gives you right to demand total agreement to any U.S foreign policy,even if it is against the will of their people.
Again, i appreciate the different views posted here and the balanced approach towards other countries history.

I'll note that the Spanish-American war was basically the swan song of American Imperialism.

The assertion that Korea or Vietnam were some sort of American wars of conquest are mindless blather. What did we take from Korea? What did we intend to get from Vietnam? It's as bad as the slander that we went to Iraq to steal the oil. Anyone with a pencil, an internet connection, and half a brain can figure out that the cheapest and easiest way to get it would be to buy it from Saddam. Heck, we care so much about oil that we won't drill in ANWR or off the coast of Florida.

Did the US wait until we were attacked to get involved in WWII? Absolutely. The isolationists wouldn't have had it any other way.

But look at what we did after the war -- no harsh peace terms on Japan & Germany, rather we wanted to rebuild them as functioning democracies. Same with the Philippines & South Korea later on.
Let's see, the Philippines senate voted basically to kick us out of their country and so we revamped the naval base there into a nice commercial port and left. Contrast that with Hungary in 1956 & Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Germany also has a sizable anti-American contingent despite our having 70,000 troops there.

Fred's point is that we don't go to war to seek an empire, but rather to liberate nations from tyrants who threaten the world & harm their own people; which is a damn sight better than what has gone on throughout the rest of history.

Oh, and as for our "late" entry into WWII, it wasn't until August 1945 that our "ally" USSR declared war on Japan.

is Michael Dobbs a college student whose innocence you need to defend?

the quick answer to that would be "I highly doubt it."

Are you seriously going to argue that the Soviets died for the freedom and liberty of people other than themselves? Really? That's a "reasonable" position?

Well, first of all, I call it a reasonable piece in part because it acknowledges the point you counter with within the piece... then it goes on to make its point even without using the Soviets as an example.

But, yes, I will say Soviets died for the freedom and liberty of other people. Those 8 million who died didn't live to see what Stalin did to East Germany after war. I've got to believe most of the Soviet soldiers were fighting to defend their homeland and to defeat Hitler, just like the US soldiers.

I think Hugh Beaumont put it best:

The contributions by other nations in terms of blood sweat and treasure are considerable. It's not constructive to wave the banner of sacrifice as if we have a monopoly on it.

DocJim writes: There are others, however, who do NOT have this view. To them (need it be said that most of them are liberals?), the US is at best just another country and at worst one of the most evil, wicked, malevolent, selfish, genocidal, imperialistic, oppressive, hypocritical, greedy, destructive nations to ever blight the face of the earth.

________________________________

Other than maybe Noam Chomsky and the chick who edits The Nation, who do you know who thinks that?
Not me or any of my liberal friends. Heck, even the hated Markos over at Kos served in the army.

Believe it or not, my liberal husband and I teach our kids to love America, to appreciate the great gift they have been given for the opportunity to live here, to strive to make sure that we live up to that standard of a "shining city" and that there are some fights worth fighting in the world. As do our other liberal Democrat friends.

Maybe you need to expand your circle of acquaintences a little. I promise we won't bite.

Thompson doesn't talk policy, he pushes fluff you suppporters call Red Meat.

If Thompson does nothing but serve up FLUFF, then the Fluff should be fact checked.

OK, Freddie loves his country and is proud to be an American.

What ELSE does he know?

Maybe it needs to be said here that there is nothing wrong with fighting to protect one's own liberty. The Soviets may not have fought Nazi Germany in defense of freedom for others but that doesn't make their sacrifices on the battlefield any less heroic, even if they were motivated solely to protect their own country.

Having read some about the siege at Stalingrad I have to say I think it's a good thing we've never actually had to fight the Russians one-on-one anywhere (that I can think of anyway). Tough people, and motivated as much by their own sense of patriotism as we are by ours.

While I think Thompson is literally correct in stating that Americans "have shed more blood for other people's liberty than any other combination of nations in the history of the world", the liberty of others has rarely been our primary objective in fighting. With the possible exception of Bosnia we have fought against threats to our own interests. And while some would disagree, there is no shame in that.

I'm sure prisoners of this camp thought the Red Army fought for their liberty:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp

I'm just as sure that the Poles who got "liberated" by the Soviets would have a completely different perspective than yours, Tom. Why don't you ask one how they felt about that "liberation"? Oh, and don't forget, the reason the Soviet Union allied with Hitler -- you know, the one who opened that death camp -- was to carve Poland up and toss it on the ash heap of history.

Unbelievable. You'll act as an apologist for the worst dictators of the world, won't you? Anyone who sees Joseph Stalin as a liberator should ask Michael Dobbs for a couple of those dunce caps.

"I'm sure prisoners of this camp thought the Red Army fought for their liberty:"

Yes Tom, but for how long?

Ed, this is an excellent post, one of your very best.

"Anyone who can't figure this much out has no business writing for a professional newspaper."
Maybe it's because the Post is a professional propaganda sheet

Prior to 12/7/1941 the US was shipping vast amounts of war material to enemies of Germany. We were engaged in naval warfare in the Atlantic involving torpedoes, depth charges and deck guns.

Prior to 12/7/1945 we were also supplying enemies of Japan and had ceased supplying Japan with war material i.e. scrap iron. They had a dire need for steel. Our military fighter pilots were allowed to "resign" their commissions, go to China, and shoot at Japanese zeros and receive fire on their US supplied P40s. The commissions reappeared with promotions when war was declared.

The war didn't start for us on 11/7/1945.

the other burt

Tom Shipley,
Russian soldiers were dying in high numbers because life was very cheap for good, old "Uncle Joe". Many of the Russian solders died from the NKWD machine guns, since they didn't have right to withdraw, under any circumstances... There was even a popular saying in the Russian Army at the time: "There is many of us".
But did they fight for freedom of other nations? Ask some Poles, or Lithuanians, or Estonians, or Fins, or Czechs, or Slovaks, or Hungarians. But watch out when doing it, some may beat you up, even now.

Addendum to my previous post:

I think it's important to note that while, as I have stated, the U.S. has fought first and foremost in her own interests - it is beyond question that where we have prevailed, so too has liberty.

Well, Ed, I'm not acting as an apologist for Stalin, just for Russian troops who fought in World War II, as I noted in my previous post.

But, yes, you and others bring up a good point in that, does it really matter given what the Soviets did after the war? In the grand scheme of things, probably not. But I also do think the actual Russian soldiers who fought in WWII -- when speaking of just their actions -- fought nobly.

You ask many US vets why they fought... what were they fighting for? Many will say they were fighting for the guy next to them. And from what I've seen and read (not first hand experience, mind you), it seems there's a certain bond that occurs between warring soldiers after a war in which there's an understanding their are in the same place. Their fighting valiantly for their country. And in large part, it's not up to them what side they are on.

Now watch how the liberal turns this around and makes it about Iraq... this underscores the importance of our people to make sure our government only goes to war when necessary, for the right cause at the right time. Soldiers follow orders. Democracies need to make sure their leaders are following the people's will when going to war (which is hard when a false case for war is given).

Wow, what a great discussion. Comment threads usually are the habitat of bottom feeders, but these posts show a great knowledge of history and political philosophy. Kudos.

Andrew Jackson is my hero.

I think many of you are missing the point here. The Washington Post, as Capt. Ed pointed out, ignored Thompson's qualifier: Americans shed more blood for the freedom of OTHERS. They totally ignored this, and, thus, their entire criticism is unfair and dishonest. They did not for one moment consider our or anyone else's INTENT in waging war. Whether our intent in fighting WWII was to liberate others from tyranny may be argued (though I believe we clearly had the most altruistic intentions of anyone; we had the least to lose by not fighting and the most reasons not to get involved*), but the fact of the matter is the Washington Post ignored this and only said that other countries lost more in WWII. The Post behaved shamelessly. For anyone here to defend such dishonesty is itself shameful.

That said, Tom Shipley shows himself to be a moral monster by arguing that Stalin fought for the liberty of others in WWII. Really? Where do you find evidence of this intent, Tom? Stalin's words? No. Stalin's actions? No. Stalin and his successors' treatment of Eastern Europe after the war? No.

_____________

* And by "involved" I mean the various belligerant actions we took against Japan and Germany prior to December 7, 1941. Really, all you people attacking Capt. Ed are amazingly ignorant (to say the least) of history.

It is disgusting how many voices here are clearly defeatist and apologetics. Specially voice of Tinian, well above. So, what has happen to our Bosnian empire?
He is an excellent example of the product of the skewed Liberal argumentative pattern: Everything you'll say sounds smart, if it is anti-American, or against the President, and damn all the facts. And don't you dare to be proud of anything US did, or of being an American.

But, yes, I will say Soviets died for the freedom and liberty of other people.

Tom Shipley, are you including the ones who invaded and annexed part of Finland?

Well, I'm Polish and I got to say that the idea of "poland" in WWII is kind of a joke. The area that constitutes modern Poland was fought over and changed hands numerous times over hundreds of years between the Germans, the Russians and the Hapsburgs. Even my great-grandparents who came over in 1914 called themselves "Austrians" in some papers and "Poles" on others.

In WWII they were stuck between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. Neither was a great choice especially if you happened to be Jewish. And many Poles blame the Western Allies esp. Roosevet and the US for abandoning them to Russia at Yalta.

Being a Jacksonian type myself, I am quite proud of our country for being so reluctant to get involved in world conflicts. We are slow to anger and our self interest has to be involved -- Africa is a tragedy but is not worth the blood of our sons. We ignored the Middle East (the doctrine was called: benign neglect) until they attacked us.

We do spend our blood and treasure to liberate others, and that's the point the Hate America revisionists ignore. Whether or not we became involved out of self-interest, the fact remains that we liberated rather than conquered.

We could have conquered and made those countries our possessions. The fact that we did not means we are unique in all the history of the world. Fred Thompson understands that. The WaPo refuses to.

Teresa,

And they were right to complain, because that's exactly what we did to Poland and Eastern Europe.

BTW, my great-grandfather came from the same area. He called himself "Austrian", but spoke Polish and came from Lvov.

I think both sides make good points. The US has never tried to conquer other nations after a war, even if they were driven to war for reasons of self-interest.

But, I think Dobbs makes good points in his article as well. And I think Hugh Beaumont summed up why Thompson's claim is ill-worded and unwise. I think Thompson probably has a good point to make, he just used the wrong rhetoric in making it.

I'm no Tom Shipley apologist but I think it's not all that helpful to denigrate the Soviet contribution to our success in WW II. We could not have won without them, I think all historians would agree on that, or at least not without even more of our blood being shed.

Did they fight for noble reasons? Well, they were attacked and they fought to defend themselves. Maybe that's not a noble enough reason as "freeing others", maybe it's what Stalin deserved for allying himself with Hitler in the first place. But it doesn't change the facts, a whole lot of Russians (soldiers and civilians) alike died in the war to defeat Nazi Germany. So to set ourselves up as more noble, I don't know if it's such a meaningful exercise.

One other point, while it is true that we implemented the Marshall Plan and rebuilt Japan, I don't know that it's helpful to see these acts as driven only by enlightened benevolence. I believe we calculated that it was necessary to do these things to avoid a repeat of what happened after WW I when the conquered countries were left to their own devices. And in that there may well be a lesson for our current conflicts (as we already learned after leaving Afghanistan to its own devices once the Soviets pulled out in 1989).

All I know is that millions of other nation's soldiers and civilians died fighting Hitler's Germany in addition to American's who fought and died in WWII to free Europe from Nazi tyranny. Thompson's boasting about who's the most virtuous is nothing more than mentioning our past "good wars" to support Bush's war in Iraq. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Anyway Ed, the country that most deserves credit for defeating Germany is Britain, which could have folded in 1940 but instead stood alone and fought. Numbers alone don't tell the whole story. As Secretary of War Henry Stimson put it, IIRC, without England in the war the U.S. might not lose everywhere but it might not have won anywhere either.

I'm no Tom Shipley apologist

I would hope not. He is a moral monster, after all.

Anyone who believes that Joseph Stalin's Red Army ever fought for anyone's liberty should go to the library and read some Solzhenitzyn.

Alexandr Solzhenitzyn was a Red Army captain in WWII when he was arrested for writing a letter critical of Joseph Stalin and sentenced to eight years - a virtual death sentence.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch (1962) is a short narrative that follows a Zek, a prisoner in a Siberian labor camp, describing in detail the daily struggle to stay alive. It won him the Nobel Prize.

The First Circle (1968) is set in a prison in the suburbs of Moscow where engineers and mathematicians were given better living conditions in exchange for their work, in this case on a voice print machine. The inmates progress is closely monitored by the KGB who want the device to identify an anti-Soviet speaker. The ironic conclusion drawn is that in the Soviet Union, only the prisoners are free.

Cancer Ward (1968) follows a terminally ill cancer patient who is a former Zek through the post-war Soviet medical system with its privileged status for members of the Communist Party. The parallel between a human with cancer and Russia under communism could not be more apparent.

Gulag Archipelago Volume I (1973) was smuggled out of the USSR to Italy when another copy of the manuscript was discovered at his secretary's home. She was so distraught, she hung herself. All three volumes detail the secret world of political prisons and provides a stunning attack on the butchery of Stalin. When I read it I could not believe the Soviets would allow him to live, much less write.

All of these books are first hand accounts of "Liberty" in the Soviet Union.

Starfleet Dude,

I am always amazed at the lengths people go to in order to disparage the great contribution the US made in winning Worl War II. This ability to ignore history and interpret facts as one sees fit seems to fill some great psychological need.

Dude, did you ever ask yourself what two thing were the sine qua non of Britain's ability to "stand alone"? For example, did it ever occur to you that they were, in fact, NOT alone?

Captain Ed -- My great grandparents only spoke Polish too. Not to hijack this thread but I can't help but think of them during immigration debates. My great grandfather came over illegally, they lived in an all Polish speaking area of Baltimore and never learned to speak English. (I remember visiting them in the early 1970's and listening to all the old ladies chat in Polish on their door stoops to one another.) They did work hard all their lives in a factory, raised seven kids (two of whom served in WWII) and their grandkids served in Vietnam. By the time the grands came along, they could speak no Polish.

Bennett,
You have to decide: could US win the war with Germany without Soviet input, or not.
Using Soviets soldiers (by sending them emergency war supplies when they had non) was very smart, since it saved our soldiers and made Germans fight on two fronts, with long supply lines.
As per Marshall Plan you don't have to be sarcastic ("enlightened benevolence"), I'd rather be proud for this great act of kindness.

Dude, did you ever ask yourself what two thing were the sine qua non of Britain's ability to "stand alone"? For example, did it ever occur to you that they were, in fact, NOT alone?

England certainly had its empire, but in 1940 it was Britain that put itself on the line against Nazi Germany, and no one else.

Ed: The Washington Post should be embarrassed by their historical and rhetorical illiteracy, and should offer an apology for calling Thompson a liar.

How about offering an apology to the American people as a whole, past and present verterans especially?

A Senator named Truman was of the opinion that we should let the Soviets and Nazis fight it out and then go after the weakened victory. It was a stroke of fortune that FDR croaked when he did.

While to the Russian people, it was the Great Patriotic War, Stalin was a monster. He had far more patience than Hitler and spread his evil system over most of eastern Europe and merely shifted the direction of flow of plunder.

Stalin had his apologists in frauds such as Howard Zinn and Walter Duranty.

The United States was being drawn into the conflict long before Peral harbor was attacked. FDR found a way to circumvent the Neutrality Act (a ploy later attempted in Iran-Contra). We were at war in the North Atlantic and American sailors were dying ('Reuben James' was more than the name of a ship) and American 'Mercenaries' called 'Flying Tigers' were fighting Japs in China. The Pearl Harbor attack was was the natural reaction of Tojo to an oil embargo and the transfer of the Fleet from the West Coast to Pearl Harbor. While these acts may have been seen as 'provocative' in Tokyo, they were rather modest countermeasures to Japanese aggression in China. This aggression included the Rape of Nanking as well as the Panay Incident.

Those in thralldom to revisionist professors may have a very distorted view of history.

OK, Tom. OK.

Maybe you're not a "moral monster." Sorry.

How about a "moral idiot"? "Amoral"? A "morel"?

And they were right to complain, because that's exactly what we did to Poland and Eastern Europe.

Ed, short of starting another war against the USSR there was nothing the U.S. or Britain could have done about Poland or the rest of Eastern Europe.

Below is a disputed Sir Winston Churchill quote published by an American reporter. If Sir Winston said it, and I doubt he did, he did so tongue in cheek. This line of thought is popular with today's leftists.

Blame America

"If you hadn’t entered the World War we would have made peace with Germany early in 1917. Had we made peace then there would have been no collapse in Russia followed by communism, no break-down in Italy followed by fascism, and Germany would not have signed the Versailles Treaty, which has enthroned nazi-ism in Germany. In other words, if America had stayed out of the war all of these “isms” wouldn’t today be sweeping the Continent of Europe and breaking down parliamentary government, and if England had made peace early in 1917, it would have saved over 1,000,000 British, French, American, and other lives."

Winston Churchill
Congrssional Record
8 September 1939.

BTW, we entered WWI because of the Zimmerman Telegram, a plan to have Mexico attack the US in support of Germany.

And they were right to complain, because that's exactly what we did to Poland and Eastern Europe.

Our policy of 'containment' was criticised from two points of view. Some felt that we needed to be more vigorous in pushing back the Soviets. Others were afraid that we were provoking the Soviets. The latter view was held by Wallace and Stettinius and both quit their jobs in protest.

We did intervene militarily in a Civil War in Greece. We did sent a fleet to the Eastern Med. Whe were not cowed by the Berlin Blockade and did not run in Korea. NATO and the Marshall Plan had their effect.

Politics is the art of the possible, whether in the local or global domain.

Starfleet Dude,

I had asked you, "What two things were the sine qua non of Britain's ability to "stand alone"? For example, did it ever occur to you that they were, in fact, NOT alone?" You replied, "England certainly had its empire, but in 1940 it was Britain that put itself on the line against Nazi Germany, and no one else."

Wrong. The two things I was looking for were "will" and "the United States."

First and foremost, to fight a war a people need the will to fight. Without that all is lost. England had the will. France, for example did not. As for the second reason, perhaps you forgot about "Cash and Carry," exchanges of US destroyers for leases for UK bases, Lend-Lease, "neutrality patrols," freezing of German assets, Atlantic patrols and escorts, US protection of Greenland (Danish territory) and Iceland, US Marines relieving UK military in Iceland to free up UK soldiers, etc.

A "morel"

TomB: what sarcasm? We didn't implement the Marshall Plan to be nice. We did it to keep another Hitler from rising up from the ashes of what was left after Germany's devastating defeat.

I see nothing wrong with enlightened self-interest and it was in America's interest to create conditions in Europe after WW II which would result in a stable continent, one where we would never ever have to sacrifice American lives again if we could possibly help it (having had to make that sacrifice twice in 25 years was more than enough).

The idea that America should or would run around the world bestowing its kindness on others and for no other reason is, respectfully, rather absurd.

And I have no idea what you are talking about "using" Soviet soldiers. The Soviet Army pushed the Nazis all the way back to Berlin while we pushed them back across the Rhine from the other side.

Given what happened after the war, I'm not so sure about who was using who. But that's not my point anyway. As to the war itself, the war against Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan (the original axis), it was won by the Anglosphere AND Russia (if I've left somebody important out, sorry!).

Teresa,

I'm judging people by what they've written here, both in this thread and others. Are there libs who do love America? Of course. But I think it's MUCH more likely to find that Americans who DON'T love America are libs. It's all part of that "citizens of the world" crap that seems to have infested quite a few minds since the '60s. Libs seem to be the first to throw mud at America and the last to admit that we've EVER done anything worthwhile in our history (Howard Zinn is a hero and icon to the left, NOT the right).

Teresa: Well, I'm Polish and I got to say that the idea of "poland" in WWII is kind of a joke.

As it happens, a good friend of mine is first generation Polish-American. One afternoon, I had the opportunity to talk to his father about how he and his wife came to America. The Soviets - you know, those peace-loving freedom fighters - played a prominent role in the story. When Hitler and Stalin decided to divvy up Poland in 1939 like a couple of gangsters splitting up their loot, Mr. W's village was on the Soviet side. You'll never guess what those lovable Bolsheviks did! They rounded up everybody in the village, herded them into rail cars, and shipped 'em out to one of the 'stan Soviet republics where they were dumped out in the middle of nowhere to starve to death. Happily, the Poles were rather more hardy that the Soviets thought, and Mr. W eventually made his way to Iran (courtesy of Winston Churchill and the British) where he joined the RAF. After serving in the RAF until after the war, he found that others of his family had survived being guests of Stalin and had made their way to America. He joined them here, met a female Polish immigrant, fell in love, and the American dream repeated itself once again.

I don't think it's an exageration to say the Mr. W hates the Russians to this day. Too bad, given that so many of them died for his liberty. /sarcasm

I also don't think he regards Poland before World War I as "a kind of a joke". For that matter, neither did the Soviets... or the thousands of Polish officers massacred by them in the Katyn Forest. I'd say that the Poles left to die while fighting the nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto by the Soviet army also shared that view.

Tom,

Done. You are a morel. Your brain is like a spongy fungus.

First and foremost, to fight a war a people need the will to fight. Without that all is lost. England had the will. France, for example did not. As for the second reason, perhaps you forgot about "Cash and Carry," exchanges of US destroyers for leases for UK bases, Lend-Lease, "neutrality patrols," freezing of German assets, Atlantic patrols and escorts, US protection of Greenland (Danish territory) and Iceland, US Marines relieving UK military in Iceland to free up UK soldiers, etc.

Leaving aside the fact that the U.S. Neutrality Act required England to virtually empty its treasury buying the supplies it needed from the United States, and how it was FDR who worked behind the scenes to support England in the face of isolationist opposition in Congress, it's still the case that after May, 1940 and Dunkirk England really had little military capability left to fight Germany if an invasion had been launched. Hitler would have gladly accepted a peace deal with England if one had been offered and been free to attack the USSR with impunity, but instead the decision was made, by Churchill but also by others in the government, to not offer peace feelers but instead fight on. That was, as has been pointed out by many historians, among them Ian Kershaw in his recent book "Fateful Choices" a turning point in the war.

Doc -- I meant a nation state called "Poland" in WWII was kind of a joke in that the borders of Poland were CONSTANTLY changing for hundreds of years prior to WWII. And people who lived in Poland did not necessarily recognize themselves as "POLISH." That is not to denigrate in any way the poor people who lived in that area which was run over by armies of every stripe since the dawn of civilization and included many of my relatives.

I am no Stalinist apologist -- just pointing out that between the Germans and the Russians the "Poles" were between a rock and a hardplace. (Which is why my own grandparents skipped to America before WWI got in high gear.)

Your brain is like a spongy fungus.

I've certainly had mornings when it's felt like one.

I think of these words, when those who would denigrate WHY we fought WWII, and have the temerity to compare it to the Soviets of all people:

Walter, this D-Day has a very special meaning for me. On D-Day, my own son graduated from West Point. But on the very day he was graduating, these men came here -- British and our other allies and Americans -- to storm these beaches for one purpose only: Not to gain anything for ourselves, not to fulfill any ambitions that America had for conquest, but just to preserve freedom.

Said by someone who might've known something about what he was talking about---Dwight David Eisenhower, on the beaches of Normandy, twenty years after D-day.

Ike gives proper due to our allies from the Free World (e.g., Brits, Canadians, Free French), and distinguishes them from those who fought to give the oppressed people of Europe new oppressors.

Tom Shipley: But, I think Dobbs makes good points in his article as well. And I think Hugh Beaumont summed up why Thompson's claim is ill-worded and unwise. I think Thompson probably has a good point to make, he just used the wrong rhetoric in making it.

I think that's fair.

For those who would argue that Stalin fought for the liberty of others (by displacing Hitler), I guess then we should raise statues to Mobotu, Marcos, Chiang Kai-shek, Park Chung Hee, and Pinochet, all of whom fought for the liberty of others against Communism, eh?

"Those of my generation in Britain have special cause to remember the unimaginable sacrifice the Russian people made to defeat fascism in the Second World War," she said.

"Nothing — not even the fact that our countries became estranged in the war's aftermath — has ever dimmed our memory of the scale of your loss. That experience should continue to inspire us as we seek to build a more peaceful and secure world."

Queen Elizabeth in remarks on the occasion of Putin's visit to Britain in 2003. She knows something about WWII as well.

skippystalin,

Ever heard of lend-lease? Ever heard of convoys? Ever heard of the flying tigers?

We were in both wars long before we were "in". While officially neutral at the outset of each war, we weren't. The above three are examples of our government's official involvement in the wars prior to an official declaration of war. In both wars, the majority of Americans were isolationist at the outset, but the government participated anyway.

Now, as for unofficial acts by groups of Americans, consider the Lincoln brigades in the Spanish Civil War and the American contigent which fought in Israel's War of Independance (which included US ace pilots fresh from WWII).

Starfleet Dude,

Very interesting but not really responsive. A red herring actually. The fact of the matter is, the UK was not alone. The US aided them with arms and material. The US acted quite belligerantly towards Germany long before December 1941(the UK was not at war with Japan until December 1941, like the US). Roosevelt and Churchill had met and discussed when (not if) the US would enter the war and agreed that Germany would come first, not Japan. This was called the Atlantic Charter. The United States was effectivly at war with Germany well before the attack at Pearl Harbor. The US aid to Great Britain was real and it was substantial.

The UK was most definitely NOT alone.

How many "death camps" did the United States maintain during and after WWII? Russia?

What nation exercised wholesale slaughter and rape of civilians on the ground or utilized massive retribution killings of civilians on the ground during and after WWII? The U.S.? Russia?

What nation had the largest number or percentage of Prisoners of War were returned home almost immediately in most cases after cessation of hostilities in WWII? The U.S.? Russia?

How many nations did we invade and keep a stangle hold on for years and years, arresting or forcibly relocating dissenters, religious groups, ethnic groups? Russia?

How many countries did we invade and then steal or ship back home the best of their hardware, factories, and technicians under force of arms, denuding their possibility of rapid re-development? Russia?

To which countries did survivors of a great war willingly flock to in droves after cessation of hostilities? The U.S.? Russia?

Which country aided and assisted defeated or conquered nations to establish free governments and encourage the development of post-war industries at the expense of their own economy in the long run? United States? Russia?

Which country was intent on maintaining colonies or subjugated nations across the globe after cessation of hostilities in WWII? United States? Russia? Great Britain? France?

Which nation before and during WWII made treaties with the Axis that promised them a portion of the conquered world after "victory?" United States? Russia?

We have NO reason to apologize for the sacrifice we as a nation made in the 20th Century.

The let's-not-be-judgemental attitudes inculcated in our youth and in our population over the last 40 years of NEA-sponsored liberal "education" is showing itself all across the nation, and even here, within the Captain's online forum for wayward boys and girls.

The Wapo article is one of those let's-not-be-judgemental screeds that are more common than not in today's journalism.

The United States for most of the 20th Century was the best thing since sliced bread to enter global politics and economy. And there are those still who deign to apoligize for our actions?

As one, among many, who risked life and limb to assist small backward nations (former colonies many of them) in the darker parts of the world to rise to threats to their sovereignty and security of their peoples not to occupy but to enable the most basic rights we seem to hold as a given, I find it beyond contempt that there are those who view Russia as some sort of altruistic liberator and the United States as an also-ran. The United States did not keep millions in conquered lands under draconian occupation for forty years after the war. Russia did. The United States did not stifle dissent, imprison dissenters, prevent the free flow of ideas and learning in those areas we liberated. Russia did.

In the aggregate, listing each participant in wars throughout the 20th century, seems the United States comes out with a distinct better track record.

Thompson is right, perhaps a bit simplistic, but essentially correct. The WaPo? Wrong on all counts if you look at the internals. Thompson, again, may be simplistic, but I've got to wonder, what and where has complex and nuanced gotten us in the past fifty years?

And the complaint that the US charged the UK for the war material, and thus bankrupted the country, is such a load crap. This is a favorite complaint, and it is stupid and mean-spirited. It is always employed by people wielding their anti-American bludgeons. The US lost money on Lend-Lease. Lend-Lease was a gift freely given and an example of the greatness of this country, not its shame.

I'm very puzzled by the comments here regarding Soviet losses.

Yes, the Soviet Union suffered gruesome losses during World War II. Soviet troops fought bravely. They did so for a variety of reasons (much as troops have fought and died throughout history for a variety of reasons).

That they were an enormous factor in the defeat of Hitler's Germany is not in question. More German/Axis divisions were deployed on the eastern front than on the western and Italian fronts combined.

What is at issue is whether they fought for "liberty."

Consider that China suffered arguably comparable losses to the Japanese. Partly because the war in China lasted longer (beginning in 1937). Partly because the Japanese occupied more of China.

Are those who argue that the Soviets should be considered to have fought "for liberty" (a grotesquely Orwellian concept) be just as prepared to grant that Chiang Kai-shek fought "for liberty"?

Would they argue, then, that Mao Zedong also fought "for liberty"?

What does the word "liberty" mean at this point? Somehow, I don't equate liberty with the right to starve kulaks, Ukrainians, or your own peasantry to death by the millions.

Your mileage may vary.

Shipley: Given your impassioned defense of Soviet Russia during World War II, you really should read "No Simple Victory: World War II in Europe, 1939-1945", by Norman Davies.

From Adam Kirsch's review in the N.Y. Sun on September 5, 2007:

"This is a revisionist history of World War II, designed to shake the complacency of British and American readers who are accustomed to thinking of it as the "good war". . . [Davies's] purpose, rather, is to remind the world of two truths [about World War II] that, while well-established, he believes are not sufficiently reckoned with.

The first is that, in military terms, the World War II in Europe was predominantly a war between Germany and the Soviet Union; the contributions of Britain and America, while crucial, were not of the same order. The second is that, when Nazism and Communism fought over control of Eastern Europe, there was little moral difference between them. The Soviet Union was one of the Allies, but it had less in common with Anglo-American democracy than it did with Nazi tyranny."

This haunting passage from the review illustrates the point: "Worse, because totally irrational, the Soviet state continued to destroy its own people even when the war was at its height. During the first year of the [German] invasion [of Russia], the Red Army issued 800,000 death sentences to its own soldiers. Evey unit had its commissar, who had to countersign all military orders, and who could condemn anyone to death for an impolitic word. No wonder that, as Mr. Davies writes, "the front-line zone maximum physical danger" became for the Red Army troops "a zone of psychological liberation, even of gay abandon, which no doubt contributed to the willingness of the 'Ivans' to rush to their deaths with a hurrah on their lips."

In short, Soviet Russia was as monstrous as Nazi Germany in prosecuting the Second World War. Its elevation of communist ideology over human life on the battlefield and everywhere else negates any suggestion that its motives, principally self-preservation of the communist regime and extension of the Soviet Empire to Eastern Europe, were benevolent.

Bennet,
This is exactly what I am talking about, no credit for US kindness, doesn’t matter what (everybody intelligent knows is for oil). How to explain food send all over the word to all the countries who can’t feed themselves? It is all for oil!! What about those countries who DON’T have oil, but we still send them food? But they MIGHT have oil in the future!
Frankly, seeing world through the oil clad glasses may sound politically correct, but it is a big crock.
To understand what I mean by “using” Soviet soldiers to defeat Germany you have to go to some basic history books, so here is just a brief of a brief. At the beginning of the war Russia was being conquered up in the hurry, since soldiers didn’t have almost any weapons to resist and hero Stalin was in panic (“But they promised they wouldn’t attack”). US send them a lot of stuff (does Murmansk convoys sound a bell?) when they didn’t have anything and fortunately on time too, so they could defend Moscow (ever heard of “Aircobras”?) and started bleeding Nazis. This way we helped them to help themselves, and us. This is what I call “Using” Russian soldiers to defeat Germany.
And you too should be proud of it.

This comment thread is unbelievable. I really cant believe that there are Americans that would argue, to the extreme as shown in these comments, that this country has not shed its blood and youth for the benefit of others. To compare the US to the Soviets is so patently and inanely absurd that it merits no response, really.

I suppose that pitting American against American, brother against brother, in Civil war to free slaves is no example of America's sacrifice for others either, right?

It's simply amazing how far a little hate for one's own country will go.

Val, If I'm not mistaken, that's one of the reasons they're called "Moonbats".

I am always surprised by how people on both sides of the argument fail to understand that the reason WWII took the course that it did was the Hitler-Stalin alliance from August 1939 through the end of June 1941. Hitler's ability to defeat France so rapidly in the spring of 1940 was directly related to this alliance. With Stalin in his pocket Hitler was able to denude the East of forces that could be used in France. Even the conquest of Poland in 1939 would have taken longer and the Germans would have paid a higher price had Stalin done no more then sit on his hands.

We must also remember that while allied with Hitler, the French Communist Party worked to undermine morale of the French Army and sabotaged industrial production during the "Phony War" period. And one more thing:. No Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, no Holocaust.

The bottom line is that you cannot discuss the Soviet Contribution to winning the War in Europe without reference to the effect of their alliance with Nazi Germany at the beginning of the war.

TomB: nowhere in my comments do I mention the word "oil" nor have you otherwise responded to my argument.

The United States is not required and should not be required to act kindly towards the less fortunate people of the world simple as an act of beneficence. We have the right, indeed the obligation, to act in OUR own interest. You may wish for American blood and treasure to be expended on charitable causes simply so you can feel kind. I do not.

I have no difficulty with feeding the hungry, freeing the oppressed and saving the whales --whatever is your favorite benevolent cause of the moment-- but only so long as America has something at stake besides your warm and fuzzy feeling at how kind and generous we are.

As to your comments about the inadequacies of the Soviet Army, there is no point in discussing it further. If you are convinced that the Soviets were our needy rearguard in WWII then nothing I will say could possibly change your mind.

Nomennovum, while it's true that the U.S. did support Britain my point still stands that it was Britain alone who remained at war against Nazi Germany. While U.S. support certainly mattered, it was not a decisive factor in the decision to fight on. And contrary to your later assertion, Britain's treasury was indeed drained by buying what it needed for the war, which was why the so-called "Lend-Lease" business ever came about in the first place. From Wikisource:

By late 1940 Great Britain was increasingly unable to pay for and transport the war materials it needed in its fight against Nazi Germany. Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill appealed to President Roosevelt to find a way for the United States to continue to aid Britain. FDR proposed providing war materials to Britain without the immediate payment called for in the Neutrality Act. ...

Pebbles:

I don't think anyone here is in anyway trying to denigrate or downplay the significant role that the UK played in the defeat of Nazism. In fact, the UK carried that torch much longer than they should have. Canadian and Australian soldiers have long had the respect of our military. They were with us on D-Day and fought bravely.

Make no mistake that, while we are proud of what we have accomplished on behalf of the world that we also remember that unlike us, the UK bore the brunt of WWII prior to us entering.

I personally believe that there are several countries that we would help first and (mostly) ask questions later: UK, Canada, Australia and Israel (though in Israel's case the right would have to force the hand of the left).

So thank you, Pebbles, and the people of the UK for doing the right thing alone for much longer than you should have.

What everyone seems to be missing here is that the Allied Powers had no difficulty with partnering up with Stalin after Germany invaded Russia. They had to make a choice and they made it, better the Communists than the Nazis. Do you think they were concerned with Soviet motivation at the time? Well yes, possibly so but not enough to avoid the alliance. And not enough not to give Stalin pretty much what he wanted after the war ended.

To sit back now, 60 years after the events and say, well we were more noble, we fought to free others, the Soviets fought only for domination, how is this meaningful? It certainly didn't matter to Roosevelt or Churchill at the time.

Maybe it helps to remember that if we were that intent on liberating others we wouldn't have abandoned Eastern Europe to the Soviets after the war.

Kathy from Austin,

Well said!

Starfleet Dude,

You said, "And contrary to your later assertion, Britain's treasury was indeed drained by buying what it needed for the war, which was why the so-called "Lend-Lease" business ever came about in the first place."

I never said,their treasury wasn't depleted by the war; I said that the US didn't cause it. Britain had to pay for its arms from ANY source -- US, UK, anywhere. The "Cash and Carry" amendment to the Neutrality Act was important to the UK. That means it was helpful, Dude, which means Britain had help from outside and was not "alone." Dude, a nation always needs to spend its treasure to wage a war. Who do you think pays for our war making? Santa Claus? What I mean is: After the fall of Europe to the Nazis, GB needed arms. One way to get arms is to produce them. Of course this still costs money and takes time. They had neither the time nor the ability to make all they needed. So, the US changed its law (the Neutrality Act) and sold them what was needed. This is a GOOD thing, Dude, and it meant we were no longer quite so ... neutral. Do you think Germany considered our amendment to the Neutrality Act a friendly, neutral, or hostile act? How do you think Britain felt about it?

Furthermore, we helped them in other ways, as I earlier mentioned. Then we passed Lend-Lease, making it obvious to the world that neutrality was out the window. This is the BEST thing, Dude, for it was a gift to GB and an act of war against Germany. For the first time ever on such a grand scale one nation freely gave another* the material to fight a war in which the donor had not itself been declared a belligerant. Why did we do this, Dude?

Our constant and ever increasing aid to Great Britain from 1939 on means Britain was never "alone," your protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. That is the point, not how much we charged for it.

_________

* And not just GB, of course.

Altruism and nobility are individual human characteristics. Any person can choose to be altruistic, and so can small associations of people (families, churches, communities.)

Beyond that, no.

A government of any size should NEVER act out of altruism. Citizens of one nation should not die for citizens of any other country unless some national benefit accrues for this sacrifice. Dedicated, concentrated, even brutal self-interest must always be the governing impetus of any act undertaken by a nation.

ALWAYS.

Bennet,
Don't invent new history to flog America some more. Help to Russia was considered to help fighting direct threat of Nazi domination of Europe and Soviet Union, with all the resources. In the process we help creating another monster and a military threat for two generations. Churchill have seen it very well, but could do nothing about it, Roosevelt was a little bit naïve (uncle Joe) and Stalin was shrewd like hell, with huge military complex to back his policies. The new war was looming for many years, till Stalin’s death, but we were more technologically advanced (A bomb, then H bomb, air superiority, Navy), so he was trying to catch up. Eastern Europe was lost, but a bigger war was avoided.

Bennett:

War fighting rule 1: Before you attack your allies, defeat your enemy.

We still had the Japanese to fight. Judging from the carnage on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the ground invasions of the four main islands loomed large.

The Red Army had occupied Eastern Europe. Would you have engaged them in another massive conventional war? Not much popular support for that idea.

I never said,their treasury wasn't depleted by the war; I said that the US didn't cause it. Britain had to pay for its arms from ANY source -- US, UK, anywhere.

The fact is that most of Britain's purchases of war material and other supplies was from the U.S., so your qualifier is rather beside the point. FWIW, the British did feel at times that the United States was not at all unhappy about the fact that Britain had to essentially sell off large parts of its empire to the U.S. in order to fight Germany.

BTW, I haven't disputed the support that the U.S. gave Britain, but let's not make that support into more than what it was. Hitler was careful not to provoke the U.S. into open war, despite the support the U.S. was providing Britain in 1940-41, because the U.S. thanks to the isolationists was staying out of the war. The fact remains that from May, 1940 to June, 1941 only the British were actually at war with Germany, which still was a choice that as Ian Kershaw pointed out was one of the fateful choices of World War II.

Not the British - the United Kingdom. It's hard to imagine today that the Canadians actually built (with lots of British assistance and prodding, to be sure) what became the world's third-largest navy within a couple years. There were Indian and ANZ troops in the Western Desert, and pilots from all over the Empire (as well as the US and the countries of occupied Europe, particularly Poland) in the RAF.

"The fact remains that from May, 1940 to June, 1941 only the British were actually at war with Germany, which still was a choice that as Ian Kershaw pointed out was one of the fateful choices of World War II." -- Starfleet Dude

A choice made possible by US support.

"Not the British - the United Kingdom." -- Mr. Kwong.

Good point, but I'd modify your words a little:

Not the British, not the United Kingodom; the Empire*.

__________

* Some may prefer -- or wish to add -- "the Commonwealth," but what's the difference?

Lets rewind the tape a little further: Britain and France had an opportunity to deal decisively with Hitler when he reoccupied the Rhineland, but did nothing. From Churchill's *The Second World War*:

'Once Hitler’s Germany had been allowed to rearm without active interference by the Allies and former associated Powers, a second World War was almost certain. The longer a decisive trial of strength was put off, the worse would be our chances, at the first of stopping Hitler without serious fighting, and as a second stage of being victorious after a terrible ordeal…'

The British failure in the 1930's to arm sufficiently, and the French lack of imagination that resulted in the Maginot Line, together with both nations' failure to enforce both Versailles and Locarno, led directly to the catastrophe.

Actually, America was involved in WWII before Pearl Harbor.

In the Atlantic the USN was sinking German subs, and in the Pacific American "volunteers" fought against Japan in China.

True, the US hadn't declared war yet - but that doesn't mean we aren't already involved.

US support was sufficiently important that Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., US ambassador to the Court of St. James, consistently tried to short-circuit and undermine that same aid.

It was his opinion that it was US aid that was propping up Churchill. If the US made it clear that it was not going to support the UK (even Papa Joe wasn't so far gone as to believe that the US should support the Germans), then the UK would come to its senses and end the war.

IIRC, Papa Joe was a big fan of Lord Halifax, in this regard.

"The fact is that most of Britain's purchases of war material and other supplies was from the U.S., so your qualifier is rather beside the point." -- Sartfleet Dude.

So, the US kept the British war machine moving in her darkest hour? You do realize (don't you?) that you just conceded your entire argument about Britain's loneliness. Who would have supplied Britain, if the British couldn't, the US wouldn't, and her enemies shouldn't?

"War fighting rule 1: Before you attack your allies, defeat your enemy."

Which would explain all those troops we pulled out of Europe and sent to the Pacific after (not, since it didn't happen). Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945. Japan surrendered on August 14, 1945. Your explanation for why we didn't take on the Soviets is that 3 month period of time? Please.

We didn't fight the Soviets because we had accomplished our mission, defeating Nazi Germany. We were ready to head home. Everything we did after that was to keep Europe from falling into anarchy and chaos AND to position ourselves to keep Soviet Russia where she was and no further, keeping in mind that where she was happened to include control over pretty much all of Eastern Europe.

We did nothing of significance to stop the Soviets from controlling Eastern Europe. We adopted a policy of containment in response. And it stayed that way for 45 years.

I think, nomennovum, that starfleet_dude, per his namesake, is wishing for a world where money didn't matter.

That is, by his lights, the United States should have simply given the UK weapons. That the United States sold Britain weapons sullies the US reputation and actions.

That, by 1941, the US was, in fact, giving not only the UK, but the USSR, China, and various expatriate/exile forces their weapons is irrelevant. Filthy lucre has entered the equation, and like the loss of virginity, can never be reversed or even ameliorated.

That, by 1944, frex, not only much of the British Army, but most of the Canadian, Free French, Free Polish, and Brazilian contingents were equipped with American armor (Shermans, Greyhounds, Priests) is irrelevant. We took British money in 1940. That makes all subsequent actions suspect.

Meanwhile, the USSR fought "for liberty." Undoubtedly without having sullied their actions with considerations of mere cash. (One might say, "Tell that to the Spaniards," but why complicate things?)

It is worth correcting, I think, my previous comment, lest someone interpret it as saying the USSR fought solely with US weapons.

US Lend-Lease to the USSR was primarily in the area of combat service support. That is, transportations (a huge number of locomotives), trucks (the entire Studebaker production of trucks was shipped to the USSR), food (SPAM, but also wheat and other foodstuffs), and some aircraft (especially P-39 Airacobras) and tanks (at least one corps was equipped with M4 Shermans, which were found to be inferior to T-34s in protection, but at least as good in reliability).

The USSR, of course, depended on its own resources for the T-34, KV-1, etc.

But the Soviet Union's offensives in 1943-1945 were sustained by US trucks, and the Soviets could free up significant manpower for the military because the US was supplying food. Also, US supplies of locomotives replaced the huge amount of rolling stock lost to the Germans or destroyed during the early retreats. Both were essential for sustaining the logistics chain, w/o which no offensive is possible.

Lurking Observer,

Unfortunately, what you say seems to be true too often. Nothing ... absolutely nothing ... the US does is free from some taint.

'tain't good.

When I think of the Soviets in WWII I can't help but recall a quote from the movie Enemy at the Gates:

The one with
the rifle shoots!
The one without
follows him!
When the one
with the rifle gets killed,
the one who is following
picks up the rifle and shoots!

TomB: "Don't invent new history to flog America some more."

"New history?" While you may have wandered in here looking for a fight, you need to pick someone else.

As I said, I am not going to debate the contributions made by the Soviet Army to winning WW II as you are clearly convinced that they acted as some 1940s version of the Afghan mujahideen: minimally supplied by us enough to be cannon fodder in opposition to the German war machine. Since the truth is otherwise, I can only assume your ignorance is willful.

As to flogging America? You are the one who wants Americans to die in the service of your ego, so you can feel pious and righteous about what a sweet, kind nation we are at the expense of someone else's blood and everybody else's money.

Fortunately the people who had to make the hard decisions during WWII and afterwards weren't trying to be Sisters of Charity. They were making decisions for the benefit of the United States, as they saw our interests at the time.

Here's an idea. Drop a check in the mail to the International Red Cross. Let that be your contribution to our foreign policy. The last thing we need are cheesy do-gooders like you trumpeting the idea that the American military needs to be slogging around the world doing charitable acts of kindness.

The glorious Soviet Union captured Berlin. Big Deal. That was effectively part of the Yalta give away. Gen. Patton was well into Eastern Europe because he recognized the danger of the Soviets capturing Eastern Europe. He was given a direct order to withdraw to allow the Soviet army to occupy the east. This resulted in the Eastern Europe satellites and much of danger of the cold war.

L.O., FDR knew of Joe Kennedy's doubts about Britain's will to fight, which is why he dispatched his most trusted advisor, Harry Hopkins, to meet one-on-one with Winston Churchill:

His first key act was to convince Roosevelt to ignore the advice of his ambassador in London, Joseph P. Kennedy, who said Britain was finished. Britain did have the will to win, Hopkins reported, and under Churchill there would be no repeat of the French debacle. ...

This mattered greatly because before FDR was willing to do all he could in the face of strong isolationist sentiments in the U.S. to support Britain, he had to know that the will to fight was there. The truth was of course that even if U.S. money and support wasn't there, the British were going to fight to the bitter end regardless. Those who claim that U.S. money and support were what really mattered in Britain's decision to fight would be wise to pick up Ian Kershaw's book "Fateful Choices" and peruse the first one he mentions, namely Britain's choice to fight on alone against Nazi Germans after May, 1940.

No doubt AJacksonian wins this debate hands down.

Why is it necessary for the United States to be portrayed as some kind of angel of mercy? Why are we not allowed to have our own self-interest and the right to act in our own self-interest?

This is bizarre to me, the number of people commenting who are appalled, just appalled that anyone would question our selfless sacrifices on behalf of the world's oppressed. Why did that have to be our motive?

Why aren't we just as entitled as every other country to defend ourselves, to defend our allies, to try and establish conditions that would lead to greater security for the United States? If someone else benefits, great, whoopdeedoo, but why this need to portray our actions as divorced from our own self-interest?

Why are we the only country in the history of the world that must always have a reason for acting OTHER than our own best interest? or even sometimes it seems required that our reasons be contrary to our own self-interest in order to satisfy everybody.

You're not making much sense, starfleet_dude.

You keep quoting Kershaw to say that Britain had the will to fight on alone. (One suspects that this is at least as attributable to an individual---Winston Churchill, as to the Brits as a whole. Halifax and his coterie were clearly prepared to cut a deal.)

In which case, why would Britain "empty its treasury," especially since, as you suggest, this was somehow to Britain's detriment? Apparently, it was not only will, but resources that mattered.

I would suggest, rather, that you have two necessary conditions---British willingness to fight on (will), but also the wherewithal to do so, which would have required US support.

Said support, of course, was not free, since somebody has to pay the workers making the machine guns, tanks, and fighter planes.

But this is a digression from the main point here. The US was providing support to a combatant nation, at some risk to itself, in order to help keep that nation free. That it accepted payment in the process does not sully that act---and the support itself was a necessary factor in Britain's ability to remain in the war.

(Consider, for example, how long Britain could have sustained its war effort if the German U-boat campaign had not been balanced by US shipbuilding.)

"Those who claim that U.S. money and support were what really mattered in Britain's decision to fight ..." -- Starfleet Dude

Strawman? No one here did. I said that the two most important factors were "will" and the "United States," with "will" being "first and foremost." This was in response to your exagerated claim that "the country that most deserves credit for defeating Germany is Britain."

Have you forgotten the thread of this dispute?

Bennett:

I think the issue is not whether US self-interest was involved.

Very clearly, it was. The US, like Great Britain and others, would have found a world where Hitler controlled all or most of Europe to its disadvantage. Similarly, a world where Japan controlled China would have been a challenge to the US.

The problem with your formulation is that you go too far the other way---it is not that there is no US self-interest at work, but similarly, neither is it accurate to suggest that only US self-interest is at work.

At the end of the day, the United States does stand for something, other than its own self-interest. The US may not have backed Syngman Rhee in 1950 solely out of altruism, but unlike, say, the French or the Chinese or the Soviets, the US, in its 50 year interaction with the South Koreans did push for democratization.

Similarly, one could make the argument that the United States could have chosen either the Japanese or the Germans, and cut a deal with them, and dealt solely with the other. (Indeed, as it was the Japanese who bombed the US, one could reasonably wonder why we focused our efforts on Germany, and if we hadn't short-changed our efforts against the real enemy. To borrow from current comments: Why are we attacking Germany, when there were no Germans at Pearl Harbor?)

The American people have generally wanted their major wars to be crusades. The Civil War was fought over secession, but it caught the larger imagination (and sustained support) because it evolved into a war over slavery and freedom. The same applies to the other major wars of US history (WWI, WWII, the Cold War).

Our smaller wars, OTOH, are much more issues of self-interest----and interestingly, were fought with much smaller forces and more limited public support.

Both self-interest and idealism are at work in US foreign policy.

Bingo, LO.

First, in defeating Hitler, Japan, and Fascist Italy, millions of Americans, Russians, Britons, French, Dutch, Belgians, Poles, Greeks, Italians (remember, after its surrender, the new Italian government joined the Allies as a co-belligerent and Italian partisans gave the Germans fits in northern Italy), Yugoslav, and I can go on and on shed their blood. The sacrifice of these men, women, and children, regardless of nationality, should never be forgotten or diminished.

Second, to be brutally honest, Great Britain survived in 1940-41 due to a mix of courage, stubbornness, blind luck (Hitler ordering the Luftwaffe to shift targets from the RAF to London following the British reprisal bombing of Berlin due to errant bombs dropping on London), Hitler invading the Soviet Union, and yes, American aid in the form of Lend-Lease and American volunteers to the RAF and British Army.

The Soviets paid the highest human price in the war--no question about that, but American aid in the form of Lend Lease, as posted above, was instrumental in Soviet offensive success.

Would Great Britain have stood without both the Soviet Union and United States in the war? No it would have fallen within a year or two. Would it have stood with only the Soviet Union helping? Maybe, but it would have been a very dubious proposition. In the end, American economic and industrial strength, along with the sacrifice of American soldiers and those of other nationalities defeated the Axis.

I understand, L.O., that we may feel the need to perceive some idealism at work in our foreign policy and that's fine. But it really is subordinate to our self-interest and should be far down on the list of motives for whatever we do.

This is why we pulled out of Somalia, why we didn't intervene in Rwanda, why we didn't stop the Chinese from invading Tibet, why we don't do anything about the Sudan or Burma or any of the other places in the world where people are oppressed. We have no self-interest at stake.

I am very proud when we do act in our own best interests and consider it right and proper. And often providing assistance to others IS in our own best interests. After the tsunami, for example, providing relief to the victims was important for reasons of stability and security in that region. This is to our benefit.

But we're a country, not a church. I just don't see the need to put haloes on our heads like we're super saints. That everything we do is out of the goodness of our hearts. I certainly hope it isn't anyway. We may be rich and powerful but even we have our limits.

Tinian said:

"Also, the Japanese were hardly in any position to invade and conquer us. Maybe take Wake Island, maybe even Hawaii, but were they really so important that we had to fight the war in the Pacific? Nope."

I would have to disagree on this one. Until December 7, 1941, if you had told people that the Japanese would be able to conquer many of the major islands in the Pacific, and then bring Oahu to its knees in about 2 hours, they would have laughed at you.

And remember, if the Japanese HAD taken both Wake Island and Hawaii, they would have effectively controlled the entire eastern and central Pacific Ocean. Our side would have no island bases for aircraft refueling. Nowadays, with our long range aircraft, Hawaii and Wake aren't as crucial as they were back then, but at the time, both were absolutely essential. There's no way we could have defeated Japan in WW2 if they had control of those two places-especially the Hawaiian Islands.

The Japanese's attempts to capture Alaska's Aleutian Islands was also part of their strategy to control the Pacific.

Bennett:

But what is "self-interest"? Is it in the US "self-interest" to promote democracy among our allies?

At the end of the day, we probably ticked off more folks by pushing democracy (however incomplete and hesitantly) than if we had simply kept the local kleptocrat in power and instructed the CIA to keep them in power.

Was US pressure on Marcos to step down a matter of self-interest, and does that contradict democratization of the Philippines?

Again, I think you are painting too manichean a contrast. At the end of the day, we believe that democracy is not only in our self-interest, but also a good thing, in and of itself. Conversely, we support democratization both because it reflects the will of the people (and, yes, sometimes that means the locals will then ask us to leave--a tu quoque comment by the Left all too often), but also because, at the end of the day, we believe that this is generally more stabilizing.

And sometimes, like any major power, we don't. As FDR said, sometimes we support them, because they're our sonuvab**ch.

Of course, this also gets us pilloried. Given a choice between a Mobotu and a pro-Communist Lumumba, we backed the former. Or, as starfleet_dude keeps reminding us---the US made Britain pay for its weapons, as though this is somehow shameful or denigrating.

And all this is in contrast to the USSR---which fought "for liberty."

Tom Shipley said

Now watch how the liberal turns this around and makes it about Iraq... this underscores the importance of our people to make sure our government only goes to war when necessary, for the right cause at the right time. Soldiers follow orders. Democracies need to make sure their leaders are following the people's will when going to war (which is hard when a false case for war is given).

Rarely do our people ever want to go to war. They didn't before WWI, and they didn't before WWII; ditto for the Civil War, Korea, Vietnam, the Mexican-American war, ... The majority didn't even want us to do the Revolutionary War!

What makes us go to war is our leaders leading us to war -- in some cases, kicking and screaming. Look at Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Bush -- you name the leader. All of the criticisms leveled by the Democrats against Bush are identical to those they leveled against Lincoln. And the American people listen; Lincoln only won reelection because Grant produced some victories just prior to the election. Had Grant lost or dithered, we would have surely had Democratic President G.B.McClellan, who promised us peace with honor with the CSA... That's why the Democrats are so intent on sullying General Petraeus. They recognize that he is the Grant of our era, and therefore making his message be a lie is paramount to their own desires to obtain and keep power, and thus to pass their own legislative agenda. Like all isolationists, they aren't really concerned about what happens overseas, they are more concerned about what's inside the cocoon, not the knife that might burst it.

I don't think any of our leaders have us go to war for themselves -- they do it for our country. Our isolationist trend runs deep, which is why we are having problems with Iraq and Immigration. We really don't want either, deep in our hearts -- we want all the good things, and we want those foreigners to just leave us alone. But they never do -- they never do...

Nomennovum, L.O., my point about Britain is based not on what happened after Britain decided to not capitulate to Nazi Germany and the subsequent entry of both the U.S. and USSR into the war, but on the fact that at one point in the war, what Britain did was critical to the outcome of the war. It was by no means certain that even with U.S. support that Britain would be able to hold out alone, which is why putting the emphasis on the support before the will is mistaken. Churchill led the way and was indispensable to the effort, but the rest of the government, including Halifax, followed his lead as well and did their part.

As it turned out, the RAF prevailed against the Luftwaffe and Britain didn't fall, and Hitler finally canceled plans for the invasion of England in favor of a fateful roll of the dice by attacking the USSR in June, 1941. All before the U.S. went to war against Germany, of course. Britain could certainly have never have beaten Germany alone, but the key point is that she didn't give up, didn't surrender, and didn't let Hitler win.

"...but the key point is that she[Great Britian] didn't give up, didn't surrender..."

And this segues into the present day rather nicely, doesn't it?

coldwarrior415, Britain was defending itself from invasion while the U.S. is a foreign power occupying Iraq.

unclesmrgol:

Agreed.

The funny thing isn't the comparison with Lincoln, but rather the idea that we shouldn't be lied into war, quoted by folks who have canonized FDR.

FDR most certainly lied us into war. Look at the orders he gave ADM Stark (then Chief of Naval Operations) regarding US Navy operations in the Atlantic. Orders to attack German U-boats, despite being a non-belligerent---a clear violation of international law (another shibboleth of the Left).

Anyone remember the USS Reuben James? Arlo Guthrie wrote a song about her. She was sunk by a German U-boat---after attacking the U-boat first.

Or the USS Kearny? Again, FDR made a speech about the unwarranted attack against her---conveniently forgetting that the Kearny had attacked a U-boat first.

Or how about the Neutrality Acts? Starfleet_dude cites it, lamenting how the US demanded to be paid. That was written into the law---a law that FDR signed.

Or how about arranging to meet Churchill in Newfoundland in early 1941, long before Pearl Harbor, and agreeing that the main enemy, the focus of US military efforts would be Germany? Joint war planning with a belligerent is a violation of international law, and such diplomacy was undertaken in secret, w/o reporting to the American people, the press, or even most of Congress.

FDR lied about German and American actions---in order to help keep Britain free. As Bennett notes, this was an issue of self-interest. It also was the right thing to do, rather than allow another nation to fall under the Nazi heel.

But one wonders whether Tom Shipley would've preferred us to have a pristine President who would have been "following the people's will when going to war" (and therefore followed Papa Joe Kennedy's advice and not provided aid and support), or whether he prefers a President who made things harder because "a false case for war is given"?

starfleet_dude:

Yes, at one point, what Britain did was important.

You know, at one point, what Joe Stalin did was also important. That was signing a treaty with Hitler that allowed the Germans to invade Poland (the ally of Britain), safe in the knowledge that the Soviets would help.

At one point, what Britain (under the Chamberlain government ) did was also important. It failed to stand up to Hitler, at Munich, and sacrificed the Czechs, leading Hitler to believe that the Brits and French would not fight for Poland.

So, yes, decisions were made throughout the war that affected its course. Millions fought and died in Europe so that THEIR nation would not be under Hitler.

Now, back to Fred Thompson's comment about the US having been willing to shed blood on others' behalf.

L.O., you'll get no argument from me about the importance of the August, 1939 non-aggression pact between Germany and the USSR and how it allowed Hitler to then go to war in Poland. There are many such what-ifs, including the one where Hitler reoccupied the de-militarized Rhineland in 1936 without any counterattack from France, which probably would have finished Hitler off right then and there. I'm just talking about turning points during the war itself.

Starfleet_dude,

If you wish to engrandize your myopia, feel free.

A point any good leader comprehends and takes to heart, be it FDR, or Lincoln, Kennedy, or even Mao or Ho Chi Minh, regardless of the nationality or national entity, the collective resolve of a people to win, and work together, sharing the sacrifice and shouldering together the burden. until that which is sought is won is the earmark of a national entity that can prevail.

Today, where is that national resolve, the resolve to once and for all begin and finish the dismantling of corrupt dictatorships, and put to final rest terrorists and thugs, and those who support them, directly or by means of money, or equipment or simple encouragement which or who have disenfranchised, imprisoned or murdered millions, at each juncture, directly or incrementally gnawing away at who we are, trying to destroy that which we have built, and in the process threatening the birthright of our children?

The wonderful point of studying history is learning the lesson contained within that history. Neither Churchill nor Roosevelt had an overwhelming mandate of the people they ruled in their attemtps to prosecute war. Roosevelt found himself criticvized well into 1944, prior to the D-Day invasion, as did Churchill. But, the people, with resolve, took on the burden, shouldered that burden, made the sacrifices to their own good end.

Seems to many are content to allow nearly 50 years of corruption and terror in the Middle East to be or stay acceptable, while we, here, hide under our bedsheets, afraid and intimidated by the largeness of what is asked of us, something that need not be asked, something that should rise freely from among all of us.

By years and years of placating everyone who may pose a threat to us, we have inculcated among ourselves the notion that we are at fault, and that those who oppose us with their threats and complaints against us are on equal footing to anything and everything we do and stand for.

I'd like to end that downward trend in our national consciousness, end once and for all the oligarchy of those who found fame and fortune as members of that group Lenin refered to as useful idiots in the 60's who have done so much to make us a nation of sheep, sheep who need to be led.

If not us? who? Who will stand as champion of the oppressed? Who will stand as champion of those who seek their God given Rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or are you, like so many others, smug and even grossly racist when you take the position that those God given Rights should accrue only to us, and no one else, ever?

The point of this thread is that the WaPo stands in its assertion that the USSR was an equal champion of freedom, equal in every respect to us, and history has shown the USSR to have been terribly lacking in that department.

One must never forget that it is and was essentially a Soviet pursuit all across the globe that oppressed millions, and set the stage for what is going on today. We are not without sin, but ours are quite venial when compared to the Soviet mortal.

Changing the direction a bit, another inaccuracy in the WaPost article "Neither Britain nor the United States was invaded or occupied in either of the world wars."

I can think of 2 cases where this is incorrect.

1) The Germans occupied the Channel Islands, IIRC.

2) The Japanese invaded the Aleutian Islands, which were US territory and part of Alaska.

"The point of this thread is that the WaPo stands in its assertion that the USSR was an equal champion of freedom, equal in every respect to us, and history has shown the USSR to have been terribly lacking in that department." -- Coldwarrior415

Not equal, Coldwarrior415: better. That was the Post's assertion.

L.O., I do not believe the Soviets fought for liberty, except their own to do with as they wished in subjugating Eastern Europe.

But I also believe that it doesn't matter why they fought or what their motives were because our leaders at the time believed they could better win the war with Russia in it on our side.

I believe that encouraging democracies does serve our own self-interest. I think we've concluded that self-governance in a system of laws with functioning institutions of state (the courts, etc.) leads to societies that don't seek out ways to slaughter their neighbors or attack other countries and are not attractive havens for terrorists.

We've seen that backing the local strong man doesn't work. We've tried it everywhere and sooner or later the societies implode or explode and we have a bigger mess to deal with. So no, I don't think we would consider it in our own best interest to install a dictator and boogie down the road. Been there, done that.

Don't forget, that Soviets invaded Poland on 17th September 1939, fullfilling their obligation from Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact.

DoktorNo:

As Tom Shipley writes, I will say Soviets died for the freedom and liberty of other people.

Thus, their invasion of Poland, as one of Hitler's allies, was in order to bring freedom and liberty to them.

Which raises the interesting question of whether, by these lights, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact wasn't, in fact, a treaty aimed at furthering freedom and liberty?

coldwarrior415, submitted for your approval from 1994:

After you take down Saddam Hussain's government, he [Dick Cheney] asks, "then what are you gonna put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government in Iraq, you can easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off... it's a quagmire ... if you try to take over Iraq... How many additional American causalities was Saddam worth? Our judgment was not very many, and I think we got it right."

That's some history there, all right. I agree that Dick Cheney could well be a useful idiot from the 60s though. Or not.

Yup, because anyone who changes their mind in foreign policy is a dolt.

Frankly, I do not know how to effect a permanency in American foreign policy.

From that horrible liar of a President, FDR, in a letter written in 1934, when he was asked to lay out a long-term, consistent foreign policy plan.

Part of that strategy of bankrupting Great Britain, no doubt. (Actually, it had to do with the decision to recognize the USSR.)

http://www.enotes.com/famous-quotes/frankly-i-do-not-know-how-to-effect-a-permanency

Or, how about this one, starfleet?

I have said not once but many times that I have seen war and that I hate war; I say that again and again. I hope the United States will keep out of this war, I believe that it will. And I give you assurance and reassurance that every effort of your government will be directed toward that end. As long as it remains within my power to prevent there will be no blackout of peace in the United States.

FDR again, 1939. Just TWO YEARS before telling the American people how the Kearny had been attacked while simply minding its own business. (Cheney's comment predates the Iraq war by seven years. The Rummy photo w/ Hussein predates the Iraq War by nearly two decades.)

http://www.enotes.com/famous-quotes/this-nation-will-remain-a-neutral-nation-but-i

Whatever is one to make of this? I'm shocked, SHOCKED to find that changing circumstances lead to policies that contradict earlier speeches!

The changing circumstances for FDR being the rise of Nazi Germany and a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. Of course FDR was no babe in the woods when it came to foreign relations, and was quite aware of the threat Hitler's rise to power posed to the U.S. and the world at large. That he had to consider virulent isolationism at home was why he had to also reassure Americans he wasn't seeking war, even as he knew war was looming on the horizon.

Dick Cheney on the other hand, was facing a situation in Iraq by 2003 that was little changed since the end of the Gulf War in 1991. Saddam was still militarily impotent and contained, and inspections were turning up nothing about those alledged WMDs either. So before you go on yourself L.O. about the circumstances facing FDR, you might want to compare and contrast those facing Dick Cheney and George W. Bush first before drawing any lessons about it.

So it is okay to lie to the American people?

Is that what you're saying, starfleet, when you say he was "reassurring" the American people?

And that the loss of 2000 American sailors and two old battleships (permanently, several more were raised) should be worthy of reassessing US foreign policy, but 3000 dead American civilians, and the loss of the Twin Towers and part of the Pentagon should not be is a rather interesting calculus.

After all, despite the attacks occurring in the Pacific, by Japan, the US, under FDR, continued to focus on a German threat that, as you've emphasized, by 1942 was hardly likely to invade the UK, never mind the US. Even as Japanese subs shelled the continental US.

Whereas the idea of reconsidering whether Saddam posed an acceptable threat (even as he was regularly firing at US and UK aircraft maintaining the no-fly zone) after the worst attack on US soil, well, that's just obviously silly.

That the containment of Saddam required the long-term stationing of US troops in Saudi Arabia, stoking the fundamentalism that bin Laden was championing, because it constituted the presence of "infidels" in the land of Mecca and Medina is blithely accepted.

Did you support the sanctions that were killing, what were the claims, 5000 Iraqi children every month, starfleet? That was part of what was containing Saddam, after all. Think that wasn't playing into bin Laden's hands?

But then, given we were bankrupting Britain rather than giving stuff away, what were you expecting?

Hitler could not cross the English Channel much less the Atlantic Ocean and while Japan could attack us in places like the Philippines there is no way they could conquer this country.

If pure self interest without any consideration for the right thing to do were all that was at play we could have avoided both wars. Of course the world would be a much different place today if we had.

The United States had fed, clothed, sheltered, rescued and just plain taken care of more people than any country in history. That is no small thing, whatever the public education system may say.

Tom Shipley stated:

" Democracies need to make sure their leaders are following the people's will when going to war (which is hard when a false case for war is given). "

Tom, you just cannot be serious with that statement are you? Are you suggesting we have an MSNBC poll determine if we go to war with Iran? If Russia decides to drop a few hundred bombs on Alaska, you want Tim Russert to hold a telephone call in poll to see if we respond?

The United States is the first imperial power in the history of the world that didn't want to build an empire.

Of course the United States built an empire, and there's nothing wrong with this very real achievement. It sounds a little self-righteous to say that our only interest has been to sacrifice our young men and women on the alter of global freedom and democracy.

The US has supported a large number of very bad dictators around the world in pursuit of its own national interests- and at great cost to local populations. Look at the history of Central America or even Saddam's Iraq before the invasion of Kuwait.

Anyone who's seriously studied US foreign policy should understand that the Monroe Doctrine is a statement of American hegemony.

Why is it necessary for the United States to be portrayed as some kind of angel of mercy? Why are we not allowed to have our own self-interest and the right to act in our own self-interest?

This is bizarre to me, the number of people commenting who are appalled, just appalled that anyone would question our selfless sacrifices on behalf of the world's oppressed. Why did that have to be our motive?

Why aren't we just as entitled as every other country to defend ourselves, to defend our allies, to try and establish conditions that would lead to greater security for the United States? If someone else benefits, great, whoopdeedoo, but why this need to portray our actions as divorced from our own self-interest?

Bennett is exactly right. And you can add the pursuit of national wealth to our aspirations. As a country of capitalists, there's nothing wrong with our pursuit of financial success.

When it contributed to a balance of powers in the Middle East and better protection of the West's oil supply, the US certainly had no problem supporting Saddam, no matter how many people he gassed and tortured.

The US has pursued noble goals over its history and played in important role in defending and supporting democracy- although more so in Europe than other parts of the world. But to say that self-interest hasn't been a decisive motivation behind US foreign policy is simply naive.

Is that what you're saying, starfleet, when you say he was "reassurring" the American people?

No, L.O. What FDR did do was walk a tightrope between doing what he could to assist Britain and prepare for the war he saw coming while dealing with isolationists at home by assuring them he only sought to protect America. The only time FDR could be said to have lied was when he said in one speech during the 1940 campaign that he would send no boys off to war and dropped of his usual "unless we're attacked" at the end. Wendell Wilkie was livid about it, but in the end FDR won the election for an unprecedented third term handily and most who voted for him preferred him because they felt he would be the better leader in case there was a war.

And that the loss of 2000 American sailors and two old battleships (permanently, several more were raised) should be worthy of reassessing US foreign policy, but 3000 dead American civilians, and the loss of the Twin Towers and part of the Pentagon should not be is a rather interesting calculus.

The truly "interesting calculus" actually is how an attack by al-Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan somehow led to a war in Iraq.

Whereas the idea of reconsidering whether Saddam posed an acceptable threat (even as he was regularly firing at US and UK aircraft maintaining the no-fly zone) after the worst attack on US soil, well, that's just obviously silly.

Given that Saddam's violation of the no-fly zone were in fact infrequent (less than ten violations in 2002. IIRC) and that none of them resulted in any casualties or even damage to U.S. or U.K. forces, it seems pretty silly to justify a full-blown war, years of occupation and over 3,000 dead U.S. soldiers on such a trivial casus belli as that.

That the containment of Saddam required the long-term stationing of US troops in Saudi Arabia, stoking the fundamentalism that bin Laden was championing, because it constituted the presence of "infidels" in the land of Mecca and Medina is blithely accepted.

The containment of Saddam Hussein's Iraq cost approximately a billion dollars a year and was sustainable in terms of the numbers of U.S. soldiers and planes required to maintain it. Bush's war will likely cost close to a trillion dollars by the bitter end and has cost the army dearly in terms of worn out equipment and men and the abuse of the National Guard as a stopgap for years that has also strained their volunteer forces. Needless to say, the occupation of Iraq hasn't exactly been strewn with roses either.

Did you support the sanctions that were killing, what were the claims, 5000 Iraqi children every month, starfleet? That was part of what was containing Saddam, after all. Think that wasn't playing into bin Laden's hands?

As if the death of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and the displacement of millions more directly as a result of the Bush's war isn't exactly what Osama bin Laden was hoping for.

Terrye said

"Hitler could not cross the English Channel much less the Atlantic Ocean and while Japan could attack us in places like the Philippines there is no way they could conquer this country"

To the contrary-Hitler had actually landed German agents on Long Island and in Florida in 1942 ("Operation Pastorius") and said agents were supposed to stage terrorism attacks in NY City. These included sabotoging the NYC public water supply, which would send the city into chaos. Luckily, an alert US Coast Guard guy spotted the guys who landed on Long Island, and they ratted out the rest of the ring.

The Japanese also attacked the West Coast-a Japanese sub shelled an oil refinery in Santa Barbara California, another sub shelled Oregon, and Japan also invaded the Aleutian Islands, US Territory at the time.

The Japanese did in fact have a plan to invade the Western US. And Hitler had also drawn up plans to invade the Eastern US, starting with the Northeast.

The Japanese had long desired to invade and capture Hawaii, and this desire continued even after Pearl Harbor. But the plan met resistance due to internal bickering.

starfleet_dude:

Slight correction on your Iraq no-fly zone comments.

After U.N. Security Council resolution 1441 was passed on Nov. 8, 2002, Iraqi forces fired on U.S and British pilots 264 times.

Starfleet Dude,

I think it's safe to say that you have wandered far afield here. Your thoughts on the Iraq war* are old, worn, tired, trite, and quite, quite beside the point. I, for one, have read them too many times from the likes of you. Don't waste our time.

We get it. You're against the current war. We made Saddam the monster he became because we never "had a problem" with him** before. You can read bin Laden's mind and you know that the US fell right into bin Laden's hand and his plans are working perfectly.

We get it. The US wasn't the decisive factor in World War II. The US was just greedy and bankrupted the UK and stripped her of her hard earned Imperial holdings. Britain's role was decisive.

We get. So, leave already.

________

* I mean "Bush's War."

** Bin Laden too, maybe?

Not to nitpick, but this claim:

When it contributed to a balance of powers in the Middle East and better protection of the West's oil supply, the US certainly had no problem supporting Saddam, no matter how many people he gassed and tortured.

Ticks me off. Just for some perspective, I have a chart.

And that is a nitpick, because while we didn't arm Saddam, we definitely sold out the Kurds after the first Gulf War, just as we sold out the Vietnamese.

But Fred's overall point stands. No other nation in the world has so many graves in foreign nations, and we didn't dig those graves with imperialistic ambitions. The other piece of the puzzle, which is too often ignored, is our actions after WWII, where we rebuilt two nations and brought them democracy. That action was unprecedented in the history of the world. And I do think we should get a little credit for it, as we're doing the same thing in Iraq. If deposing Saddam Hussein was our only goal, we could've been long gone. We've spent more blood and treasure rebuilding nations than any other country in history.

I'm not ignoring the bad, I'm just saying that we try harder and are more idealistic than damn near anyone else when it comes to our actions and motives.

Del Dolmonte, here's what I found about no-fly zones, BTW:

Following are charts provided by British Defense Secretary to parliament. On November 27th in 2002, in response to a question asked by the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, Sir Menzies Campbell, the Ministry of Defense released the information "on how many occasions (a) coalition aircraft and (b) UK aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone in Iraq have (i) detected violations of the no-fly zones, (ii) detected a direct threat to a coalition aircraft and (iii) released ordnance in each month since March, stating for each month the tonnage released" (House of Commons Hansard) included in these charts:

(i) No-fly zone (NFZ) violations are detected in several ways. I am withholding details of detection methods in accordance with Exemption 1 of the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information. The number of violations recorded, by month, in the southern No Fly Zone, is as follows:

Month

Number of violations recorded

March 0

April 1

May 0

June 1

July 1

August 0

September 3

October 2

November 0

Of course this isn't the whole story, but it does make me wonder where all these hundreds of violations you speak of are coming from, and how such numbers were determined in the first place.

Here are the problems with comparing Saddam / Iraq to World War II:

1. We know how World War II turned out: we won. What is the saying? "Victory has a thousand fathers, while defeat is an orphan." Since World War II turned out well for us, EVERYBODY thinks of it as "a good war". We don't know yet how Iraq will turn out; if the libs have their way, it'll be the worst US disaster since Vietnam (another war they scuttled).

2. Evidence of Hitler's evil is well-documented and widely known. He's been the ultimate villain in American minds since 1945, the undisputed Worst Man in History.* Saddam was an amateur compared to him, and there are no undisputed tallies of just how many people he DID murder.**

3. Hindsight is ALWAYS 20 / 20. Looking back at 1919 or 1925 or 1933 or 1935 or 1938, it's obvious that Hitler was up to no good and had to be stopped. We don't have that sort of hindsight with regard to Saddam.

So a few questions to starfleet_dude and the rest of you who stoutly maintain that Saddam was not a threat, that he was contained, that we were just a bunch of ol' meanies when we picked on him:

How many nazis were there in Germany in 1929, i.e. ten years before the German invasion of Poland? Did anybody but the most hysterical alarmist think that Germany, still bloody and battered from its defeat just ten years before, was REALLY a threat to world peace? After all, there were the various terms of the Versaille Treaty to ensure that Germany had only a small, defensive army. Germany was contained, right? And who was afraid of those doofuses in the brown shirts? Why would anybody think that Germans would be crazy enough to follow a gang of losers like them?

How big a threat did Japan pose to the United States in 1931, ten years before the attack on Pearl Harbor? Anybody know just how puny Japan's industrial base was compared to ours, even counting the effects of the Depression? What was the population of Japan relative to the United States? Why would anybody but the worst alarmist in the Navy Department EVER think that Japan would be a major threat to the United States? And who would ever think that the Japanese would be crazy enough to pick a fight with a country so much larger and stronger than they were?

Since libs doubtless miss the point, let me be explicit: the world is not static. The world is not predictable. The nation that is your friend today may be your enemy tomorrow. The nation that doesn't seem a threat today may kick your ass a year from now. Claims that Saddam was "contained" are hollow as we simply don't know (and, happily, will never have to find out) what he and Iraq might have done five or ten years from now. Would the sanctions regime have held together? Almost certainly not. Would Saddam have tried to get more WMD, including nukes? A safe bet that he would. Would the UN have stopped him? Don't make me laugh!

When you say that "Saddam wasn't a threat to the United States in 2002", remember that Nazi Germany wasn't a threat to us in 1932... but we were in a desperate war with them just ten years later.

----------

(*) I've often mused about the fact that Hitler wins the title while Stalin finishes a distant third behind Schickelgruber and George Bush (or whoever the libs decide to hate on a given day). Stalin and his goons murdered far more people that the nazi regime did, yet many on the left still have fond regard for Uncle Joe and the USSR. I guess Stalin just had better PR (Walter Duranty, anyone?).

(**) Libs often sneer that more people have died in Iraq as a result of our liberation than were murdered by Saddam. Question: how many people did Hitler murder, and how many died as a result of the "Great Crusade" to liberate Europe from his odious clutches? Was World War II therefore not worth it?

"We've spent more blood and treasure rebuilding nations than any other country in history."

And we did that because we calculated it was in our own best interest to do so. Hitler came out of the ashes of WW I; Japan if left to its own devices may well have reconstituted and continued its imperialistic ambitions at some point, or worse, become a satellite of Russia. We learned after WWI that you can't just fight, win and leave. Because something worse might take its place and then you have to fight again.

And we got rid of Saddam and are now trying to rebuild a stable country in Iraq because we calculate that it is in our own best interest to do that, so it doesn't become another Somalia or Sudan or Afghanistan after 1989, where AQ can hide out and grow.

Doesn't this make us smart and sensible? Must it also make us virtuous?

Bennett,

Don't lose sight of the fact that doing the right thing can be (and usually is, in my view) in one's self interest. They are certainly not mutually exclusive.

Further, "self-interest" is often used as an excuse NOT to do the right thing -- usually for short term gains, greed, or simple malice. Thus, you should always ask yourself, "What is the right thing to do?" With regard to national security and foreign policy, this should be followed by, "Can it be done, what are the costs, and are the benefits worth it?"

Finally, do not forget that American citizens are generally happy "to do the right thing" -- often at considerable cost to the taxpayer. Do I really need to list the examples?

Bennett: And we did that [rebuilt defeated enemies after World War II] because we calculated it was in our own best interest to do so. Hitler came out of the ashes of WW I; Japan if left to its own devices may well have reconstituted and continued its imperialistic ambitions at some point, or worse, become a satellite of Russia. We learned after WWI that you can't just fight, win and leave. Because something worse might take its place and then you have to fight again.

...

Doesn't this make us smart and sensible? Must it also make us virtuous?

Yes, it does. Consider what we MIGHT have done, and indeed what some US officials (notably Sec. Morgenthau) WANTED to do: utterly destroy Germany. Divide it up into several smaller, autonomous and agrarian states that could NEVER be a threat to anybody ever again. We might have done as the Soviets did in East Germany, which was to establish a puppet government and a police state to ensure that the new Germany would NEVER be a threat to them again. We could even have taken a leaf from the pages of ancient history and slaughtered the Germans as Rome did Carthage and as Schickelgruber attempted to do with the Jews, or as Stalin did with... just about everybody that he could get his hands on.

We did none of those things. Why? Because Americans, even while motivated by national self-interest, still feel some desire to do the "right" or "decent" or "virtuous" thing.

People have been discussing this subject as if America's behavior is an "either / or" proposition: we are either motivated solely by altruism or else solely by self-interest. The fact of the matter is that we are motivated by both things. However, getting back to Thompson's original point (lost in the dust 150 posts ago!), we have been motivated by altruism far more than any other country in history.

I want to repeat myself: we have mud on our skirts. We've done selfish and wicked things in our history. We have not always done - or even tried to do - the "right" thing. But compared to any other country on earth, I think our record is damned good. There are literally millions of people on earth who owe their peace and security and prosperity to the fact that America is a fundamentally decent nation.

I am generally only interested in doing things that are for the benefit of the United States. I don't hide my nationalism, it's how I feel, it's what I believe.

For example, I believe we long ago calculated that it's not in our national interest to have colonies, to seek to acquire lots of territory outside the US. It's not who we are, it's inconsistent with our beginnings and our purposes. And perhaps more important, colonies can be a drain on the treasury, they require security and infrastructure.

I think we've decided that the lives of our military men and women are exceedingly important to us and we will not willingly sacrifice them unless we believe it is necessary to serve our own interests.

The right thing? The right thing is what serves our interests. Generally speaking, we've found that doing the wrong thing doesn't serve our interests. Was it right to prop up the Shah of Iran, not to rein him and his Savak secret police in when we had the chance, to allow him to create conditions in Iran that facilitated the triumphant return of Khomeini? No, that was the wrong thing to do and we've paid for it.

Was it the right thing for President Clinton to decide that instead of simply facilitating food shipments into Somalia we should take responsibility for establishing security throughout the country but without adequately equipping ourselves to do that and with no proper understanding of the true conditions on the ground there? No, that was the wrong thing to do and we paid for it.

Del:

Oh puhleaze, there is a big difference between landing a few men on the shore and launching an all out invasion like the landing at Normandy.

"Because Americans, even while motivated by national self-interest, still feel some desire to do the "right" or "decent" or "virtuous" thing."

As I pointed out in my last post, this is generally because the decent or virtuous thing is in our own best interests. I think we were well aware at the end of WW II that Soviet Russia was going to be a problem and that if we turned Germany into an agrarian society (which was not ever seriously considered as a viable alternative except by Morganthau) it would make western Europe more vulnerable to Soviet aggression. The other alternatives would not have been in our own best interests because we didn't lose all those men in defeating one monster just to take his place.

Look, I realize this is well off the original post about the Soviets being great liberators. the only point I've been trying to make is that as a country we have the right to act in our best interests. And more often than not what we calculate to be in our own best interests also happens to be decent or virtuous. But the former should drive the latter, not vica-versa.

I love these self interests debates, etc.

Is it in the best interest of the United States to surrender in Iraq? Is it in the best interest of the United States if one of our major political parties treats the President of the United States more like an enemy than a war time President? Is it in the best interest of the United States to abandon our allies?

It would seem so to some people.

If Saddam was not a threat, the time to make that determination was about a decade ago. Do not kick that can down the road to the next guy and then complain about the ultimate outcome.

As for Saddam, if he had been turned loose back in 2003 or 2004 {after we had to end the sanctions and stop the no fly zones} he would have had plenty of time to start up the weapons programs again, get back to work killing his people and threatening his neighbors and making deals with the Russians and God knows who else.

Why wouldn't he have? Monsters like Saddam and Hitler do not change, they do not learn their lesson ,especially if they are allowed to get away with bloody murder.

But whatever people might think of that we are in Iraq now and we have a responsibility to our fallen soldiers and the people of that country and it would be nice if people could get past the partisan crap long enough to think about what running away really means.

Oh yeah, we have the right to act in our self interest and so does Israel. you betcha. Unless of course we are stealing oil or whatever.

Now the Soviet Union they would not steal oil or anything. No siree, in fact we are no better than they are. That is exactly what the argument is.

Among people who have killed more than Hitler one should add Mao in addition to Stalin. Pol Pot was as viscous as any of them although he was only a bit player in the headcount game.

If Saddam was not a threat, the time to make that determination was about a decade ago. Do not kick that can down the road to the next guy and then complain about the ultimate outcome.

Dick Cheney said it wasn't worth ousting Saddam in 1994, which makes his subsequent change of heart more than a little ironic.

As for Saddam, if he had been turned loose back in 2003 or 2004 {after we had to end the sanctions and stop the no fly zones} he would have had plenty of time to start up the weapons programs again, get back to work killing his people and threatening his neighbors and making deals with the Russians and God knows who else.

No one was ever proposing to just turn Saddam Hussein loose though. We could have maintained the no-fly zones and a sanctions regime for decades at a far lower cost than Bush's war without straining our military capacity to the limit either.

Why wouldn't he have? Monsters like Saddam and Hitler do not change, they do not learn their lesson ,especially if they are allowed to get away with bloody murder.

The U.S. let Hussein get away with launching an unprovoked war against Iran in the 1980s, and only got upset when it was Kuwaiti oil at stake, which is also pretty ironic.

As to Dick Cheney on ousting Saddam in 1994, hasn't this been covered quite a bit in other places? Our agreement with our coalition partners was that we wouldn't try to remove him. We'd push him back over the border and that was the agreed upon mission.

I also think there was a belief that after his devastating defeat, the conditions would develop in Iraq that would lead to his removal from within. Obviously that didn't happen but I don't know that it was unreasonable to think that. And you really can't discount the impact of 9/11 and its effect on our calibration of threats or possible threats. Right or wrong, it's part of the equation.

The sanctions weren't working and the no fly zones weren't really working either.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1009636.stm

Oh, uh uh like we really had a dog in that hunt, Iran vs. Iraq I mean. And unless you're into peddling your way around town on a bicycle, concerns about the world's oil supply are perfectly legitimate.

Americans "have shed more blood for other people's liberty than any other combination of nations in the history of the world"

100% untrue, and you blow off other nations' actions in times of war, as if America is the only honourable nation in history with honourably shed blood.

What a load of arrogant, ignorant horsesh**.

Bennett:

The invasion of Japan was not an overnight deal. We had to depoly at least 15 Divisions and the entire 8th Air Force from Europe. The logistics would have pushed the invasion to the Spring of 1945.

The Soviets, who were not at war with Japan, agreed to come in on our side. We expected the Japanese to put up a brutal fight with more casualties than on the beaches of Normandy. Remember, we were liberating the French. Japanese civilians would not have the same attitude. We had just lost 28,000 Marines taking Iwo and Okinawa. Japanese 100,000 plus 140,000 civilians.

The Spring of 1945 was a time to occupy Germany and prepare to invade Japan, not confront the Russians.

Correction: the invasion out to the Spring of 1946

Bennett, back in 1994 Cheney said that the removal of Saddam Hussein from power wasn't worth the cost in American lives and that Iraq would likely fly apart into pieces as a result. Strangely enough, events are proving him right.

As for 9/11, it didn't affect anything about the actual threat Saddam Hussein posed at all. What it did do was allow President Bush to deliberatly mislead Americans on the subject of those alledged Iraqi WMDs and manipulate the country into going to war in Iraq. That was part of the equation, and it was wrong.

As for the no-fly zones, there wasn't a thing Saddam Hussein could do about them and while he never was able to shoot any U.S. or U.K. plane down you can be sure that every time that he tried the poor SOBs who followed his orders were lit up in retaliation.

Finally, if the U.S. hadn't been quietly supporting Saddam Hussein's unprovoked war against Iran, maybe the invasion of Kuwait would never have taken place and we wouldn't be stuck in Iraq now. Our friend isn't necessarily the enemy of our enemy.

You can, as others often do, use 9/11 as a justification to claim that Bush lied about Iraq and WMD. What no one has ever been able to explain is exactly why he would do that. In any event, how we viewed threats and what we decided we should do about them changed after 9/11. You can say it was from cynicism. I disagree.

The no-fly zones were never intended to be a long term solution. We came under increasing criticism for maintaining them.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1175950.stm

I see no connection between Iran and Kuwait other than both are examples of Saddam's aggression. While it is fashionable to lay everyone else's actions in the world at our feet, Saddam didn't need our encouragement to act the bully.

"The Spring of 1945 was a time to occupy Germany and prepare to invade Japan, not confront the Russians."

This, of course, begs the question. Why didn't we do it after August, 1945? The answer it seems to me is obvious. There is absolutely no indication that the American people would have supported a continuation of war in Europe once the Nazis were defeated.

We wanted the same thing back then that a whole lot of people want now. Our troops home.

You can, as others often do, use 9/11 as a justification to claim that Bush lied about Iraq and WMD.

Bush took advantage of 9/11 to push for a war against Iraq. I'm not using 9/11 for a justification of anything, but only pointing out how Bush used it. As to why, prior to the 2000 election, Bush told a writer who was asked to do a book about him that if the opportunity presented itself for a war against Iraq, he would take advantage of it to his political advantage. From Russ Baker:

(Houston) - Two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about the political benefits of attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer, who held many conversations with then-Texas Governor Bush in preparation for a planned autobiography.

“He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. “It was on his mind. He said to me: ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.’ And he said, ‘My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.’ He said, ‘If I have a chance to invade….if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.”

The no-fly zones were never intended to be a long term solution. We came under increasing criticism for maintaining them.

We did it for 12 years, and there was nothing really stopping us from continuing with the containment of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

I see no connection between Iran and Kuwait other than both are examples of Saddam's aggression. While it is fashionable to lay everyone else's actions in the world at our feet, Saddam didn't need our encouragement to act the bully.

No, but he did benefit from our willingness to turn a blind eye regarding his barbaric use of chemical weapons against Iran.

Oh come on now, you're taking what he said and twisting it. He wasn't talking about looking for an opportunity to invade Iraq. He was saying that his Dad came out of the Gulf War with high approval ratings and a lot of political capital and he didn't use it to get anything accomplished. And he lost that capital and ultimately lost the election. He's making a political equation, not plotting war against Iraq. Remember, he's dumb, he probably didn't even know where Iraq was at the time.

It's interesting that you continue to insist that the no fly zones were sustainable. We were under increasing international pressure to drop them, to drop the sanctions, to allow Saddam Hussein back into the "world community". There is nothing to support the idea that they could have gone on for decades, which is what it would require, through Saddam, then Uday and Qusay and then their sons. And what exactly did they contain anyway? They were designed to protect the indigenous population, not keep Saddam from rearming. But we can certainly agree to disagree on that.

If I understand you correctly on your last point, you believe we're responsible for his use of chemical weapons? What would we have done? Call for a UN Resolution condemning it? Invaded? What exactly? (all rhetorical questions) We didn't make Saddam use chemical weapons and it's rather bizarre that you lay that at our feet.

I'm not exactly sure how this thread morphed into yet another discussion about Iraq.

starfleet_dude, you need to change your name. Captain Kirk would kick your sorry hind end for supporting the rape rooms and the prisons of Saddam Hussein.

The flyovers were keeping him contained -- so Uday and Qusay could snatch girls off the street and gang rape them, so Saddam could feed people feet first into paper shredders, so Saddam could make cash payments to Palestinians for killing AMERICANS as well as Israelis.

But, hey, dude, he was contained, man.

You're a disgrace to the fine universe of Star Trek.

Bennett, you can be sure George W. Bush knew where Iraq was in 1999. It's also impossible to misconstrue Bush saying "If I had a chance to invade" as anything other than his having the desire to invade Iraq if given a chance to.

As for the no-fly zones and international pressure, after 12 years it was fairly reasonable to think that they could continue as long as Saddam Hussein was deemed a threat to the Kurdish enclave in the north. We really didn't need the southern no-fly zone from a containment standpoint, IMO.

My last point wasn't that the U.S. was responsible for his use of chemical weapons against Iran, but that the U.S. could have led the way to condemn Saddam's use of them and directly imposed sanctions of our own against him at the time he was actually using chemical weapons, rather than doing nothing.

As for this thread topic and Iraq, I said pretty early on that Fred Thompson was merely talking up our past "good wars" as a way to support Bush's war in Iraq as being as noble a cause as WWII was. It isn't, but Republican presidential candidates (with the exception of Ron Paul) can be expected to not be critical of the war and instead try to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Wow! a lot of history here! My mother was a WW2 war bride. Her country Estonia was invaded and taken over in 1939 by the Russians. Fortunately speaking five languages she was able to escape Russian occupation the first time then join the allies when the americans became involved.

What is not mentioned here is what the people of her country had to put up with between the occupation of the Russians and the Germans before the Americans got involved. The russians were very crude occupiers compared to the germans. What a choice people had to put up with.

I have often wondered why Churchill and Roosevelt seemed to have sold out the Eastern European Countries at the Yalta Agreements. Some of what I read here helps me to understand what was going on.

The Russians got a lot of resistance during their occupation of her country and as a result of it my uncle got five years in Siberia.

The Russian army was so barbaric and backwards it was a relief to the people when the Germans ran them out. Mind you this was before America allied Russia in the war to defeat the Germans.

What a mess to be in before any hope of liberation was generated by American involvement.

A country is subject to being made the object of occupation of two warring nations seeking to take them over.

Thank you all for the history lesson. It has been quite interesting.

This thread was an interesting read, it's the second thread I've come across pretty much stating the Russians defeated Hitler in WWII. Seems every one forgets the Russian Winter did as much or more so to defeat Hitler as the Russian army in the east.

When I really think about it....I mean really think about it......outside of better preparation for a post Iraq occupation, I wouldn't have done anything different from what Bush has done after 9/11.
Using all the power at my disposal, I would have been as obsessive in my quest to never let this happen again.

Hugh Beaumont: When I really think about it....I mean really think about it......outside of better preparation for a post Iraq occupation, I wouldn't have done anything different from what Bush has done after 9/11. Using all the power at my disposal, I would have been as obsessive in my quest to never let this happen again.

That's because you don't:

1. Believe that Bush actually planned 9-11, or;

2. We deserved what we got on 9-11, or;

3. That making war on a terrorist-sponsoring regime in Iraq has absolutely, positively, unequivocally NOTHING to do with 9-11.

I'm often reminded of a liberal British columinst who, a few months after 9-11, THANKED the United States (and, by extension, George Bush) for what we DIDN'T do after the attack.

That making war on a terrorist-sponsoring regime in Iraq has absolutely, positively, unequivocally NOTHING to do with 9-11.

Only in the sense that it was a fools errand to transform the middle east at the barrel of a gun dressed up as war of necessity because of the threat the Saddam's WMDs and nuclear program posed.

9/11 "changed everything." Most importantly in, the eyes of the Bush administration, it meant they could invade Iraq.

As far as leaders following the will of the people into war, yes, I think that is acutely critical. FDR did this, in large part because of Congress. Subsequent presidents did not -- from Truman through Kennedy, and now Bush II. And look how those wars have turned out.

Now, yes, leaders have a responsibility for seeing and making a case for war. But Congress, the voice of the people, has to authorize it. That's why so many people are up in arms at the Congress giving Bush control of the decision to go to war.

The will of the people has to be behind a war for it to go well. People don't like to get into open-ended conflicts. WWI and WWII both had tangible ends. Even with those wars, Americans were reluctant to get involved, but -- especially in the case of World War II -- when we did, we were fully in. Prudence paid off.

Bush rushed this Iraq invasion. Dressed it up as a war with a tangible goal -- removing Saddam the threat his WMDs and nuclear program, without going into what we were really attempting and signing up for. That's a major reason why this war in unpopular. It was sold as "this guys such a threat, we NEED to act now and figure out what to do afterward." Well, when it turned out he wasn't that threat, and Iraqis started a violent insurgency against our occupation, people logically began to think, why are we there? Should we be there? It's a debate that's still going on. A debate that should have happened prior to the war (and Congress and the media in large part are to blame for not pushing that debate).

"it's the second thread I've come across pretty much stating the Russians defeated Hitler in WWII."

I don't think anyone here has said that have they? At least I know I didn't. But it is certainly true that after Germany attacked Russia, the Allies partnered and coordinated with Russia to defeat Germany. The calculation was made that allying with Russia (as despicably as Stalin was viewed) was worth it to defeat Hitler.

And the Russians did fight. They didn't just engage in some kind of holding action, they pushed the Nazis all the way back to Berlin. So no, I don't think anyone here is saying Russia alone won the war, clearly they didn't. But they did help to win the war and Russian soldiers died by the thousands.

This thread has been more about why they did it (to defend themselves and gain more territory) than what they did. And my own point of view is nobody cared at the time about their motives or the cost that ultimately would be paid by the people of Eastern Europe, or not that they didn't care but that it was worth it to defeat Hitler. A strategic calculation at the expense of a moral one.

I think the country that contributed the most to the defeat of Germany was Germany herself.

For people to be free, to have individual liberty, there needs to be security, individual rights, and an aligned rule of law, and pretty much in that order.

For other peoples, the US has provided the first, encouraged the second, and usually left the third up to individual nations (Japan is an obvious exception). Perhaps only the UK has been that generous. It certainly says something about our common law and Christan based cultures.

Interestingly, the policies of liberal socialism take all three of those items away from the individual. (gun control, criminal rights, government seizure of property, high tax burden, hate speech laws, expanded social welfare, etc...) The poor UK is going down the drain. The US may need to rescue them someday.

Well, when it turned out he wasn't that threat,FALSE and Iraqis started a violent insurgency against our occupation,FALSE people logically began to think, why are we there? Should we be there? It's a debate that's still going on. A debate that should have happened prior to the war (and Congress and the media in large part are to blame for not pushing that debate).THE DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS AND THE MEDIA ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR AIDING OUR ENEMIES

GRADE-F

Tom, you need to stop stating your opinions as historical facts. Start your statements with "in my opinion"..... George W. (principal)

Rovin, you believe Saddam was the threat we made him out to be prior to the war? You think Colin Powell's UN speech was legit? You think there was an active nuclear program and large stockpiles of WMDs?

To paraphrase Denny Green, the threat was not what we said it was.

And you don't think Iraqis started an insurgency against the US?

"Because Americans, even while motivated by national self-interest, still feel some desire to do the "right" or "decent" or "virtuous" thing."

As I pointed out in my last post, this is generally because the decent or virtuous thing is in our own best interests.

We could just as well have decided that it was in our best interest to make an oil-producing colony of Iran (the US Army was there in WWII) or to do many other things.

Our definition of our 'national self-interest' is a reflection of who we are, of the kind of nation we see ourselves to be, of the national identity we have inherited and choose to preserve.

For some reason the emboldening on my post just above is wrong. The first two paragraphs are quotes, and should be emboldened.

"As for 9/11, it didn't affect anything about the actual threat Saddam Hussein posed at all. What it did do was allow President Bush to deliberately mislead Americans on the subject of those alleged Iraqi WMDs and manipulate the country into going to war in Iraq. That was part of the equation, and it was wrong."

dude- Are you aware that the above statement makes you sound like a Truther? How many times have we heard that common chant "Bush lied, people died!"
Congress saw all the same intelligence that Bush did, even if Hillary now claims she didn't read it. How many of countries believed the same things about Saddam and Iraq? Intelligence is imperfect!

Usually your are well thought-out even if I disagree with you, but you discredit yourself with the "mislead" thread!

Oh when, oh when, will the 60s ever go away? 40 years later and we are still hearing the (&#($ those people thought up. Aren't they all 60-70 now? Shouldn't the Lamest Generation be falling silent? Get it right, ya'll. This is America, the best country that ever has been. You can root around til you find a fault...but you can't keep from falling over the faults of all the other countries. And G.W. Bush, just like his daddy, goes wrong mostly when he tries to placate the 60s losers. Think Churchill, think Patton, think John Wayne! That's when we were humming....think there's a connection? Lose the 60s! Forget they ever existed! Think 40s, think 50s...think 80s for that matter.

I really cant believe that there are Americans that would argue, to the extreme as shown in these comments, that this country has not shed its blood and youth for the benefit of others

I don't think anyone is arguing that America has not done so - but Thompson's assertion that they have done more so than any other nation or combination of nations in history is patently false. According to the Post, total US casualties in all foreign wars from the Civil War onward were ~625,000. Total British Empire casualites in WW I alone were ~1,000,000. So much for Thompson's fatuous twaddle. One can be an admirer of the United States without misrepresenting history. Noting that other nations have made sacrifices, in some cases even greater than those made by the US, in no way diminishes the sacrifices made by America - or our respect for them.

DCardno, this late in the game and you still have not grasped the root of the Washington Post article.

Yes, we all know that millions of non-Americans died trying to put and end to Hitler and the Japanese Empire.

But, what colonies or territories did the United States immediately take colonial control over and keep suppressed for decades?

Great Britain and France went right back to maintaining their global colonial empires. Russia took over all of Eastern Europe. And the United States took over what?

Yes, we had an Army of Occupation in Germany and Austria until about 1949, as did the UK and France, and in Japan until about 1950, but in 1949, the Bundesrepublic of Germany became independent as did Austria. Japan by that same time had already transitioned to a functioning parliamentary democracy, on her own, as were Germany and Austria.

The Soviets on the other hand by 1949 had completely taken over all the nations of Eastern Europe, controlled their military forces completely, controlled their security services completely, controlled their banking completely, contrlled their relatinos with non-Warsaw Pact nations by dint of threats of clamp downs or by full fledged clamp downs, or does 19565 Hungary or 1968 Czechoslovakia or Jaruzelski Poland in the 80's mean nothing at all in the historical scheme of things? Seems the citizens of those nations had this odd notion that they were not only occupied but were forcibly held under the Soviet boot.

The Soviets maintained this occupation until 1990.

And that is the root of Thompson's assertion.

We did what we did, shed our blood when we did, and then turned over those conquered territories to their citizens and did so with a huge economic cost paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

As my daughter's third grade teacher used to say to her students, "Stay on task. Stay focused on what is in front of you."

"Stay on task. Stay focused on what is in front of you."
Yes - a statement by a Presidential candidate that is both factually incorrect and betrays an absolute failure to understand both the world around him and America's place in that world. Beside that danger, I am not too concerned about the WaPo article.

Yes, we all know that millions of non-Americans died trying to put and end to Hitler and the Japanese Empire.
No - you do; Fred Thompson does not, along with too many people contributing to this thread. I have no quarrel with the notion that by-and-large, the US has not sought an empire, has not colonized other nations (although in that enterprise they had the disadvantage of a late start, so perhaps that makes a virtue of necessity), or that as a pre-eminent military power they have acted with great restraint.

And that is the root of Thompson's assertion
I don't believe that to be the case. I think Thompson actually believes what he said: that the US was exceptional, and had made greater sacrifices than any other nation or group of nations in history. I do have a problem with the world-view as expressed by Thompson that sees the US as inevitably and always on the side of the angels, an entity that acts entirely selflessly and with no thought to their own advantage. Thompson was not claiming that the US has a better track record than the Soviets - I think that even a doofus like him would realize that was setting the bar too low. Thompson was claiming that the US has a better track record than anybody - ignoring, for just one example, the Royal Navy's actions to supress the slave trade, carried on with great profit and with the ultimate destination of the Carribean and -ahem- the US South. I think (although I grant that his words did not go that far) Thompson betrays a belief not only that the US is exceptional, but that the US has had to act alone in these great endeavours; that other nations were not willing to make the sacrifices that Americans made in the name of freedom for other nations.

That lack of appreciation for historic context, cripes, even for historic accuracy is dangerous; who knows where it might lead.

Really don't wish to prolong this agony, but with regard to the British Navy going after the slave trade, so did the U.S. Navy, as a matter of fact, the USS Constellation, for example, presently berthed in Baltimore harbor had a number of tours on the Africa run, chasing down slavers with a very good track record, and there were other U.S. Navy ships in the African Squadron doing the same from the early 1800's to the start of the American Civil War. The Slave Trade, the forced importation of slaves into the United States was abolished by law by Jefferson in 1808. Liberia was founded by private US citizens in 1847 solely to return captive Africans back to the continent, no small task.

Your understanding of the problem of slavery and U.S. efforts to ameliorate the same is wanting.

But, specifically to the point, Thompson obviously was NOT talking about the slave trade. The slave trade has nothing to do with what Thompson stated.

Thompson was stating simply that it is his belief that the US has spent more in blood in foreign wars than any other nation for the benefit of more non-American people than any other single country on Earth.

Given the facts, and staying just on that subject, and looking at the totality of the historical record since our inception as a Nation, I'd lean pretty much in favor of Thompson's statement.

As for the Civil War, the war that ended slavery, best estimates are the over 350,000 Union soldiers died and liberated 3.5 million slaves. I could be wrong here, as I have seen higher figures for Union combat and combat related deaths that raise the figure substantially. So if one adds that to the total figure, seems we lost one heck of a lot of soldiers to liberate millions.

Liberating 31 million Afghans from the Taliban seems a pretty nice thing to do. Likewise, the millions liberated in WWII.

Thompson was stating simply that it is his belief that the US has spent more in blood in foreign wars than any other nation for the benefit of more non-American people...

And, as pointed out in my first post, that is simply not true. It may be Thompson's belief - and that is largely why I find it frightening. That in no way diminishes the good that America has done in the world - but part of doing that good was the ability of American leaders to appreciate and understand the world areound them, which includes a basic knowledge of history. Thompson seems to lack that understanding, and I question whether such a leader (although I doubt it will come to that) will contribute much to the aggregate good delivered by America.

Coldwarrior - an internal conflict to end your own practice of slavery does not count towards "shed[ing] more blood for other people's liberty than any other nation on earth" - unless you wish to make the argument that the CSA were not a part of the United States until 1866. That seems at odds with the historical record.