War with Iran

I'm going to defer wasting any more of my time on you until you at least put in the work to read the links I've posted, or articles or books about the subject that show (if you can find one) any contrarian viewpoints. But right now, you're simply not at my level. You don't have backup material, your "facts" have been disproven, and your quotes are from another poster who shares part of your view. You've literally brought nothing to the table but misinformation and personal attacks.

I've posted links, quotes, definitions, rebuttal topics and sources. Go ahead and read some of it. Go ahead and look up things, and form an opinion.

Right now we're playing hold 'em, I'm calculating pot odds and reading tells, and you are asking me if I have a 7 to Go Fish. I don't have time for that.

 

There's no doubt the Japanese did some horrific things prior to our involvement in the war. The Germans, too. But what about our involvement?

We bombed civilians in their cities. We firebombed the city of Dresden. We dropped TWO atom bombs on Japanese cities filled with civilians. We took no prisoners on the battlefield.

What did we do it all for? So the Russians could subjugate half of Europe and Stalin was able to murder 50M to 70M people in his own country and those he controlled? Do tell why that was better than what the Germans did.

Or so Mao could mass murder 50M of his own people?

Things were really bad, I agree. But we made them 10x worse. Literally (in terms of deaths).



Those figures do not even count the 50M+ killed in WW II itself. By the arsenal of Democracy!

As for FDR, he had much grander plans. You might have heard of this book: http://www.amazon.com/Conquerors-Roosevelt-Destruction-Hitlers-1941-1945/dp/0684810271. I read it a few years ago, then took note when during one of W's State of the Union speeches (2003 or 2004), the journalists mentioned that it was the book W was currently reading.

The book details how the FDR and then Truman administrations planned the nation building of Germany and Japan after the War, their plans for doing so had been in the works prior to the end of the War. And it details how FDR wanted to implement the UN and then become its president. Seems president of the US wasn't a big enough or powerful enough position for him.

Like I said before, do not lump me with HK. I am a student of history, and I've no interest in insulting anyone. In fact, I appreciate your service and your posts about nuclear power and related issues are downright amazingly good to me.

 

Wait, what? Our POW record in WW2 is exemplary...we had by far the lowest rates of our prisoners die (less than half a percent, iirc) compared to the 40% or more killed by the Russians, Germans, and Japanese. We didn't take many Japanese prisoners b/c they didn't surrender...their mentality was to torture and kill our prisoners, so they didn't want to become one and fought (in almost all cases) to the death.

I'm not defending or accusing anything we did in the war...my point was that it's revisionist history to say that poor, innocent Japan was just minding it own business and we provoked them into war for economic or any other reasons. Japan had been hell-bent on Asian Imperialism (the Co-Prosperity Spheres) since their first attempt at a Pearl Harbor-like attack against the Russians at Port Arthur. Germany had been appeased by the West for far too long...if in 1936 when the French realized Germany had violated Locarno and was building up its army (marching into the Saar) and mobilized to destroy Hitler's army (which was severely outnumbered) WW2 might've been averted--instead they claimed it would be too costly economically and didn't think it was that big a deal to let Germany go back on its treaty obligations (that they'd volunteered to agree to!).
And I submit that there was a large contingent of Americans (maybe just in the military?) who knew that Friendly Uncle Joe was a big problem, even back in 1940-41 with Katyn. I don't know of anyone who was actively supporting Mao, it was more that Chiang (and/or his government) was so corrupt that no one wanted to give them the aid to beat back Mao. But for some reason (non-interventionism, perhaps? ) the defense cuts through 1948, declining military support worldwide (with the exception of the mostly-economic Marshall Plan) and Acheson's "non-Korea" speech basically invited communists to start a whole new series of conflicts worldwide (Greece, Eastern Europe, China, Korea). And once we'd drawn back, we had no way of "intervening" to stop those millions of people from being killed. So to your point, I'd say that because the US (and the West, after they got back on their feet) didn't intervene more in China and Russia and Eastern Europe, lots of people were killed that didn't have to be.
Things were really bad, I agree. But we made them 10x worse. Literally (in terms of deaths). Those figures do not even count the 50M+ killed in WW II itself. By the arsenal of Democracy![/quote]Maybe I'm missing the point, but you seem to be on my side with this. By just giving guns and bombs and planes and tanks and putting them in the hands of evil people (even if they're supposedly our "allies") we create a capability that really bad things can happen. But (no matter what college kids may tell you) since our military (maybe not our leadership, but our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines) has a stellar reputation world-wide for being fair and trying to do the right thing--unlike, say, Russia or China--then it's morally deficient for us not to intervene in situations where we can stop millions from being massacred by bad people.

I hadn't....thanks for the link. I have read a bunch about Morgenthau and his plan, but it seems that it was more a retribution against the Holocaust (and the preceding decade of anti-Semitism) rather than some grand scheme to advance FDR's world agenda. Though multiple sources talk about FDR's, shall we say, ambitious personality. It's fascinating to me, though, how we went from FDR one day to Truman the next. Truman was a total outsider, a National Guard Colonel, and kept out of the loop by FDR and his staff until FDR keeled over and all of a sudden he's the Most Powerful Man on Earth.

Don't worry, I'm not. I think I've tried to discuss with you, rather than put up with name-calling and the like. Thanks.

 

Hitler likely would never have come to power if it weren't for the war reparations heaped upon Germany after WW I. It's no wonder the French didn't mind so much that 17 years later, Germany wanted no part of it anymore.

Germany could not have dominated Europe for very long. Their method was to invade a country then raid its treasury for all the gold, then spend it and have to repeat the cycle again. I think we've seen that a nation with a 65% of GDP for military fails (eventually) like the USSR did.

WW II might have been averted if we kept our nose out of it, too. A lot of historians hold this view.

Patton wanted to continue the war and march into Russia:

"Let's keep our boots polished, bayonets sharpened, and present a picture of force and strength to the Red Army. This is the only language they understand and respect."

"I understand the situation. Their (the Soviet) supply system is inadequate to maintain them in a serious action such as I could put to them. They have chickens in the coop and cattle on the hoof -- that's their supply system. They could probably maintain themselves in the type of fighting I could give them for rive days. After that it would make no difference how many million men they have, and if you wanted Moscow I could give it to you. They lived on the land coming down. There is insufficient left for them to maintain themselves going back. Let's not give them time to build up their supplies. If we do, then . . . we have had a victory over the Germans and disarmed them, but we have failed in the liberation of Europe; we have lost the war!"

Yet nobody goes into Russia and survives the winter there. What a debacle that would have been.

If anything, our mistake was becoming allies with the Russkies in the first place. It forced Truman to use the A-Bomb so Russia wouldn't have gotten involved and taken half of Japan like they took half of Europe.

And after almost 4 years of incredibly bloody war, there's no wonder our people didn't want any part of extending it.

The thing is, you knock down one evil and there's another waiting to take its place. We're better to not ally with any evil and stick to our own needs and use our own resources on our own problems.

So do tell why the Japs killing 3.5M Chinese is a whole lot worse than us killing a couple million Chinese and Koreans in Korea.

War is good if your objective is conquest and empire. Yet empire is difficult (impossible) to maintain over the long haul. We're suffering from our own imperialism at this point.