http://tinyurl.com/2rvmuv

Calling People Trolls...

...is like labeling them communists. I really dislike this custom here and elsewhere in Cyberspace.

-- omooex

I don't really care what you think, or think you dislike. If cyberspace bothers you so much, maybe you should go for a walk.

I do not think you will find anyone who will say that the US should have stayed out of World War II. Given the bellicose actions of Germany and Japan in the 1930s, it was all but inevitable that the US would eventually be dragged into the war. However, as others pointed out, the US waited until it was attacked and had war declared on it to enter the war. There had been talk in the US government prior to Pearl Harbor about getting into the war, but public sentiment was against it at the time. Also, a certain influential segment of the US population was actually pro-Nazi. Had the US entered the war prior to Pearl Harbor, it might have appeared to be one more agressor among many.

In World War II the US was not so much acting as a force for good as fighting for its survival. Success by the Germans and/or the Japanese would have resulted in a very different world. I am a big fan of alternative history. It requires imagination and attention to detail to make a case for a plausible different outcome from what we know actually happened. I think that before we commit ourselve to a war, especially one of our choosing, we should ask ourselve bluntly what could happen if we lose. Anyone who answers "We won't lose," should be locked in a padded cell and not allowed out until the meds kick in.

Of course, I agree with the larger point that others have made that the US should not be in the business of engaging in preemptive wars. How do we really know that we are acting as a force for good in the world by starting a war and occupying another country? The Preamble to the Constitution lays out the reasons for our system of government: To form a more perfect union, establish justice, PROVIDE FOR THE COMMON DEFENSE, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. Our government is not supposed to initiate wars, but to protect its citizens from the agreesion of others. Each time our country strays from that intention and acts as the agressor, we lose a little more of our collective soul. If you want to do good in the world, join the peace core, not the military.

...is like labeling them communists. I really dislike this custom here and elsewhere in Cyberspace.

It is worth observing that at least one mea culpa, by Timothy Noah, notes that those who were right about the war should be acknowledged.

Yours

FPJ

entering into the most mundane news reports, sports competitions, financial statements ... always reassuring that we're number 1, we are the city on the hill, we are what the rest of the world aspire to ... ad nauseum.

The spectrum of acceptable opinion is remarkably narrow ... and historical references are "wonkish"... (mustn't be wonkish or boring or literal or theoretical) ... Careerism could explain a lot.

Because the War on Terror (global or otherwise) is just like a new Cold War except of course 09/11 changed everything ... and we are nation of laws, but we hate the UN and mistrust even our allies, so we have to use armies and military might to fight terrorists using guerilla tactics. We're intelligent, rational, fair people fighting "evil doers" for the future of mankind.

So much of what people think they know about America is propaganda ... Read "A People's History of the United States." It's always been government by and for the rich industrialists... look at the American legacy of suppression of ideas ... they've been marvelously successful at convincing us that the poor brought it on themselves, much as Saddam brought it on himself and Afghanistan brought it on themselves and the Vietnamese brought it on themselves ... but America was viciously attacked for no reason by madmen.

Ignore it.

What we know about WWII today was as murky back then as WMDs in Iraq were a few years ago to us.

Just upthread it was pointed out that extensive work by UN weapons inspectors had found no evidence of WMD's just prior to the illegal invasion. None, nada, zilch. Any murkiness was just from the chaff Cheney was throwing. If there had been credible evidence, other countries would have joined us at significant levels. That they didn't tells you all you need to know about the quality of the intelligence provided to them.

Plato comes to mind with his concept of reality as "shadows projected on a wall", life but flickering images on a screen: a computer screen, a television screen. Unless you yourself are over there, unless you have family or friends who come back in pieces, the Iraq war is a cleverly staged story made of words and images (one hopes sanitized non-controversial words and images of Iraqis handing flowers to our soldiers) written and filmed by, well, journalists yes, but also by all of us here.

From an ambitious journalist’s perspective war should be seen as one of a number of convenient pegs on which to frame a successful career where the attitudes of publishers, editors and advertisers count far more than bodies piled in a place none of us will ever really visit or see. Reporters and pundits who questioned our little invasion simply failed Success in Journalism 101.

Of course there are broader consequences to treating it thus, but one hopes that’s another set of shadows in another cave projected on yet another set of screens set to entertain us when they arrive. Right?

And a crime, according to the precedents set at Nuremberg. Until these people come to this realization they will continue to believe that, yes, they were kinda sorta wrong this time, because Bush is an idiot and they didn't realize it, or whatever other excuse they can come up with, and that, done right, it is OK to go to war; and so we will do it again.