China quietly "threatens" Austrailia, page 1

BTW, World War II wasn't about democracy.

Yes, I know.

The Second World War was caused by:

a. Hitler’s Plans for World Domination

1. To unite German speaking people under the concept of the National Security Doctrine, which had been denied at the Treaty of Versailles.
2. Hitler wanted lebensraum (living space) in order to gain self-sufficiency (autarky).
3. Hitler wanted to dominate Europe and the World.

To achieve any of these aims involved breaking the Treaty of Versailles, which resulted in war.

b. The aggression of Hitler’s Allies

1. Italy – Mussolini wanted a Fascist-Roman empire in the Mediterranean and Africa. This plan was initiated with the Abyssinian invasion in 1935.
2. Japan – Japan wanted a Nipponese empire in the Pacific, extending into China and Australia. This plan was initiated with the Manchurian invasion in 1931.

c. The Axis powers were all inherrently hostile to Communism (USSR), and this also was a cause of the war.

d. Democratic powers were passive and/or isolationaist in nature.

1. USA – policy of isolationsim.
2. France – France was passive and reluctant to intervene against Germany, because France could not rely on Britain’s and America’s support.
3. Britain – Between 1934 and 1937, Britain was sympathetic to German recovery. Between May 1937 and March 1939, Britain appeased Germany.

These powers could have stopped Fascist aggression earlier than 1939.

e. The League of Nations failed to keep peace

War was caused by a combination of a-e, but Hitler’s aims and actions were the main cause of war. In a nutshell, WWII was caused by Fascist aggression and the failure of democratic powers to stop this aggression.

Today the democratic powers are faced with different forms of aggression. There are traditional forms we are familiar with, such as communism in China, and fascism in Iraq. But there are also new forms of world aggression, such as the expansion of radical Islamic groups determined to gain dominion over weaker peoples.

The point is that the democratic powers have a responsibility to ensure that, whenever possible, the perpetrator nations of aggression and tyranny must be contained, destabilized, and if necessary, eliminated.

In the last 100 years, we have paid too high a price in pain, blood and suffering to not have learned the lessons of the past. The cold, hard truth is that it is better to invest 1500 American lives now to ensure the stability of the mid-east, than to count the price of our freedom in the face of a nuclear-armed foe like Saddam Hussein in the future. The same can be said of Taiwan. We simply will not allow an oppresive, communist-controlled regime to conquer and subjugate a smaller, friendly nation whom we share so many values and links of common history.

I believe that eventually China will endure some sort of internal change (hopefully non-violent), and that a massive change will sweep the people of the Middle Kingdom. The forces of the free market economy coupled with the information age are too powerful for the old greybeards in Beijing. The western powers understand that these changes will come slowly, and we are willing to wait. After all, there is an ancient Chinese proverb that says "Be not afraid of growing slowly; be afraid only of standing still".

But in the meantime, it will be a cold day in Hell before we allow a group of communist thugs to pull another Prague Spring on a valued friend.