Would you support the allied involvement in world war two today ?

Note My intension is not to compare the Iraq conflict with World War Two
Since public support for the war in Iraq has bottomed out in the US and elsewhere I thought that it worth noting that during World War Two at times the Allies made some pretty big blunders and showed gross incompetent at times.
Also before December 7th 1941 other then sinking a destroyer Germany hadn't directly attacked the USA.

So in those dark days of 1942 and 43 when the War was a stalemate in some areas would you have supported the continuation of the War against the Axis ?

Put aside that you have the benefit of hight sight when it comes to history and also bear in mind that the allies often lost more men in a single battle then the US has lost so far during the war on terror.

So would you have supported the fight against the axis or would you have settled for the axis ruling most of the globe because allied causalities are already to high ?

I don't want any debates about the Iraq war being based on lies that has been dealt with already.

well... there isn't a proper parallel here. the war in iraq is really a war as an occupying force. the stalemate in WW2 was still two nations fighting it out against each other.

however, knowing of the concentration camps and the horrid atrocities committed by the nazi government, of course i'd keep supporting it.

however.... in the iraq conflict AMERICA has perpetuated the mass of war crimes here. we've bombed civilian targets, attacked hospitals, and knowingly cut off food and water from civilians... just to name a few.

so not a proper parallel at all.

Well then whats the difference between Hitler and the concentration camps and Saddam's use of poison gas on the Shias and the Kurds?

Let me guess, that was really the CIA that did that?

[edit on 23-9-2007 by ChrisF231]

Originally posted by ChrisF231
Well then whats the difference between Hitler and the concentration camps and Saddam's use of poison gas on the Shias and the Kurds?

Let me guess, that was really the CIA that did that?

the difference is that the USA supported Saddam THROUGH the use of WMDs and even supplied him with them. Saddam may have pulled the trigger, but we gave him the weapon and the unconditional support as long it was prudent to us...

oh, and the difference is the Shia and Kurdish populations weren't attacked because of who they were.... they were attacked because of uprisings. the Holocaust was a systematic attempt to rid the world of certain minority groups... Saddam's wasn't an attempt to rid himself of a people, but to squash a rebellion in a brutal manner.

i'm not defending Saddam's actions, i'm just saying that they aren't anything like Hitler's, it's a different kind of bad.

LOL

Note My intension is not to compare the Iraq conflict with World War Two

Then you go on to do exactly that

I can't understand how you people think.
I just can't quite wrap my head around the stunning self-deception involved.

Look, there is simple no comparison between the current set of conflicts and WW2, no matter how cleverly you try to spin it.

In WW2 we were attacked by a massive strike force of thousands of men, hundreds of planes, and scores of ships sent by a nation (Japan) that was a member of an alliance (the Axis) that not only intended to take over the planet, but that clearly had the means to do so.

On 9/11, we were attacked by 19 fanatics armed with freaking boxcutters. Then we use that as an excuse to go a country (Iraq - I have no objections to the war in Afghanistan) that not only had nothing to do with the attack, but was an avowed enemy of the organization that did.

Saddam was a thug and a tyrant, no doubt about it, but the fact is he never represented any credible threat to the US.

No matter how you try to spin it, how you twist the facts, how many clever semantic tricks you pull, there is no way the bogus "war on terrorism", which should have ended with our forces capturing/killing OBL in Tora Bora, bears any similarity to the Second World War.

None at all.


[edit on 9/23/07 by xmotex]

Xmotex I am comparing people will to support there country in the event of wars. I am not trying to say that the conflicts are the same but I am looking at people attitudes and how the differ over time.
Madnessinmysoul the Concentration camps didn't become widely known to the allied public until late in the war so your argument doesn't add up.

reply to post by xpert11


...the holocaust was known of well before america got into world war 2, we may not have known the extent of injustice, but we knew that many were suffering simply because of who they were born as. it's actually interesting to note that captain america went to war before america did, because those that wrote the comic were jews hearing about how hitler was abusing the jewish populations.

we knew there were bad things happen, it was the scope that we didn't know.

there's a difference as well. we were attacked by the axis powers, a group allied with each other. they represented a credible threat to us and our allies.

saddam didn't attack us and saddam's allies didn't attack us. this is quite a different situation. we're fighting a war that we started for other reasons.

Fair points about the axis attacking the allies and the Holocaust .
Putting aside the invasion of Iraq and the removal of Saddam from power could you compare what is happening now in Iraq to the Holocaust ?
If you think it was worth fighting to put an end to the Holocaust isnt the war in Iraq worth fighting ?

reply to post by xpert11


you can't really compare it to the holocaust. this is sectarian conflict, civil war... not genocide.

however, i think that the US involvement isn't improving things. don't ask me what we should be doing, i just know what we are doing hasn't helped

I probably would. Almost certainly, I would expect. The Axis proved to be an existential threat to western nations and democracy as a political system. They steamrollered over several sovereign states, imposing their own rule, or political puppets, without provocation.

Of course, its very hard to assume what I would think, given I already know the outcome. But I am generally in favour of democracy and the rule of law, and have a natural antipathy to Fascism (I blame my Liberal philosophical background) as a political philosophy.

The thing was, practically everything had been tried with Germany, to deter them from their aggressive expansionist course. Yet they had ignored, bullied and threatened in order to continue building an empire. Some things are worth risking your own destruction for.

Except for the atomic bomb, I think I'd still support it. Waging a war to defend oneself is justifiable, and that is what I feel the allies did, but I cannot possibly imagine any situation in which it is justified in killing hundreds of thousands of civilians with atomic weapons.

reply to post by DragonsDemesne
I, too, would support involvement. The world came very close to disaster in the twentieth century, and that war might well have been the most dangerous moment.

About the bomb, I'm not so sure I agree with you. Of course it is a horrible weapon. But given the strategic choices available at the time, the logic may well have seemed inexorable. The Allies feared the Japanese would fight to the last man and woman -- and there was some justification for that fear; there were reports that the Japanese government was already arming and 'training' civilians, women included, in preparation for the expected invasion. So the polticians and generals may well have convinced themselves that they would actually be saving lives this way.

The OP question takes us into the realm of what historians call the counterfactual; a corner of the discipline in which people ask 'what if?'. What if the Axis won the war? It probably would have if America hadn't come to Europe's rescue. I say 'probably', not certainly, because the Soviet Union -- not just its war machine, but its size, climate and massive population -- presented a more formidable challenge to Nazi Germany -- and thus to its Axis partners -- than the western alliance ever did, and might well have checked Hitler's ambitions without help from the West.

A world in which the Axis won would not have been a pleasant one to live in, and the repressive political order would probably have broken down quite soon, leading to fragmentation and a period of chaos. We might be picking for scraps through the rubble of human civilization today, surviving hand to mouth, instead of sitting here having a comfortable chat with people on the other side of the world from the desk in our study.

The atom bomb question is interesting. How do others feel about this? Can we add that question to the thread?

Imagine Nazis with nukes... no, I'm happy things went the way they did.

Originally posted by Astyanax
The atom bomb question is interesting. How do others feel about this? Can we add that question to the thread?

Yeah why not it does fit into the scope of the topic without wildly going astray from my original. As for what ifs for a long time I have wondered why the Japs didn't leave Pearl Harbour and just attack places like Malaysia and Java.

Anyway I support the dropping of the Atomic bombs there is no way I would have wanted my Pa who take part in operations in Borneo to have been killed during the invasion of Japan.

Imagine Nazis with nukes... no, I'm happy things went the way they did.

Yeah its only with hindsight that we that the Nazis were far off base in terms of there Nuclear research.

reply to post by xmotex


Your right...no comparisons at all.

Pedral Harbor attack - Personnel losses were 2,333 killed and 1,139 wounded

9/11/01 - 3,500 CIVILIANS DEAD.

Yup.....definitely not worth fighting a war over this.

Originally posted by traderonwallst
Yup.....definitely not worth fighting a war over this.

The issue is not whether it's worth a war - it was clearly an act of war - but who to fight the war against.

In Afghanistan the US had every right and reason to attacked the people who had attacked us, and the people who were giving them a safe base of operations.

But Iraq didn't fly any planes into the WTC or Pentagon - they weren't even particularly friendly with the people that did.

It's not like kicking the Japanese back across the Pacific.

The casualties were greater than at Pearl Harbor, but at Pearl Harbor there was no question about who the enemy was.

[edit on 10/16/07 by xmotex]