That’s just great. So, again, Afghanistan asked the U.S. government for evidence, and refused to give them any, including CIA evidence. So no, it was not a justified war. Not only that, but if he was guilty, the U.S. should have co-operated to get him, not ruin a whole country. Or do you think if the U.S. government is searching for a murderer, that it is OK to ruin a whole town, county or state to get him?
Try again.
I’m realizing that you and I are never going to see eye to eye on this. Which is fine. I don’t need to have you agree with me for me to be right. And you don’t need me to agree with you for you to be right. Therefore, I think I’ve said as much as I can say.
You are obviously a person that has a very low threshold as to when it is OK to kill people and ruin lives.
People should not delude themselves into thinking America entered WWII out of some humanitarian impulse. Don’t get me wrong, American’s are a generous people generally, but FDR and Churchill, among others, did everything they could to draw the US into the war. The US export economy was heavily dependent on the Allies (France and Britain) and their colonial possessions, if they lost the war, who would buy American goods?
When it comes to war and the government, economics generally trumps humanitarianism. If you still believe the US entered the war primarily to save the victims of Nazi atrocities, then ask yourself why the US has avoided helping other victims of atrocities elsewhere, up to this day? The bedrock of any decision to go to war generally lies with the economic factors.
perhaps you can make those kinds of mercantilist arguments, but they are not economic arguments.
Maybe I am reading this naively but this seems like an admission of criminal guilt on your part.
Mercantilism is a form of economic theory, not one I agree with, but one nonetheless.
we are not in dispute about that then [:)]
Human nature is scary, not moral relativism.
What crime?
Jacob, again I ask. What crimes are you referring to? If you’re referring to mass concentration camps, you have your history kind of backwards. Concentration camps as extermination camps didn’t start until after the US entered the war making it clear to Hitler that he could not win in the ways he expected to.
There were other complications, but the main point I deduce from history is that absent the US, the holocaust as we know it never would have occurred.
I suggest Pat Buchanan’s book on this subject.
Ok, so let’s say we assume Hitler was going to lose the war no matter what. And as soon as he realized this, he was going to start his final solution. So then, if you’re right, the death camps would’ve started later, but they would’ve started nonetheless. So what difference does it make?
OK. I can accept that. Morals are for the dead.
So why are you defending the US entering the war against Hitler on moral grounds?
Jacob,
You’re oversimplifying that. Human behavior is not about variables and equations - well, some of it is, but this case not so much - you could say that potentially, the death camps would have started if Hitler stayed in power, didn’t get what he wanted (the rest of pre-WWI Germany), and if it was not so obvious that he would lose as opposed to being more or less a loss in the Eastern front and a stalemate in the West.
Those are a lot of ifs, however, and it still doesn’t guarantee that death camps would have occurred later on.
On what’s the difference, this is kind of the point about WWII, isn’t it? The funniest thing about the war, the absolute comedy of it all is that the result was pretty much the same anyways.
Because a majority of the people in the United States thought and still thinks that WW2 was just and necessary. So you’ve got a majority opinion and an enforcer. That’s all you need to be right. And yes, I understand how..slippery a slope that is, but that’s the way things work.
I admit there are a lot of ifs. But we had to act. And maybe it would’ve all been the same either way. Maybe. But maybe not. I think not. I think it was right to fight Hitler. I think it was just. And I think a lot of people would agree with me. Now…that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m right. But it does mean that if it were possible to go back in time and do it all over again, we would probably do the same thing. Anyways, trying to figure out who’s right and wrong in a war…is kind of a fools errand if you ask me.
Fair enough, if you’re in a situation where every American is in the same room and armed.
However, a situation, much like morality, is relative. In a room full of libertarians, you’re the nut.
I don’t think the US had to act; it should have done nothing at all and gone Swiss. Let the Europeans fight each other to the point of collapse and then we’re all done with any further wars - not to mention we could save the whole Israel catastrophe from ever occurring.
I think Roosevelt was on par with Hitler and Mussolini for the “bad-person award.” Stalin licked 'em all, of course.
Anarchists don’t believe in democracies.
Hitler started the final solution because no other countries want to accept the Jews. If the US government has not been an ass it has been, most of the Jews would be saved.
Problem solved.
Representative democracy creates 2 different social classes, a productive one and a parasitic one. It’s immoral.
Direct democracy is highly impractical. It just doesn’t work.
Democracy is collectivism; is the dictatorship of the majority, the mob rule. It oppresses the individual.
"Nothing indeed can be a stronger presumption of falsehood than the approbation of the multitude" - David Hume