Brain Fertilizer

Some good points, Nathan; and a strong, impassioned take on the current situation. You had me nodding along with you until:

"Yes, more justified than even WWII."

That one got a tongue cluck, followed by a sardonic "Puh-leeze!" I don't question the validity of the war; I don't question any of your other statements regarding it. But I think maybe the beginnings of evidentiary validation for your other strongly-held beliefs have you a bit giddy.

Then again, I believe you're too intelligent to have made such a statement without having considered your stance carefully and without recognizing that there would be quite a few "puh-leeze" -ers out there, even amongst conservatives. In fact, you might even be throwing out hooks for just such a reaction...

So good then -- you've successfully "begged the question," and I'm the first fish to bite. I look forward to reading your response in a future post.

Be safe over there...

Dang, you saw through my evil plot.

Yeah, that was a deliberately inflammatory statement, cuz I wanted to start a discussion. Your reasonableness and sanity makes it hard to have a good argument, yanno? So I'll come clean.

The comparisons are interesting, but probably won't prove anything one way or the other as far as justification.

Really, it's just a different world now. We had a toothless "League of Nations" and a generation that had just seen one of the ugliest, bloodiest, most horrible wars in all of history (WWI). So their reluctance to fight WWII was understandable, if not admirable. By the time Great Britain got involved, it was quite obvious that Hitler was rapacious and set on owning all of Europe, and so there was certainly excellent justification for entering the war to fight him.

And yet, and yet...
...it took a "secret" telegram from Germany to Mexico (promising them the US if they fought on Germany's side) to help get Americans angry enough to fight. From what I understand, there is still some debate as to whether Great Britain faked that telegram or not to get us riled up. It also took a sneak attack by Japan to get us to fight them. From what I understand, there is still some debate as to whether FDR deliberately let it happen (although from what I also understand, if he did, the attack was far worse than his advisors had anticipated), and even some debate as to whether it was even intended to be a sneak attack, that some incredible coincidences occurred that prevented the official declaration of war.

However, there are other parallels between Saddam and Hitler: the concentration camps for Jews vs the children's jails and mass graves for those who opposed Saddam and the entire village of Kurds murdered with chemical weapons. Both were national socialists. We went after Hitler before he was an imminent threat to us because we didn't want to wait until it was imminent...

Of course, Saddam never had the grandiose plans of world domination that Bush I claimed when he compared Saddam to Hitler before the first Gulf War. Saddam wasn't able to conquer even Iran, and his conquest of Kuwait wasn't all that impressive, either.

However, in WWII, Germany was attacking the rest of Europe, in part due to excessive reparations and restrictions placed on them after WWII. There were no indications at the time of our entrance into the war that he was pursuing nuclear weapons. At the time we entered the war, Hitler had not begun mass executions of Jews, and although some eye-witness accounts and rumors provided hints of the atrocity, much doubt and debate remained; we didn't actually find proof until after we conquered Germany (according to Wikipedia).

With Iraq, we knew he was torturing and killing some of his citizens. We knew he provided monetary encouragement to suicide bombers in Israel. We knew he had a chem/bio weapon program and had intentions of obtaining nuclear weapons, we just didn't know the current status of those programs (including whether or not they were in abeyance) and he refused to provide evidence. We knew that he was increasing his ties to a loose collection of international terrorist groups whose main goal was the destruction of western culture and the United States in particular. Please note: we had hints of connections with al Qaeda, but we had strong indications of connections with other terrorist groups who had contact and interchange with al Qaeda, and we had evidence the goals/plans/techniques of al Qaeda were being adopted by Islamic terrorists worldwide. All this can be found through Google.

Thus, it is at least arguable we had more justification to go to war against Saddam Hussein than against Hitler. Do not forget the perspective of history impacts debate: We have not yet discovered the extent of Saddam's atrocities and plans and accomplishments, and we have an actively anti-war movement impeding and doubting at every turn. Whereas WWII is safely 60 years ago, we know nearly everything that can be known, and at the time, the news media actively lobbied Americans to support the war. That's a far cry from the negative reporting and post-Vietnam anti-war bias we get from our news media these days.

It's not a closely-held belief of mine. I wouldn't pretend it is a slam dunk. But it is worth considering how perceptions have been affected by the nature of the news structure now as opposed to in the 1940s...

But it is worth considering how perceptions have been affected by the nature of the news structure now as opposed to in the 1940s...

This part I absolutely agree with. And it doesn't end with the news structure. Society has been affected by mass media in general, which has almost universally advanced a "me, me, me - now, now, now" mentality that has assisted in a breakdown of every societal structure (family unit, religion, education) that would have promoted the sort of moral pride that caused tens of thousands of Americans...among them my grandfather and two great uncles...to join the army during WWII. It was a simpler time then, but "complicated" is certainly not synonymous with better.

They did it because they never questioned it was the right thing to do. Obviously, there are still many people with these same moral convictions, but they seem to grow fewer and fewer as each year goes by. And society at large, while continuing to outwardly praise many of those who follow such a course, shows a decreasing willingness to follow it themselves.

Sorry if I foiled an evil plot. I promise I wasn't playing Batman to your Riddler.

[grin]

The only reason WWII might *seem* more justifiable is because idiots like Neville Chamberlain waited and waited and waited until much damage was done. Here are some reasons why I think this war is just as justifiable.

1. It is more justifiable to sit and do nothing when your enemy is strong than when it was weak. Germany was a hell of a lot stronger than the terrorists, which means that it was a hell of a lot more frightening to intervene. For this reason, the appeaser's arguments at least had a bit of force. None of those arguments make much sense when you have the overwhelming strength that we do in the present case. We can crush them and we should. The only real obstacle is our own psychological weakness.
2. In WWII we didn't have WWII as a plain example of what happens when you appease and appease and appease. In this case, we have the benefit of looking back and seeing what happened in the run up to WWII. This lesson provides justification for acting sooner rather than later. There is less justification in the present case for waiting and trying to negotiate with our enemies. There is also less justification for negotiating because are enemies are dispersed among many states with no clear head of state to negotiate with. With Hitler, there was at least some chance that negotiations might mean something. The same cannot be said for Bin Laden or the other terror masterminds. No possibility of negotiation = more justification for direct action.
3. In the case of both Iraq and Germany, we joined the war without having been attacked by either Iraq or Germany. Therefore, on this point there is no difference.
4. Our strategic interest in the middle east is greater because of oil than was, say, our interest in Czechoslovakia or Abyssinia etc. We simply cannot allow the terrorists and their sympathizers to control all the world's oil. Our economy would collapse.