“For the first time Americans are now paying attention to foreign policy and they say, ‘Wow, there are such crazy people in the world. Here we were minding our own business… we were on a picnic when the thing happened, and here these crazy people want to attack us.’ Go figure, human nature, ‘Americans are the most peaceful, sweetest, most generous people in the world, people who love their children…’ basically good guys, and here these people are trying to attack us.”
A little sarcasm to cure my Pearl Harbor blues.
The Japanese didn’t attack Pearl Harbor “because they had nothing better to do that day.” (Raico)
WWII was not “the good war”, it was the kickoff of the Empire. That is, the American land empire (founded in the Whiskey rebellion and consolidated by Lincoln), becomes the American colonial empire after the Spanish-American war, until finally through WWII it becomes the World hegemonic empire.
All these milquetoast, bet-hedging, waffling, “but, you know America is still a good country daggum” types who refuse to look critically at WWII are frankly no good! In my opinion. It does little good to critique General Westmoreland and Dick Cheney, if you can’t resolve why WWII was a “bad war”. Hitler was his generation’s Hussein, Assad, take your pick. Guilty, bad, but cornered and set up on a pedestal, desperate to avoid the fury of American armaments, but unable to stave off the inevitable wrath of US policy makers’ geostrategic planning. WWII was a pre-meditated power grab by American elites.
I’ll make the point, most important of all. If America had seriously, seriously leveraged its grave sincerity and true neutrality to preserving a peace in Europe between the USSR, Poland, and Germany – and between Japan and the other colonial powers – then it’s possible the entirety of the conflict could have been avoided. Instead, America pushed and pushed and pushed for Britain, and Poland, and China, et al to fight fight fight. And, finally cornered, the sharks and jackals bit back against the giant. And the giant unleashed his fury.
80 million dead later, after the official end of war, we have the 5 years before the Korean War in which thousands and millions of German, Chinese, Koreans, and so forth are displaced or killed. The Korean war with its millions dead under American bombs. Indonesia, Malaysia, Mao, Indochina through to Laos and then the killing fields, the slaughters in Central and South America which neither Germany nor Italy nor Japan had ever a thing to do with, the Middle East and its travails, all of Africa (mostly in the the areas beyond the places ever having a thing to do with the Axis powers); do I need to continue?
The implication of “good war” theology is that everything that happened in the world after 1946 is square on the shoulders of the “United Nations” – that is, the Allies. My biggest regret is not that the world is nasty – it would have been anyway. But America could have been the good guy that mediates, the neutral party, the shining example of the non-interventionist war, the anti-empire. A world power on the side of friendship, a contrast against the killers. An example of the other way.
So much for that opportunity.
It’s worth noting, despite the sensitivity of the matter, that Roosevelt could have saved almost all the Jews in Hitler’s camps. Hitler said that if Germany was existentially threatened, the Jews would die. In a hostage situation, you don’t just run in guns blazing, but that’s what happened. Eisenhower was shocked that FDR was demanding unconditional surrender. Had America fought World War II to prevent genocide, they simply could have made the salvation of the Jews one of the conditions of a conditional surrender deal. That would have guaranteed better treatment of captive German Jews.
American policy makers wanted to dominate Europe politically and economically. Empire. NATO and the CIA fingerprinted European Community represent everything you need to know about this outcome.
Should I mention the crimes of the USSR?
So much for the good war!
