Posted on 09/03/2006 10:03:43 AM PDT by meandog
LOL
Hint - perhaps you can point out ANY serious political resistance to WWII after Pearl Harbor before declaring my ignorance. Or do you just like calling someone ignorant without backing it up?
His biography says, "He is by all accounts as looney as a tune." You think his article is making "common sense"? Maybe you purposely forgot the sarcasm tag because you're bored and wanted to stir things up a bit today?
There are many differences, none of which are dispositive on whether or not attacking Iraq as a battle in the WOIF's was a mistake as this moron you support seems to think. The moron claims that history tells us that killing our enemies and then occupying their country for a time can not have a positive outcome. He uses that in an affort to persuade that the war in Iraq was a mistake. His logic sucks. Entiendes?
and
I've been a fan of FredOnEverything.net for a long time.
Don't always agree, but he's usually pretty entertaining.
Mark
The Japanese were faced with us, or death. The Germans were faced with us, or the Soviets (arguably worse than death).
The Iraqis aren't faced with anything but us. Sure, it's a rough neighborhood, but no rougher than it's ever been.
They're glad Saddam is gone, but as irrational and illogical as it clearly is, they don't consider us much of an improvement. So, the factors that made our victory over the Axis possible aren't in play here. The Iraqi people have nothing to lose by resisting us, and as a matter of national pride, have much to gain.
Capiche?
The two are not mutually exclusive, dude. You keep shifting the points of debate.
No, I simply corrected your false statement that the Saudis planned to sabotage their oil wells a couple of years ago. It was Al Qaeda that actually threatened to sabotage the Saudi oil fields.
As far as the debate on the Saudis and the WOT, they have been on our side both in Iraq and against Al Qaeda. In both cases they have increased oil production during critical time periods in the fight against Iraq and Al Qaeda.
(Now if you want to debate about Hamas and Hezzbollah versus Israel and the Saudi position...that's a different story.)
Your spouting nonsense, the same nonsense that left wing loons and bearded expatriots living in a country invading our borders spout.
Our invasion of Iraq was not for altruistic purposes alone. The invasion was for many reasons not the least of which was the confluence of Islamic fascist nuts and Husseins propensity for WMD.
Aside from that you've done a miserable job of rehabilitating Reeds assinine claim that history teaches us that killing and occupying our enemies can not have a positive outcome. Tough job though, glad I'm not you.
As best as I can tell, what the Maximum Cipher lacks, among an inexhaustible list of other things, is a hop toad's understanding of how people work. Here we have the explanation of just about everything he does. He's dealing with a world full of people, but has no idea what people are. He probably couldn't recognize one. So he doesn't take their predictable behavior into account.
Help me out here, Fred: Which one of you's the guy who's halfway through his second term as president, who served a term and a half as governor of Texas before that, and has been married to a good woman for almost thirty years, and which one of you's the divorced hack, marinating his brain in margaritas in semi-retirement in Guadalajara after a middling career in journalism? (My apologies for insulting middling journalists.) The answer to that is, in my opinion, the answer to which of you has the better working knowledge of human nature. I'd give you the answer, but I think you already know.
Like most loons, Reed's thesis is predicated upon lies.
He answers his question rather promptly ... it is he who is the depressing, witless ferret.
There wasn't any serious political resistance for a reason.
That reason was probably because the Axis military was the biggest war machine on the planet, and it sent a fleet of aircraft carriers to punch us in the back of the head.
9/11, on the other hand, killed an similar number of people, but it was launched by 5,000 cave dwellers from a somewhat obscure terrorist group hiding in a country 96% of Americans couldn't find on a map.
Clearly, these two events were going to provoke different responses, politically and militarily.
Clearly, these two events were going to provoke different responses, politically and militarily.
Surely you jest? We have been at war with the Islamofascists since Jimmy Carter, having gutted the military to the point where we had no spare parts and no ammo for training, allowed the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (read Hizbullah) to humiliate and kill our people at their leisure.
Newt.
He is a conservative kook!!
That the writer says the things he does, is perfectly understandable; what is less clear to me is why a hope-to-be-credible publication publishes such obvious personal attacks -- unless the editor wishes he wrote it himself, and usually edits it for even more powerful offense.
Letters editors receive stuff like this everyday -- but they also receive well-written pieces also -- which they unfailingly suppress, thus giving thoughtful readers the impression that no intelligent person reads or writes for that paper. That has been a driving force in the explosive growth of the alternative, new media and publications of the Internet -- as people desperately search for intelligent life in the universe.
Clearly, these two events were going to provoke different responses, politically and militarily.
Response A, 1941. Defeat the Japanesse and German war machine. Defeat those countries and their people.
Response B, 2001. Work with various willing countries and their willing people in the Middle East and around the world to defeat the terrorists in their own country. Remove dictators and replace with democracy any terrorist supporting country that refuses to cooperate ASAP. See Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan for positive results with Syria, Iran and (Lebanon) to follow.
Two different responses. Both are correct.
Every newsroom in this country is apparently presided over by some third-rate mediocrity who has been banished to "edit" letters from the deranged people who have developed obsessions and delusions of relevance and self-importance with the various letters editors seething in their own resentment and bitterness towards obviously successful people.
That should not ruin their day.
Biographies of FDR, Truman, Ike, Churchill, Vandenberg, Warren, Jackson, Taft and Marshall and the several war bond drives 1940 - 1944 - - to name the ones that come to mind instantly, discuss precisely the internal politics of the WW II period. To attempt to use the legitimate debates that swirl around Bush's compulsion to attack Iraq and all of the many distictions that comprise a very real difference to any historical antecedent is a meaningless exercise in a mindless defense of ideology and party loyalty. It's undertaken by the same people who would be best described by the tale of the Emperor's New Clothes as fawning over the wonderful new invisible suit notwithstanding the boss'stark nakedness.
It should also be noted that Japan had no history of democracy and a decidedly non-Western majority religion based in part on worship of the Emperor. Getting democracy there must have looked to be impossible in 1945. How, oh how, did we manage it?
1. The Japanese surrendered, and the emperor (who as you point out, was worshipped by the population) directed everyone to stop fighting.
2. There was one commander - General Douglas MacArthur - of the entire occupation effort, military and civil.
3. MacArthur worked to win the Japanese people over. “MacArthur himself arrived in Tokyo on August 30, and immediately set several laws: No Allied personnel were to fraternize with Japanese people. No Allied personnel were to assault Japanese people. No Allied personnel were to eat the scarce Japanese food.”
3. Numbers. By the end of 1945, more than 350,000 US personnel were stationed throughout Japan. Adding the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in February 1946 added 40,000 more.
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