New Books challenge conventional wisdom on WW2

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pzrmeyer2

New Books challenge conventional wisdom on WW2

Post by pzrmeyer2 »

Was World War Two just as pointless and self-defeating as Iraq, asks Peter Hitchens
By PETER HITCHENS -

Last updated at 21:01pm on 19th April 2008



It makes me feel like a traitor to write this. The Second World War was my religion for most of my life.

Brave, alone, bombed, defiant, we, the British, had won it on our own against the most evil and powerful enemy imaginable.

Born six years after it was over, I felt almost as if I had lived through it, as my parents most emphatically had, with some bravery and much hardship in both cases.

What do you think? Tell in the comments section at the bottom of the page

Scroll down for more...


Heroism: Tommies commandeer a German machine gun during battle for Caen in 1944


With my toy soldiers, tanks and field-guns, I defeated the Nazis daily on my bedroom floor.

I lost myself in books with unembarrassed titles like Men Of Glory, with their crisp, moving accounts of acts of incredible bravery by otherwise ordinary people who might have been my next-door neighbours.

I read the fictional adventures of RAF bomber ace Matt Braddock in the belief that the stories were true, and not caring in the slightest about what happened when his bombs hit the ground. I do now.

After this came all those patriotic films that enriched the picture of decency, quiet courage and self-mocking humour that I came to think of as being the essence of Britishness. To this day I can't watch them without a catch in the throat.

This was our finest hour. It was the measure against which everything else must be set.

So it has been very hard for me since the doubts set in. I didn't really want to know if it wasn't exactly like that. But it has rather forced itself on me.

When I lived in Russia at the end of the Soviet era, I found a country that made even more of the war than we did.

I even employed a splendid old Red Army war veteran to help me set up my office there: an upright, totally reliable old gentleman just like my father's generation, except that he was Russian and a convinced Stalinist who did odd jobs for the KGB.

They had their war films, too. And their honourable scars.

And they were just as convinced they had won the war single-handed as we were.

They regarded D-Day as a minor event and had never heard of El Alamein.

Once I caught myself thinking: "They're using the war as a way of comforting themselves over their national decline, and over the way they're clearly losing in their contest with America."

And then it came to me that this could be a description of my own country.

When I lived in America itself, where I discovered that the Second World War, in their view, took place mainly in the Pacific, and in any case didn't matter half as much as the Civil War and the Vietnam War, I got a second harsh, unwanted history lesson.

Now here comes another. On a recent visit to the USA I picked up two new books that are going to make a lot of people in Britain very angry.

I read them, unable to look away, much as it is hard to look away from a scene of disaster, in a sort of cloud of dispirited darkness.



Same story? British soldiers at Basra Palace during the Iraq War - a conflict justified on the precedent of the Second World War


They are a reaction to the use - in my view, abuse - of the Second World War to justify the Iraq War.

We were told that the 1939-45 war was a good war, fought to overthrow a wicked tyrant, that the war in Iraq would be the same, and that those who opposed it were like the discredited appeasers of 1938.

Well, I didn't feel much like Neville Chamberlain (a man I still despise) when I argued against the Iraq War. And I still don't.

Some of those who opposed the Iraq War ask a very disturbing question.

The people who sold us Iraq did so as if they were today's Churchills. They were wrong.

In that case, how can we be sure that Churchill's war was a good war?

What if the Men of Glory didn't need to die or risk their lives? What if the whole thing was a miscalculated waste of life and wealth that destroyed Britain as a major power and turned her into a bankrupt pensioner of the USA?

Funnily enough, these questions echo equally uncomfortable ones I'm often asked by readers here.

The milder version is: "Who really won the war, since Britain is now subject to a German-run European Union?"

The other is one I hear from an ever-growing number of war veterans contemplating modern Britain's landscape of loutishness and disorder and recalling the sacrifices they made for it: "Why did we bother?"

Don't read on if these questions rock your universe.

The two books, out in this country very soon, are Patrick Buchanan's Churchill, Hitler And The Unnecessary War and Nicholson Baker's Human Smoke.

I know Pat Buchanan and respect him, but I have never liked his sympathy for "America First", the movement that tried to keep the USA out of the Second World War.

As for Nicholson Baker, he has become famous only because his phone-sex novel, Vox, was given as a present to Bill Clinton by Monica Lewinsky.

Human Smoke is not a novel but a series of brief factual items deliberately arranged to undermine the accepted story of the war, and it has received generous treatment from the American mainstream, especially the New York Times.

Baker is a pacifist, a silly position open only to citizens of free countries with large navies.

He has selected with care to suit his position, but many of the facts here, especially about Winston Churchill and Britain's early enthusiasm for bombing civilian targets, badly upset the standard view.



In his element: Churchill preferred war to peace. claims U.S. author Patrick Buchanan

Here is Churchill, in a 1920 newspaper article, allegedly railing against the "sinister confederacy" of international Jewry.

I say "allegedly" because I have not seen the original. I also say it because I am reluctant to believe it, as I am reluctant to believe another Baker snippet which suggests that Franklin Roosevelt was involved in a scheme to limit the number of Jews at Harvard University.

Such things today would end a political career in an instant.

Many believe the 1939-45 war was fought to save the Jews from Hitler. No facts support this fond belief.

If the war saved any Jews, it was by accident.

Its outbreak halted the "Kindertransport" trains rescuing Jewish children from the Third Reich. We ignored credible reports from Auschwitz and refused to bomb the railway tracks leading to it.

Baker is also keen to show that Hitler's decision to exterminate the Jews of Europe came only after the war was fully launched, and that before then, although his treatment of the Jews was disgusting and homicidal, it stopped well short of industrialised mass murder.

The implication of this, that the Holocaust was a result of the war, not a cause of it, is specially disturbing.

A lot of people will have trouble, also, with the knowledge that Churchill said of Hitler in 1937, when the nature of his regime was well known: "A highly competent, cool, well informed functionary with an agreeable manner, a disarming smile, and few have been unaffected by a subtle personal magnetism."

Three years later, the semi-official view, still pretty much believed, was that Hitler was the devil in human form and more or less insane.

Buchanan is, in a way, more damaging. He portrays Churchill as a man who loved war for its own sake, and preferred it to peace.

As the First World War began in 1914, two observers, Margot Asquith and David Lloyd George, described Churchill as "radiant, his face bright, his manner keen ... you could see he was a really happy man".

Churchill also (rightly) gets it in the neck from Buchanan for running down British armed forces between the wars.

It was Churchill who, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, demanded deep cuts in the Royal Navy in 1925, so when he adopted rearmament as his cause ten years later, it was his own folly he was railing against.

Well, every country needs men who like war, if it is to stand and fight when it has to. And we all make mistakes, which are forgotten if we then get one thing spectacularly right, as Churchill did.

Americans may take or leave Mr Buchanan's views about whether they should have stayed out, but the USA did very well out of a war in which Britain and Russia did most of the fighting, while Washington pocketed (and still keeps) most of the benefits.

Surveying Buchanan's chilly summary, I found myself distressed by several questions.

The First and Second World Wars, as Buchanan says, are really one conflict.



Blood brothers: By Christmas 1940, Stalin (right) had murdered many more people than Hitler, and had invaded nearly as many countries


We went to war with the Kaiser in 1914 mainly because we feared being overtaken by Germany as the world's greatest naval power. Yet one of the main results of the war was that we were so weakened we were overtaken instead by the USA.

We were also forced, by American pressure, to end our naval alliance with Japan, which had protected our Far Eastern Empire throughout the 1914-18 war.

This decision, more than any other, cost us that Empire. By turning Japan from an ally into an enemy, but without the military or naval strength to guard our possessions, we ensured that we would be easy meat in 1941.

After the fall of Singapore in 1942, our strength and reputation in Asia were finished for good and our hurried scuttle from India unavoidable.

Worse still is Buchanan's analysis of how we went to war.

I had always thought the moment we might have stopped Hitler was when he reoccupied the Rhineland on March 7, 1936. But Buchanan records that nobody was interested in such action at the time. Nobody? Yes.

That includes Churchill, who said fatuously on March 13: "Instead of retaliating by armed force, as would have been done in a previous generation, France has taken the proper and prescribed course of appealing to the League of Nations."

He then even more wetly urged "Herr Hitler" to do the decent thing and withdraw.

Buchanan doesn't think that Britain and France could have saved Czechoslovakia in 1938, and I suspect he is right.

But this is a minor issue beside his surgical examination of Britain's guarantee to help Poland in March 1939. Hitler saw our "stand" as an empty bluff, and called it.

The Poles were crushed and murdered, and their country erased from the map. Hitler's eventual defeat left Poland under the Soviet heel for two generations.

We then embarked on a war which cost us our Empire, many of our best export markets, what was left of our naval supremacy, and most of our national wealth - gleefully stripped from us by Roosevelt in return for Lend-Lease supplies.

As a direct result we sought membership of a Common Market that has since bled away our national independence.

Would we not have been wiser to behave as the USA did, staying out of it and waiting for Hitler and Stalin to rip out each other's bowels?

Was Hitler really set on a war with Britain or on smashing the British Empire?

The country most interested in dismantling our Empire was the USA. Hitler never built a surface navy truly capable of challenging ours and, luckily for us, he left it too late to build enough submarines to starve us out.

He was very narrowly defeated in the Battle of Britain, but how would we have fared if, a year later, he had used the forces he flung at Russia to attack us instead?

But he didn't. His "plan" to invade Britain, the famous Operation Sealion, was only a sketchy afterthought, quickly abandoned.

Can it be true that he wasn't very interested in fighting or invading us? His aides were always baffled by his admiration for the British Empire, about which he would drone for hours.

Of course he was an evil dictator. But so was Joseph Stalin, who would later become our honoured ally, supplied with British weapons, fawned on by our Press and politicians, including Churchill himself.

By Christmas 1940, Stalin had in fact murdered many more people than Hitler and had invaded nearly as many countries.

We almost declared war on him in 1940 and he ordered British communists to subvert our war effort against the Nazis during the Battle of Britain.

And, in alliance with Hitler, he was supplying the Luftwaffe with much of the fuel and resources it needed to bomb London.

Not so simple, is it? Survey the 20th Century and you see Britain repeatedly fighting Germany, at colossal expense.

No one can doubt the valour and sacrifice involved.

But at the end of it all, Germany dominates Europe behind the smokescreen of the EU; our Empire and our rule of the seas have gone, we struggle with all the problems of a great civilisation in decline, and our special friend, the USA, has smilingly supplanted us for ever. But we won the war.
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Re: New Books challenge conventional wisdom on WW2

Post by Annelie »

Interesting.
But at the end of it all, Germany dominates Europe behind the smokescreen of the EU; our Empire and our rule of the seas have gone, we struggle with all the problems of a great civilisation in decline, and our special friend, the USA, has smilingly supplanted us for ever. But we won the war
Question I ask is "Who is pulling the strings behind Germanys power?"
Annelie
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Re: New Books challenge conventional wisdom on WW2

Post by phylo_roadking »

Can you edit that appropriately to show up which bits are Buchanan's cut-and-pasted by Hitchens, Ditto Churchill, and which are actual "Hitchens"

And possibly provide a link to it?

Plus - I SHOULD say - if this is THE "Peter Hitchens"...then you were probably on firmer ground with Jeremy Clarkson as a WWII pundit...
"Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle." - Malcolm Reynolds
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Re: New Books challenge conventional wisdom on WW2

Post by Cott Tiger »

Peter Hitchens can be quite good fun as he stirs up debate and likes to poke the wasp nest with a big stick every now and again, but much of what he says is hyperbole and he loves being controversial purely for the sake of it (he quite likes the attention it brings I think).

For example:
Many believe the 1939-45 war was fought to save the Jews from Hitler. No facts support this fond belief.
….

The implication of this, that the Holocaust was a result of the war, not a cause of it, is specially disturbing
I have never heard or read of any serious historian, academic or politician claim that WWII was started due to the Holocaust, or to save the Jews. Even the most basic student of history knows that the killings didn’t really take hold until after the war had commenced.

So for Hitchens to state the “revelation” of such “facts” have “rocked his world” is really all rather laughable.

Other things in your snippet stand out as well.

Are we really to believe that Hitchens has only just found out Stalin’s communist regime was a murderous one? And that Buchannan is the man to thank for bringing such shocking revelations to the world’s attention. Again, it’s rather laughable.

He also boldly tells that Buchannan has brought about a new and disturbing understanding of Churchill and that he:
portrays Churchill as a man who loved war for its own sake, and preferred it to peace.
However only a few sentences later we hear what a “wet” Churchill was:
I had always thought the moment we might have stopped Hitler was when he reoccupied the Rhineland on March 7, 1936. But Buchanan records that nobody was interested in such action at the time. Nobody? Yes.

That includes Churchill, who said fatuously on March 13: "Instead of retaliating by armed force, as would have been done in a previous generation, France has taken the proper and prescribed course of appealing to the League of Nations."

He then even more wetly urged "Herr Hitler" to do the decent thing and withdraw.
Rather confusing actions for a man we have just been told is war-mongering, and peace-hating.

Next we have:
Can it be true that he [Hitler] wasn't very interested in fighting or invading us? His aides were always baffled by his admiration for the British Empire, about which he would drone for hours.
Again, Hitchens is playing with his audience here. He knows ,as does any scholar of this period, that Hitler wanted to avoid going to war against the British and that he admired many facets about British culture and her Empire. It’s very disingenuous to make out that Buchannan has again unearthed this ground breaking new information and that his own “religion” of WWII has been shattered.

I could on and on but I'll end by suggesting that one reads Hitchens writing with a healthy pinch of salt. He’s out to purely stir a reaction.

Regards,

André
Up The Tigers!
pzrmeyer2

Re: New Books challenge conventional wisdom on WW2

Post by pzrmeyer2 »

Cott Tiger wrote:Peter Hitchens can be quite good fun as he stirs up debate and likes to poke the wasp nest with a big stick every now and again, but much of what he says is hyperbole and he loves being controversial purely for the sake of it (he quite likes the attention it brings I think).

For example:
Many believe the 1939-45 war was fought to save the Jews from Hitler. No facts support this fond belief.
….

The implication of this, that the Holocaust was a result of the war, not a cause of it, is specially disturbing
I have never heard or read of any serious historian, academic or politician claim that WWII was started due to the Holocaust, or to save the Jews. Even the most basic student of history knows that the killings didn’t really take hold until after the war had commenced.

So for Hitchens to state the “revelation” of such “facts” have “rocked his world” is really all rather laughable.

Other things in your snippet stand out as well.

Are we really to believe that Hitchens has only just found out Stalin’s communist regime was a murderous one? And that Buchannan is the man to thank for bringing such shocking revelations to the world’s attention. Again, it’s rather laughable.

He also boldly tells that Buchannan has brought about a new and disturbing understanding of Churchill and that he:
portrays Churchill as a man who loved war for its own sake, and preferred it to peace.
However only a few sentences later we hear what a “wet” Churchill was:
I had always thought the moment we might have stopped Hitler was when he reoccupied the Rhineland on March 7, 1936. But Buchanan records that nobody was interested in such action at the time. Nobody? Yes.

That includes Churchill, who said fatuously on March 13: "Instead of retaliating by armed force, as would have been done in a previous generation, France has taken the proper and prescribed course of appealing to the League of Nations."

He then even more wetly urged "Herr Hitler" to do the decent thing and withdraw.
Rather confusing actions for a man we have just been told is war-mongering, and peace-hating.

Next we have:
Can it be true that he [Hitler] wasn't very interested in fighting or invading us? His aides were always baffled by his admiration for the British Empire, about which he would drone for hours.
Again, Hitchens is playing with his audience here. He knows ,as does any scholar of this period, that Hitler wanted to avoid going to war against the British and that he admired many facets about British culture and her Empire. It’s very disingenuous to make out that Buchannan has again unearthed this ground breaking new information and that his own “religion” of WWII has been shattered.

I could on and on but I'll end by suggesting that one reads Hitchens writing with a healthy pinch of salt. He’s out to purely stir a reaction.

Regards,

André
Andre,

I dont disagree with you, however, Hitchens is as you say, playing to his audience. While historians of the serious and/or feldgrau variety know these tidbits, you'd be surprised how little the general public knows about the subjects and minor details that Hitchens (and Bucanan and Baker) dig up.
Many believe the 1939-45 war was fought to save the Jews from Hitler. No facts support this fond belief.
….

The implication of this, that the Holocaust was a result of the war, not a cause of it, is specially disturbing
I have never heard or read of any serious historian, academic or politician claim that WWII was started due to the Holocaust, or to save the Jews. Even the most basic student of history knows that the killings didn’t really take hold until after the war had commenced.
read what he (they) says again Andre. The way "history" is taught these days, one with only a basic understanding of the war might think it was so. He is not disagreeing with you, only saying that it would be a revelation to many who are otherwise ill-informed. It used to be taught that the "Big H" was a "detail" of the much larger and deeper WW2. But now, the reverse is true: its not a stretch for the average Joe here in the states to think that WW2 was just a sideshow of the Holocaust, in which a group of Navajo Codetalkers, Tuskeegee Airmen, and Japansese-American Nisei liberated Hitler's capital of Auschwitz by dropping the A bomb on it.

Buchanan's contention is that there might never have been a "Final Solution" had the war not started. Hence, a result, not a cause. This and other thoughts about "who started it" and why may digress from the simplisitc notion of "the good war" that here in the west we are popularly taught. I think Norman Davies" No Simple Victory" also makes these points. Here in the USA, few even know how the actual causes of Germany's defeat were primarily the hardly "good guy" Soviets, not the US or UK. Indeed, few accounts here even mention "our" Allies at all. Its all Pearl Harbor -Midway-Iwo Jima-Abomb or DDay(USA)--Bulge(USA)--Berlin(USA). The vast scale of the East is often ignored as the focus is on the albeit insignificant to the overall picture battles like Market Garden and El ALamein. Compare those with Kursk or Bagration in terms of csualties or strategic importance.

PS I have both Buhanan's and Baker's books, but have not read them yet....I ll try to post a mini-review of each when I finally tackle them...
Paddy Keating

Re: New Books challenge conventional wisdom on WW2

Post by Paddy Keating »

What if the Men of Glory didn't need to die or risk their lives? What if the whole thing was a miscalculated waste of life and wealth that destroyed Britain as a major power and turned her into a bankrupt pensioner of the USA?
What indeed? Let me hasten to say that many people who ask themselves such questions are by no means anti-American. It was in America's interest to wreck the British Empire. I blame the European ruling classes and their bankers for giving the farm away to Uncle Sam on a plate. I certainly don't blame him for accepting it.

War with Germany was carefully engineered by a clique in Britain and France. Had it really been about Poland, why didn't our glorious leaders declare war on the USSR at the same time or, to be more precise, deliver the same ultimatum to Stalin as was delivered to Hitler?

I must say that I find it hard to imagine that FDR would have been involved in any anti-Jewish shenanigans, given that he was, if anything, a good friend to Jewish advancement, surrounding himself with many Jews. I just can't see him having anything to do with a conspiracy to keep Jews out of Harvard.

PK
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Re: New Books challenge conventional wisdom on WW2

Post by phylo_roadking »

Moderator's Note;
Can you edit that appropriately to show up which bits are Buchanan's cut-and-pasted by Hitchens, Ditto Churchill, and which are actual "Hitchens"

And...provide a link to it?
...so that it can be read in context.

And this discussion will move away from the Holocaust nd associated anti-Semitism. There's enough else in that article of Hitchens' to debate relating to the causes of the war - or not.
"Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle." - Malcolm Reynolds
pzrmeyer2

Re: New Books challenge conventional wisdom on WW2

Post by pzrmeyer2 »

here you go Phylo, enjoy....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/a ... ge_id=1770

no one here is bringing up the Holocaust or anti Semitism. But hey are part and parcel of the article Hitchens wrote and Buchanan's book. Moreover, they have become deservedly or not the central themes of all those millions, who these authors attempt to debunk, that because of the bIG H attempt to justify all the death and carnage as somehow "noble" and "good" and "worth it". I understand and accept feldgrau's speech code when it comes to topical discussions that are too politcally sensitve for many to handle. But, If we cant bring these up in even a secondary or tertiary way, then shut the thread down.
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Re: New Books challenge conventional wisdom on WW2

Post by greenhorn »

Blame the European ruling classes...... not sure about that. Perhaps the German elite, bankers and the such choose Hitler because they wrongly assumed he was a strawman and would take direction and sort out their domestic left wingers and communists.... Could you inform me how exactly the Germans to organise the Brits & French to sign up to the Agreement of Mutual Assistance between the United Kingdom and Poland & the

Interesting supposition that the war with Germany was carefully crafted? I thought they were fulfilling treaty obligations. They were unable to declare war against Russia at the same time as Germany. The Germans invaded 1st Sept '39 and the French & Brits declared war on the 3rd. The Russians invaded on the 17th September.
Under Agreement of Mutual Assistance between the United Kingdom and Poland.-London, August 25, 1939 the signatories would help one another to resist foreign invasions if the invaded party was still in the fight (article 3).... perhaps by the 17th September organised Polish resistance had collapsed? Basically following treaty obligations to the letter....
The Kasprzycki-Gamelin Convention only bound France and Poland to aid one another against Germany aggression....

Anti-semitism was rife in the USA under FDR..... with people like Charles Coughlin on the radio.....
Ivy League college operate what was effective a "Jewish" quota (not allowing more than 15% of year's intake to be Jewish)
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... rvard.html
Yale had a 10-15% quota.....http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~dobbin/cv/r ... arabel.pdf

Many private clubs in the US practiced active discrimination against Jewish applicants....
Banzai!
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Re: New Books challenge conventional wisdom on WW2

Post by phylo_roadking »

Just because something is in the middle of a document posted up doesn't mean there's an obligation to pick it out and discuss.

For ANY thread to be closed is a fall-back option at the discretion of management- it's for Feldgrau members to learn to use the site according to Jason's rules. They're very simple, easy to use and don't intrude on the main reason for the site's existence.
"Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle." - Malcolm Reynolds
pzrmeyer2

Re: New Books challenge conventional wisdom on WW2

Post by pzrmeyer2 »

here's a slightly off topic view from another author...


How Empires Fall
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

In a new book that will infuriate the fake conservatives who inhabit the Republican Party, Patrick J. Buchanan documents how British self-righteousness, delusion, and hubris destroyed both the British Empire and Western ascendancy in two unnecessary wars launched by a small cabal of morons that ruled Britain

Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War shows that the two world wars that destroyed European civilization began when England declared war on Germany, thus dragging in the Empire, Commonwealth, and United States. This was a strategic blunder unparalleled in history. Mighty Britain emerged from World War II as an American dependency.

Buchanan cites such British notables as F.J.P. Veale, B.H. Liddell Hart, and C.P. Snow to document that it was Winston Churchill who committed, in Veale’s words, “the first deliberate breach of the fundamental rule of civilized warfare that hostilities must only be waged against the enemy combatant forces.” It was Churchill, not Hitler, who first targeted civilian populations in World War II and caused the structure of civilized warfare to collapse in ruins.

The Americans quickly adopted Churchill’s criminal policy of attacking civilians, culminating in the outrageous use of nuclear weapons against two Japanese cities, the slaughter of Vietnamese civilians, and the ongoing slaughter of Afghan and Iraqi civilians.
A popular American myth is that “the greatest generation” saved the world from Nazi tyranny. As Buchanan points out, the fact of the matter is that the Normandy invasion in June 1944 played little, if any, role in Germany’s defeat. By the end of 1942 Hitler had lost World War II at Stalingrad, long before any American troops appeared on the scene. What the Normandy invasion achieved 18 months later was to keep the Red Army from over-running all of Europe.

Although Buchanan’s book is about how the British destroyed themselves, Buchanan is clearly thinking about America. In the closing pages Buchanan shows how the Bush Regime has broken from the sound policy of President Reagan and is replicating the British folly of self-destruction. “There is hardly a blunder of the British Empire we have not replicated,” laments Buchanan.

The distinct American hubris that we are “the indispensable nation” and the braggadocio that we are an “omnipower” has us overcommitted in alliances that we cannot fulfill. Despite 25 percent of the Iraqi population killed, injured or displaced, the “world’s only superpower” cannot even control Baghdad. To deal with the pointless war we started in Afghanistan, we have had to sucker our NATO allies into a conflict that is no concern of theirs. Militarily overextended and with a faltering economy and collapsing currency, the cabal of morons that rules America still hopes to attack Iran, Syria, and to drive Hezbollah from Lebanon. American idiots in think tanks are busy at work drawing up plans about how the US is going to check China and prevent her emergence as a power beyond US control. The Republican presidential candidate has boasted that he will challenge Russia and bring Putin to heel.
Amazing.

The world’s greatest debtor is going to take on the two powerful countries with the largest trade surpluses. According to the World Factbook, an annual publication of the CIA, Russia’s 2007 current account surplus is $465 billion and China’s is $363 billion. In contrast, the US current account deficit is $987 billion--an amount larger that the total deficits of all other countries in the world combined. The out-of-pocket and already incurred future cost of Bush’s wars of aggression is between $3 and $5 trillion, every dollar of which must be borrowed. That comes on top of the unfunded liabilities of the US government totaling $53 trillion. By any account the US is the world’s worst credit risk. The “mighty” US relies on foreigners to finance its consumption, its wars, and the daily operations of its government.

When Buchanan looks at the collection of idiots that comprise America’s ruling class, he despairs.

In truth, American power is already broken, and the country is already lost.

The country is lost, because the brownshirt Bush Regime has destroyed the US Constitution with the complicity of the opposition party and the federal courts. There is no organized power that can restore the Constitution or even much concern that it has been overthrown.

The country is broken, because American capitalists have moved offshore so many US manufacturing, engineering, and research jobs that US imports now exceed US industrial production. American dependency on imported manufactured goods, advanced technology goods, and energy is astounding.

Moreover, the dependency is escalating dramatically. In March 2002, prior to Bush’s decision to impose Israel’s will on the Middle East, oil was $25 a barrel. Today oil is $125 a barrel, a five-fold increase that has seen our oil import bill rise from $145 billion in 2006 to $456 billion presently, a $300 billion addition to a trade deficit that was already running $700-$800 billion annually.

There is no possibility of the US closing its trade deficit. The US is able to survive such enormous deficits only because the US dollar is the world reserve currency. This role for the dollar is nearing an end as the world looks for more stable stores of value. Although oil is still nominally priced in dollars, in reality it is being priced in euros as oil producers raise the dollar price with a view to keeping their oil revenues at a constant purchasing power in euros.

When the dollar loses its reserve currency role, foreign financing for US trade and budget deficits will evaporate. US living standards will collapse, and the indispensable omnipower will be just another washed up country.

For a world weary of “American exceptionalism,” this can’t happen too soon.
pzrmeyer2

Re: New Books challenge conventional wisdom on WW2

Post by pzrmeyer2 »

Just because something is in the middle of a document posted up doesn't mean there's an obligation to pick it out and discuss.
perhaps not, but it is central to Buchanan's (and others) points about the importance of the "event" in relation to the war itself and cause or effect of said event. If you wish to ignore the 800lb gorilla in the room to focus on more mundane topics like the Anglo-US-Japanese Naval Treaty of 1925 and its implications for the world war, the choice is yours.
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Re: New Books challenge conventional wisdom on WW2

Post by phylo_roadking »

The Forum rules are quite clear. All gorillas will be checked at the door.
"Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle." - Malcolm Reynolds
pzrmeyer2

Re: New Books challenge conventional wisdom on WW2

Post by pzrmeyer2 »

phylo_roadking wrote:The Forum rules are quite clear. All gorillas will be checked at the door.
see no evil, hear no evil. you'd make a good low level Deutsche Reichsbahn train official, circa 1942-43, Phylo. 8)
phylo_roadking
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Re: New Books challenge conventional wisdom on WW2

Post by phylo_roadking »

The Forum rules are clear. Post here according to them. They also include no ad hominem attacks...
"Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle." - Malcolm Reynolds
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