Friday, October 08, 2004

The Right War

Lonsberry: "the first real offensive of the war, the first bit of payback for Pearl Harbor, was our attack on German troops in North Africa.
I wonder, back then, if the likes of John Kerry would have mocked President Roosevelt and claimed Africa - and Italy and Normandy after it - were 'the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.' I wonder, as the Americans tried to take Hitler down, if the John Kerrys of that day would have railed against the president because Hitler wasn't Hirohito."

(Based on the comments this post has recieved, it looks like Bob's argument is pretty weak. He does often try to make his points with pretty weak foundations. But here it is anyway for what it's worth.)

2 comments:

Ryan Early said...

What a horrible argument. It's not like Germany didn't DECLARE WAR against the U.S. shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack, and that the U.S. wasn't in a much better position to take action against Germany first because Japan had destroyed the majority of our fleet, right?

I think a better analogy would be if after Germany invaded Austria in 1938, a grand coalition of forces under U.S. leadership joined together and kicked the Nazis out of Austria, disarmed Germany, and set up sanctions to prevent Germany from reaquiring their military strength. But then after Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, FDR decides to invade Germany first.

If that happened, then at the time I would speak up and say "wrong war, wrong place, wrong time" and be correct in doing so even if we had the perfect knowledge of 20/20 hindsight that the original argument implies.

Because at the time, North Korea ... er, ahem, I mean, Japan, was the bigger and more serious threat in such a scenario and should have been dealt with first. We would thus hope a coalition consisting of England, France, and even the Soviet Union, could keep an eye on Germany and Italy and keep them in line until Japan could be neutralized.

J.E. Remy said...

Re: Ryan

here, here.