A question for the Kerry supporters

Joe, i cannot imagine why you would not wish to include India in your list of Allied nations in the second world war, unless it has to do with their status within the "British Empire." India provided more troops to the Commonwealth effort than all other nations in the Commonwealth combined, saving only Canada. The United Nations army in Italy was a truly United Nations army, with a division from Brazil, French and French colonial troops (from Morrocco, Algeria, Senegal and French Equatorial Africa), Belgians, Poles, South Africans, New Zealanders, Palestinian Jews and several infantry divisions and several armored regiments from India. Those nations provided troops and treasure when called upon to do so by England and United States.

The alleged "coalition of the willing," however, has England, Spain and Australia as the only members who signed up with no further incentive than a sense of alliance. In the case of Spain and Australia, and the late-comer Italy, this was done over the objection of the citizenry. In the case of Poland, Belarus, the Ukraine and a host of smaller nations, the incentives were monetary and political. I personally consider "coalition of the bought" to be a more coherent description. Many of these nations secured lucrative contracts for the rebuilding of Iraq. One consequence of this has been that young Iraqis who have no skills to offer remain unemployed, although participation in the rebuilding would have offered them the chance for employment as laborers. The continuing high level of unemployment combined with a lack of essential services in the Sadr City district of Baghdad makes for a fertile recruiting ground for Muqtada Al Sadr, who otherwise does not have the religious credentials of his father, and would likely have few prospects for recruitment if the young men of Sadr City had real jobs to go to.

It is breathtaking to contemplate the manner in which this administration has managed to make a mess of every aspect of the invasion and "rebuilding" of Iraq.

Setanta and Joe
Some of the most heroic fighters in World War II, while technically American, were the sons of Japanese families interred in US concentration camps. They did not have to serve; they chose to fight for the country that interred them. By any definition, they were an ally.

Answering the call to duty, young Japanese Americans entered into military service, joining many pre-war draftees. The 100th Infantry Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team, fighting in Europe, became the most highly decorated Army unit for its size and length of service in American military history. Japanese Americans in the military intelligence service used their bilingual skills to help shorten the war in the Pacific and thus saved countless American lives. The 1399th Engineer Construction Battalion helped fortify the infrastructure essential for victory.

Senator Daniel Inoue of Hawaii was a veteran of the 100th Infantry Battalion, which, along with the 442nd RCT, fought in Italy, France and Germany. He lost his arm in Italy, and was despondent while in hospital recuperating. I saw an interview in which he said that the doctor to whom he went for therapy got on his case. He became angry as said he had been a piano player before the war and had planned a career in music. During the first world war, a German officer named Wittgenstein, brother to the philospher of the same name, lost his right arm. He asked Maurice Revel to compose a piano concerto for the left hand.

This doctor got a copy of the score for Inoue, and told him to play it. He then upbraided Inoue for his despair in light of the conditions his people were enduring at home. Inoue said he really got mad, and it was the best thing that the doctor could have done. I can think of no other example of a patriotic devotion in the face of active prejudice than the Neisei, with the exception of the African Americans who served in such large numbers in the Revolution and the American Civil War.

Compared to what??

Perhaps Setanta has not sufficiently considered the historical context and its implications for just how good are our European allies at recognizing and acting on growing dangers.

The WWII alliance to which he referred developed only after 1941. Hitler had 5 years of systematic violations of the Versailles treaty during which the European powers did nothing to stop him. He swallowed up Austria, the Sudetenland, and alater all of then Czechoslovakia, and then went on to invade Poland before Britain and France acted to oppose him. Even then they sat on their heels, taking no aggressive action until after Hitler had devoured Poland. It was not until after the rather precipitous fall of France that Britain seriously engaged the threat before them. The broad alliance did not develop until after the Japanese attack on America and the subsequent German declaration of war.

All this strongly suggests that our European 'allies' are much more likely to ignore a growing danger before their eyes than we are to engage one precipitously. (Bosnia and Kosovo are but two other recent examples.)

The confrontation between the Islamic world and the West has been building since the 1918 dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire by Britain and France. There is no surprise either in it or in the disposition of the Europeans to ignore it and like dangers.

That is precisely the reason why I would omit India from the list. Since it was not an independent nation, it could neither declare war nor pursue an independent foreign policy. India, in other words, was in much the same political situation as Newfoundland or Bermuda.

I see, that makes sense.

John Kerry said in a speech today that he would act preemptively in the face of an "imminent threat",yet that is exactly what the Left accuses Bush of doing.
Never mind the fact that Bush NEVER called Iraq an imminent threat,he called it a growing threat.

Here is the question.
If Kerry would strike first at an "imminent threat",then who defines the threat? Who decides if its imminent or not?
Answer...HE DOES
Also,where will he get his intelligence?
Where will he get the info to determine if a threat is imminent?
Answer...our intelligence agancies.
Now,the left is condemning Bush for using his judgement and relying on the intelligence experts,yet Kerry says he will do exactly the same thing.
Whats the difference?
If Bush was wrong,then Kerry will also be wrong.

Some have suggested (of course we will probably never know for sure) that Bush et al planned the Iraq invasion long before 911, and that they saw 911 as a way to "justify" what they were planning all along. For this justification to be valid, however, the connection between Saddam and al Quaeda would have to be definitely established. Could it be that Bush took what he wanted to take from less than definite intelligence reports, perhaps stretching those reports just a teeny tiny bit to serve his pre-911 agenda?

Is it possible that Kerry might not have such an agenda?

And is it possible Kerry might insist on more substantiated information from our intelligence departments before launching an attack, pre-emptive or otherwise?


Then there would be a difference, wouldn't there?


Hmmmm.

He already has and it is just as inane as the last one.

Comparing the "coalition" formed during WWII and that formed for the Iraqi war is dubious.

Most of those in the WWII coalition were subject to a direct threat by the Axis.

It wasn't so much a coalition of the "willing" as a coalition of the "choiceless."

It is incredibly disingenuous to argue that the "Coalition of The Willing" is somehow diminished by the quid pro quo that pervades all international relationships.

If John Kerry had been president post 9/11 and seeking to form a coalition to attack Iraq, he might have been able to secure the cooperation of France and Germany, but it would not have been through artful persuasion, it would have been through wheeling and dealing...and most likely through concessions.

It is also interesting that so many posters refuse to address the fact that by accusing so many of the coalition nations of self serving interest, they are practising the very same Ugly Americanism they find repulsive in the Bush administration.

How is it that dismissing France and Germany is repugnant, while dismissing Poland and Australia is not?

Well said !

Ah, the strawmen gently gambol on the fields of conservative imagination . . .

Setanta,

A (very) nice metaphor indeed, but you have not addressed the issue.

Take a breather, George, i'm doing that right now.

Compared to, for example, the Marshall Plan, or MacArthur's constitution for Japan.



Perhaps George has not sufficiently considered the extent to which European failures of will are not at all germaine to the question of the performance of the Shrub and his Forty Thieves in Baghdad.



In fact, Britain and France did not even act to oppose Hitler when he had invaded Poland. To the English, this period was known as the Phoney War, the Germans call it the Sitzkrieg. Hitler, supreme gutter politician that he was, had correctly guaged the moral cowardice of England and France. When he was confronted by Churchill and a "National" government, however, his prognosticative abilities deserted him--he was definitely outclassed in those conditions.

As for this statement: "The broad alliance did not develop until after the Japanese attack on America and the subsequent German declaration of war.", this is nothing less than "Americo-centric" self delusion. Do you suggest that the effort which England and France made in Norway, and especially in the bitter fighting for Narvik doesn't count somehow? When English and New Zealand naval forces hunted down Graf Spee, does that not count? Did the fight for Greece not count? Did the New Zealanders, South Africans, Greeks, Australians, Belgians, Palestinian Jews, Poles, and Indians/Pakistanis who fought first the Italians, and then the Afrika Korps not respresent a broad alliance? I suggest to you George, that you're taking a partisan position, and that you have not "considered the historical context and its implications" in this very slanted and in some places, patently untrue description of the alliance in the second world war. Precisely how is one to contend that the vital interests of Sénégal, Brazil, Agentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic. Ecuador, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Liberia, Paraguay, Peru, South Africa and Venezuela were threatened, and that they simply defending themselves in the Second World War? New Zealand contributed a "super division," a mechanized force twice the size of a standard dominion infantry division, and Australia contributed significant forces, despite the proximate and more substantial threat of Japan. Acknowledging that most of the Latin American nations were likely dragooned, and perhaps bribed, the Brazilians, at least, came up to mark, and provided an infantry division for the Italian campaign. There are several African nations which i omitted because one could make a tenuous case that Algeria and Morroco, for example, were threatened by the Italian ambitions in North Africa. French Equatorial Africa, now representing severl nations, as well as Sénégal, were not only not threatened, but had an opportunity to free themselves from colonial rule by simply repudiating an impotent Vichy government. Nevertheless, they provided substantial troops to the Free French, and fought in Africa and Italy.



Once again, the failings of European states are not germaine to American performance in Iraq, nor the motives of those who have joined the soi-disant coalition of the willing.



This is a false statement. Arthur Balfour and Winston Churchill divied up the middle east in the period 1920-22, and it is inferentially demonstrable that Churchill, the former First Lord of the Admiralty, assured that the petroleum producing states created would be in the English sphere. Your use of the term "confrontation between the Islamic World and the West" tars hundreds of millions with a very broad brush--nowhere near the majority of muslims in the world are citizens of states in which terrorism is tolerated or supported. Not even a significant fraction of muslims could be shown to actively wish to destroy the west. You are now peddaling the crusader rhetoric of the religiously motivated fanatics upon whom the Shrub relies in large measure for his support. Given that the European states are not necessarily seen as hard-line supporters of Israel and the repressive regimes of the Arab world, it is understandable why they would be less than enthusiastic about joining us in the trumped up holy war.

We're dealing with "nations" and "issues" here, but we're also dealing with people. Blatant in-your-face disrespect and insult generate real consequences. I think it will be a long time before "Old Europe" forgets Bush et al.

Setanta,

First some more or less stand-alone comments.

Neither the economic devastation of Europe after WWII, nor the political restructuring of Japan after their utter defeat in WWII were at all analogous to the challenges of today's world. In both cases we were the absolute masters of the situation. We had all of the resources at hand to deal with the issues and depended not at all on the cooperation of others.

The military effort in Narvik was a failure, both tactically and strategically. The French support for it was desultory at best. The moment had already past, and earlier forceful action on the German border would have been far more effective.

The British Empire coalition that fought the Italians (and much later the Germans) in North Africa was physically in place as the conflict started. Japanese naval success at Singapore and in the Indian Ocean soon after Pearl Harbor rendered the withdrawal of New Zealand and Australian forces a moot question.

The U.S., after its entry into the war leaned very, very heavily on the Vargas regime in Brasil for their active support, economic development of rubber production in the Amazon, and for U.S. bases at Fortaleza and other locations. This was more a question of the survival of an authoritarian regime than it was the active support of that country. Argentina under Peron waa quite sympathetic to the Axis and entered the war only at the last moment when the issue was no longer in doubt.

Polish support for the British was indeed heroic. However, it was more a result of the spirit of this people than the result of a balanced alliance between the British and the Poles, as the later history of the war amply demonstrated.

The U.S. suffered several thousand casualties at the hands of the "impotent Vichy government" during Operation Torch and its aftermath.

The (then) secret 1916 Sykes Piquot treaty between France and Britain defined the division of the spoils of the Ottoman Empire in the event that they could bring it down. France was to get a free hand in the Magreb, Lebanon, Syria, and Mosul (or northern Iraq), and both were to share in the oil riches. By 1917 the U.S. had inserted 500,000 troops in Europe, and coincidentally the British and French had positioned 500,000 of their forces in the Middle East. As it turned out, at Versailles and in the ensuing conflict with the Turks, the British outmaneuvered the French and took a disproportionate part of the spoils themselves.

The poison pill of Zionism in Palestine was of course planted by the same Lord Balfour who made contradictory promises to the Zionists and to Hussein. Subsequent European atrocities and indifference led hundreds of thousands of Jewish victims to flee Europe for Palestine after WWII. The rest, as they say, is history.

After 1920 more than 70% of the Moslems in the world lived under British, Dutch, Italian, or French rule or protectorates - from Indonesia to Zanzibar, to Somalia, to Morocco.

On the central issue, it appears you believe that our adventure in Iraq has been badly executed and both a strategic and a tactical failure. Though things indeed are difficult - as are all such enterprises - , I reject both propositions. I believe there is indeed a confrontation going on between the Islamic world and the West and that its origins lie in the effects of European colonialism and of internal failures of the various Moslem states.

First, some stand alone replies. We are, or if the Shrub's Too Live Crew weren't such a bunch of stumble bums, ought to be the absolute masters of the situation in Iraq. We have all of the resources at hand to deal with the issues, and fail to do so despite the cooperation of others.
It is more than a little disingenuous to state that the effort at Narvik was a strategic failure, because that is axiomatic in the Allied defeat-Churchill immediately recognized the significance of holding Narvik and cutting the Germans off from the cheap and easy access to the Swedish ore fields. The French had sent mountain troops to southern Norway, and were in the process of evacuating King Haakon and his government and fragments of the Norwegian military at the time that the English called upon them to interdict the Germans marching north toward Narvik. That they failed had more to do with too few resources and insufficient time to effectively react, rather than your chimerical "desultory effort." Tactically, the German and British ground troops both did their uttermost, and the fighting was very bitter. The principal criticism to be leveled at the Allies would be at the Royal Navy, and in fairness to them, i don't think that they could have been expected to predict that German destroyers would virtually commit suicide to hold them off while the German troops secured their position outside Narvik. The Royal Navy suffered heavily to get in and evacuate British troops, but the Germans lost nearly every destroyer they possessed.

It is not true that Commonwealth troops were in position to fight the Italians in North Africa as the conflict started. Wavell was outnumbered more than five-to-one in Somalia, and when Churchill criticized his retreat before the Italians (objectively seen as one of the most brilliant fighting retreats ever conducted, with minimal casualties), Wavell dryly commented that ". . . butchery is not the mark of a good tactician." Wavell was replaced, and became the Viceroy of India in 1943, where he managed, overcoming great difficulties and shortages, to prevent a Japanese invasion of the Bengal. The Austrialians and New Zealanders, as well as the Indians (read also: Pakistanis) and South Africans who fought in North Africa arrived well after the Italians had driven the small British army (barely two divisions) back past Cyreniaca. In fact, the New Zealanders first fought in Greece and then Crete. It was after the New Zealanders and Brits with some Greeks arrived in Egypt that the Italians retreated helter-skelter, abandoning airfields and aircraft and a good deal of their motor transport. The Australians came in later, with the South Africans, Poles, Belgians, Free French and the Palestinian Jews.

The Japanese capture of Singapore did not cut off New Zealand and Australia. You seem to have had a significant geographical lapsus here, George. Had the Indian Ocean been denied them, they had the vast waters of the southeast Pacific as a route to the South Atlantic. Because of the threat in the eastern Med, the Brits had already taken to routing convoys by Capetown and Freetown to the western Med. The Japanese never challenged the substantial naval forces based on Trincomalee and Columbo-they poked their heads into the Indian Ocean, rattled their collective sabre at the Andaman Islands, and then skedaddled.. Of course, the English were obliging enough to send Prince of Wales and several cruisers to be unceremoniously sunk by airforces operating from Camron Bay in Vietnam. In fact, Australian forces in North Africa were withdrawn after the fall of Corregidor, and constituted a major portion of MacArthur's forces in the southwest Pacific

I have already noted that Latin American nations were likely dragooned or bribed into participation. I only noted that the Brazilians sent troops to Italy to point out that they, at least, put their money were their collective mouth was. The Americans landed at Casablanca, Oran, Algiers and Tangiers. Only at Oran was there any real resistance. Somewhat over five hundred Americans were killed, and somewhat over 800 were wounded-a far cry from the image created by saying that "thousands were killed." Ranger launched escorted air strikes, and five escorts were downed, as opposed to seven French fighters. Massachusetts traded salvos with Jean Bart-which was in dry dock, and never had a chance. Shortly after the Vichy French agreed to stand down, Eisenhower appointed Darlan, the Vichy officer who had opposed the American landing, to command French North Africa. The Free French vigorously protested, but Churchill and Roosevelt backed him-so the French took the simple rout, and Darlan was assassinated shortly thereafter. To suggest that Vichy had the resources to threaten Sénégal and French Equatorial Africa is ludicrous.

Balfour's original plan had a map which showed French territory in an arc from the coast to Mosul, as you have pointed out was the plan. Churchill, as First Lord before the Great War, had converted the Royal Navy to oil-fired turbines, and he quickly redrew the map to engross the petroleum producing areas of the middle east. The French did not object-tant pis. You seem to miss the point that modern muslim resentment of the west centers on the United States because we are seen as the principal supporters of Israel, and of what are seen as the repressive regimes of the Ibn Saud clan and Mubarek in Egypt. Keeping a lid on Egypt assures the neutralization of the largest Arab population in the world-more than all of the rest of the Arabs in the world. The muslim fanatics have no love for Europe, but they are not seen as responsible for the continued military supremacy of Israel and the hated regimes in Cairo and Riyahd.

I see the adventure in Iraq (how charming that you use such an accurate term) to be strategically unnecessary. I consider that Rummy and company were tactically clueless about how to deal with the occupation of Iraq, after the collapse of an ineffective Iraqi military. Many, many American officers advised more force-the use of the Powell doctrine-and the assembly of police and occupation specialist units before the invasion, and they were ignored. When the Marshall plan and MacArthur's constitution rebuilt Europe and Japan, the contracts were let to local companies, and this provided employment for the local populations, avoiding the economic catastrophe which engulfed Germany in 1918, and helped prosper the lie about the betrayal of the Army which was central to the propaganda of Ernst Rohm, Ludendorf, and later, Hitler. In Iraq, we have purchase the participation of other states with the lure of contracts, and given Halliburton incredible unbid contracts. This does nothing to get a healthy economy going in Iraq, and unemployment puts bully boys on the streets of Iraqi cities as surely as it did in the Weimar Republic eighty years ago. Although European colonialism may have created the situation from which modern, murderous Islamic fanaticism has arisen, we stepped in to prop up the original Israeli state, in the belief that we could thereby forestall Soviet influence. We then overthrew the elected and popular government of Mossedegh in Persia. When Eisenhower sent naval forces to the eastern Med in 1956, and landed Marines in the Lebanon, while at the same time refusing to support the English and French assault on the Suez canal, for whatever the intent, the effect was to make us the sole western player on the scene. Simply because the Project for a New American Century agenda calls for substantial bases in southwest Asia is not sufficient reason for the disastrous and ham-handed efforts of a bunch of military rank amateurs playing fast and loose with our lives and fortunes, and with little risk to their own. Nothing you've written is convincing to me, George.

I will note once again, by the way, that there is not a confrontation between "the Islamic world" and the west. The confrontation is between murderous fanatics from a minority portion of the Islamic world, and is largely directed specifically at the United States. For all that you wish to cast this as a self-defensive crusade, the facts simply won't support your contention.

I agree with Set. There are a lot of people who WANT to see this as a titanic struggle between two different cultures.... but what it really is is a rogue group, who perpetrated acts of mass destruction against us in order to provoke a response. They got exactly the response they wanted.

Cycloptichorn