Every day I see in the news about how buddy buddy we are with Japan and Germany in defending the world from China and Russia.
Like wasn’t it the other way around 80 years ago?
…are we the baddies?
Yes we are the baddies. and. No we aren’t the baddies.
1 Like
It’s complicated
3 Likes
It’s almost like there’s more than black and white…
2 Likes
If you have to ask…
1 Like
Germany and Japan surrendered. China and Russia didn’t.
We’re more like a big brother,
“Nobody gets to destabilize foreign governments but us!”
But we also do some good here and there.
1 Like
Might want to re-read about Russia 80 years ago
1 Like
i didn’t realize that germany was still murdering jews in concentration camps in 2021.
i mean, not that the US really cared about that.
We’ve had some issues since WWII . Our Brand needs a bit of polish.
we haven’t had much of a brand since Trump.
We haven’t cared about that, the murder of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese after we left, the murder of tens of thousands of Bosnians, the murder of untold numbers of Iraqis under Saddam, the murder of several hundred thousands of Tutsis in Rwanda, …
I mean, we didn’t really care enough to do anything about it (save the Jews when we finally overran Germany and liberated the camps and aved those who hadn’t been killed yet, but saving them wasn’t the primary objective of that campaign), but we said we cared, we said it was horrible and someone should do something about it, and we offered up thoughts and prayers. In other words, we granted ourselves absolution from any responsibility to be a leader on the world stage.
oh, i know we didn’t care. the only reason we care now is because there are a lot of jews in the US, some of whom are the ancestors of holocaust survivors.
i say that as the collective “we” because i’m horrified about the holocaust as a jew. i’m pretty sure that had i been around during WW2, i would have been even more horrified because they are my people. people tend to care about their own.
1 Like
We had a brand with Trump.
Not necessarily a positive one, but it was something.
Con-men-R-us?
Very true. The policy of the U.S. post-WW2 has been “killing scores of innocent people is bad … unless the people doing the killing are people we support, in which case we’ll tolerate it because having someone else in power would be worse. If it’s someone we don’t want in power, well, that’s really bad and we’ll take care of those people by … strenuously objecting to what’s going on.”
Were it people we really do care about, … I’m not convinced we’d do anything different.
2 Likes
to some extent he likely stirred some fear in other world leaders. It was truly unclear if he would fly off the rails and physically attack.
The current admin seems to be openly passive. To the point that we are predictable, which gives our adversary’s the upper hand. china and russia can really just decide if the economic sanctions from invading Taiwan/Ukraine are worth it. But it is clear the US will not openly go to war about it.
1 Like
I mean we could have just let Hitler steamroll them. Doesn’t matter how many fingers you want to point at Stalin, actions are louder than words and we sent those trucks over there and allied with him.
I think it’s optimistic to conclude Hitler and the German military would have steamrolled the Soviet Union. They were still at war with the British Empire and the remains of the French
Correct. Hitler was having the same issues Napoleon did, and the Soviets were holding off the Germans despite being desperately short on supplies. [Cue discussion of alternative WW2, in that thread.] Stalin was going to throw everyone he could at the western front, so I suspect he would have just worn Germany out eventually.
Had Japan decided to go after the USSR on the eastern front, it’s a different question.
1 Like