Okay, I’m no historian, but I’ve got some serious doubts about the stuff you’re about to read. A very conservative friend of mine passed on this word document in an mass email which claims to “present the ‘Big Picture’ in just the right manner” (Note: I think he meant “Right manner”).
The author is Raymond S. Kraft, a lawyer from California, and a google search will give you a taste of where he stands on things like the constitutionality of Kerry’s presidential campaign, among other things.
This letter should be interesting to Europeans and Asians who like to read what other people say about their history. I’m not necessarily saying the guy’s wrong. Like I said, I have serious doubts about some of this stuff. That’s why I’m asking you guys.
One note, there are a lot of dubious claims in this, so I just want to debate the historical authenticity of the events that his arguments are based on (I put a lot of them in bold), NOT HIS ARGUMENTS THEMSELVES. There’s already been plenty of debate about why the US is in Iraq, and the like. That’s not what this is.
I had to cut parts because it was too long. You can find the full version here . Here goes:
Unanimously? Wasn’t there one vote against going to war? I thought there was one woman who voted against the war.
Also, is there something wrong about all this talk about Allies? Aside from the fact that he needs to mention that Germany and Japan were not, in fact, our allies in the war…
France wasn’t an ally? I know it was occupied, but does that mean it wasn’t an occupied ally? That they were still with us?
That’s not a lot? Weren’t those pretty much all of the biggest military powers of the time? Didn’t Ireland almost aid the Nazis out of contempt for the English?
Is that true? I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’ve just never heard that…
Here’s what this supposedly has to do with our current situation…
France? Germany? Tisk tisk tisk…
I can’t tell if he’s saying that the Oil for Food money was used by Jihadists to buy weapons or that the European governments were selling weapons directly to Jihadists.
Paints a pretty picture of the Saudis…Those well-Educated, rational people who kill citizens who convert to Christianity.
That paragraph is a doozy.
I didn’t know anyone was saying that we didn’t need to fight them…Nor that we could fight someone “nowhere.”
Again, the Euros were selling arms to Jihadists? I know some Russians still has some very questionable weapons deals, including one possible nuke deal with al-Qaeda (Through Our Enemies Eyes, Mike Scheuer), but I personally don’t know anything about these governments selling weapons to Jihadists (at least not any more than America did).
Was Kofi Annan himself ever accused of supervising the Oil for Food Program’s corrupt practices?
WWII also brought the US out of the Depression, am I wrong?
About the $160 Billion, is that right? I thought we were well over the $200 Billion mark.
In your face “We don’t need to worry about Islamic terrorism” pansies!
I dabbled in pacifism once…not in 'Nam, of course.
30 days? The forces took *Baghdad *in 30 days, am I wrong?
Isn’t there a word for “amputating heads”?
Why did WWII start before the economic crash in '29?
You lefties are so greedy.
Again, let’s PLEASE debate the historical authenticity of his claims, not the logic of his arguments.
Others will pick apart better than I because I have studying to do…but to start with, the USA declared war on Japan after Pearl Harbor. Then, as part of the Axis agreement Germany declared was on the USA. Then the USA declared war on Germany.
This little screed certainly didn’t seem to get that across. It made it seem more like, “Well, we’ve declared war on the Japs, may as well throw in the Nazis, too.”
I’m just gonna pop in here real fast and say that it’s very, very, very doubtful that Hitler could actually have invaded Britain successfully. Among other reasons, the German military simply didn’t have the capability for a D-Day type air-sea operation against an enemy of any real strength.
*America was not prepared for war. America had stood down most of its military after WWI and throughout the depression, at the outbreak of WWII there were army units training with broomsticks over their shoulders because they didn’t have guns, and cars with “tank” painted on the doors because they didn’t have tanks. And a big chunk of our navy had just been sunk and damaged at Pearl Harbor. *
This is true, for what it’s worth. Our pipeline of soldiers outpaced our production of weapons there for a bit at the start of the war. This got straightened out rapidly. Nothing wrong with the idea either. You really don’t need a functioning rifle to do close order drill, after all. Before our troops entered combat, the pipeline was flowing.
First of all, Hitler was only one man, so I doubt the Littlest Corporal could have taken the islands even if he had managed to make it across the channel.
However, if there’s anything we’ve learned from the current situation it’s that Hitler wanted to invade England and may have at one point written on a cocktail napkin “I’d love to invade England one day” and therefore, ex post facto manga cum laude, he did so.
First glaring there is already a historical mistake:
It was not the next day it was three days later (11th December) AFTER Germany had already declared war on the US (hence there was nothing dicey about it we were already at war with Germany). If Hitler had not made it easy for FDR by declaring war himself, it there would have be a large body of opinion for NOT declaring war against Germany.
There’s a real problem of conflation and crude reductionism in Kraft’s argument. He’ll use these catchall terms like “the terrorist movement” and “jihadis” and slap them on everyone he doesn’t like. But you can’t do that. For example, Saddam was not a jihadi, he was an anti-jihadi. If the Iranians are jihadis, remember that Saddam fought a ruthless war against them and killed hundreds of thousands of them – which should make him, in Kraft’s book, a hero of the struggle. That’s the basic problem here – Kraft is not a historian, he’s a propagandist. He’s accurate on some historical points, wildly off the mark on others. He patently didn’t do any research, but relied on his own memory and understanding.
And he has no interest whatever in subtleties. Here’s an example: “If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control the Middle East, and the OPEC oil, and the US, European, and Asian economies, the techno-industrial economies, will be at the mercy of OPEC.” Oh, please. In this equation, “lifeblood of industrial economies”=oil=OPEC=Middle East=Wahabis.
Ireland the state was “non-aligned” (IIRC - not “neutral”) during WWII, which was referred to as “the emergency”. Northern Ireland was of course part of the UK so was an ally of the US. (Separating the nations of the UK out seems a big odd, too.) Many Irish citizens, however, fought in WWII with the British forces, out of economic necessity, or principle.
Since there are two definitions of “Ireland” - namely the republic, and the whole island - of neither is it correct to say Ireland was an “ally”.
The Vichy government in France certainly capitulated enthusiastically, but was only part of the country. The rest was invaded and occupied. “Free France”, headed by de Gaulle existed in exile, and considered Pétain a traitor, as he has been seen since liberation.
(I might say, gitfiddle your “You lefties are so greedy” seems to go against your plea for “debating the historical authenticity of the events” “not the logic of his arguments”.)
The whole article full of bad-logic, and very sketchy historical assumtions but this is my pet peeve. Of all the pro-war arguments it is the most ridiculous nonsensical BS imaginable. And EASILY falsifiable…
In Iraq over the course of the occupation there had on average been one sucide bombing EVERY day, some months the average is as high as 4 a day. These bombings have overwhelmingly been carried out by foreign jihhadis. If these jihaddis are just “bad guys” who we’d be fighting somewhere else if we weren’t fighting them in Iraq, where were all these attacks in 2002 ? Show me somewhere with 20-30 sucide bombings a month in 2002 which magically stopped when we invaded Iraq, as the “bad guys” upped sticks and moved to iraq.
Prior to Iraq if somewhere has ONE sucide bombing a month would be considered an incredibly dangerous terrorist hot spot. Its not as there weren’t any targets, the middle east is full of soft targets: vacationing westerners, oil workers, Arab Christians.
Not really a good comparision, not even when done out of facetiousness. Hitler never had the capability for an air-sea operation against Britain or anybody else and was very ambivalent about fighting the Brits. Hussein, however, definitely, had a serious CBW capability at one time and had used it, and it is known that he fully intended to ramp up his CBW program as soon as the heat was off. He was also known to have serious connections with terrorist groups.
(shrug) There was nothing “alleged” about those ties. They were very real and well documented. If you don’t believe me, perhaps you will believe Christopher Hitchens.
Again, don’t know if it counts as an historical falsehood, but the Wahhabis ALREADY control the oil (at the very least the 25% under Saudi Arabia). Billions of dollars flow into Wahhibi evangalism every year from Saudi Arabia (and certainly large chunks of that money ends up in the hands of extremists). Sub-saharan Africa has traditionally practiced a moderate liberal form of Islam, but Wahhibism is growing every year fuelled by Saudi money (Just as fundementalist protestanism is growing in Catholic latin america, fueled by US money).
First, why refer to England, (N) Ireland and Scotland as separate countries? Second, what about China? Most of Japan’s army never saw any action against the Americans because they were fighting the Chinese and the Soviets in China. I’d call that a fairly significant contribution
I couldn’t get past that error. Whether done deliberately or out of ignorange, it doesn’t matter. If the former, they guy is a liar. If the latter, he’s woefully ignorant of history. Why listen to him in either of those cases?
The entire analogy is weak. The jihadists are not trying to conquer the west, they just want the west the fuck out of their countries. I don’t see Saudi Arabia or Iraq marching into Poland. Iraq did invade Kuwait, but they are Islamic as well.
I think the better analogy is between Japan and the US. Japan wanted to ensure it’s supply of raw materials by controlling Asia. This is much like the US is doing in the Middle East. It was the US blockading Japan that led to Pearl harbor.
I don’t want this to seem pro-Islamisist of pro-Imperial Japan. Both of them are/were contemptible.
I think the more we are involved in the middle-east the less secure we become. The way things are going I think it is inevitable that someone is going to sneak a nuclear bomb into NYC.
It was NOT overseen by Kofi Annan and his son. The OFP was effectively a US/British invention and was overseen primarily by them under the auspices of “The 661 Committee”.
At one time, yes, but there was no evidence he had it at the time of the invasion. As for connectins with terrorist groups, cite? Iraqi officials did meet with alQ, but there was no action, and Iraq did send some money to the widows of Palestinian bombers, but the major terrorist camp in Iraq was in the north, out of his control.
One thing not mentioned in the resonse to the OP’s quote. The lack of resources were not for the invasion, but for control of Iraq after the invasion. This prevented us from controlling the borders and from mopping up those we had to bypass to get to Baghdad fast. There were substantial State Dept. studies on the problems of an occupation, all of which were ignored and most of which actually happened. Who knows what Franks actually felt - it was clear that Rumsfeld had a troop level in mind, and that wanting more was career limiting.
gitfiddle, does your friend have any cites or evidence that Hussein funded nuclear research anywhere else? I’ve never even heard of this claim, and it sounds rather bogus.