# From a conservative friend, an email history from WWII to Iraq.... **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 27, 2006, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479 "2006-04-27T17:42:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![gitfiddle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/898d66/32.png) [@gitfiddle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gitfiddle)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/1 "2006-04-27T17:42:31Z")
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](http://righttruth.typepad.com/right_truth/2006/03/historical_revi.html) . Here goes: > [@](#): > > Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat, and had sunk more than four hundred British ships in their convoys between England and America for food and war materials. > > Bushido Japan had overrun most of Asia, beginning in 1928, killing millions of civilians throughout China, and impressing millions more as slave labor. > > The US was in an isolationist, pacifist, mood, and most Americans and Congress wanted nothing to do with the European war, or the Asian war. > > Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and \*\*in outrage Congress unanimously declared war on Japan, and the following day on Germany, which had not attacked us.\*\*It was a dicey thing. We had few allies. > > \*\*France was not an ally, the Vichy government of France aligned with its German occupiers. \*\*Germany was not an ally, it was an enemy, and Hitler intended to set up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe. Japan was not an ally, it was intent on owning and controlling all of Asia. Japan and Germany had long-term ideas of invading Canada and Mexico, and then the United States over the north and south borders, after they had settled control of Asia and Europe. 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? > [@](#): > > **America’s allies then were England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and Russia, and that was about it.** There were no other countries of any size or military significance with the will and ability to contribute much or anything to the effort to defeat Hitler’s Germany and Japan, and prevent the global dominance of Nazism. \*\*And we had to send millions of tons of arms, munitions, and war supplies to Russia, England, and the Canadians, Aussies, Irish, and Scots, because none of them could produce all they needed for themselves. \*\* 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? > [@](#): > > \*\*All of Europe, from Norway to Italy, except Russia in the east, was already under the Nazi heel. \*\* > > 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. \*\* Is that true? I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’ve just never heard that… > [@](#): > > **Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of $600 million in gold bullion in the Bank of England that was the property of Belgium and was given by Belgium to England to carry on the war when Belgium was overrun by Hitler** - actually, Belgium surrendered one day, because it was unable to oppose the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble the next day anyway just to prove they could. **Britain** had been holding out for two years already in the face of staggering shipping loses and the near-decimation of its air force in the Battle of Britain, and **was saved from being overrun by Germany only because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively minor threat that could be dealt with later** and turning his attention to Russia, at a time when England was on the verge of collapse in the late summer of 1940. > > Russia saved America’s butt by putting up a desperate fight for two years until the US got geared up to begin hammering away at Germany. > > Russia lost something like 24 million people in the sieges of Stalingrad and Moscow, 90% of them from cold and starvation, mostly civilians, but also more than a million soldiers. More than a million. Had Russia surrendered, then, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire campaign against the Brits, then America, and the Nazis would have won that war. > > Had Hitler not made that mistake and invaded England in 1940 or 1941, instead, there would have been no England for the US and the Brits to use as a staging ground to prepare an assault on Nazi Europe, England would not have been able to run its North African campaign to help take a little pressure off Russia while America geared up for battle, and today Europe would very probably be run by the Nazis, the Third Reich, and, isolated and without any allies (not even the Brits), the US would very probably have had to cede Asia to the Japanese, who were basically Nazis by another name then, and the world we live in today would be very different and much worse. I say this to illustrate that turning points in history are often dicey things. And we are at another one. Here’s what this supposedly has to do with our current situation… > [@](#): > > There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world, unless they are prevented from doing so. > > **France, Germany, and Russia, have been selling them weapons technology at least as recently as 2002, as have North Korea, Syria, and Pakistan** , paid for with billions of dollars Saddam Hussein skimmed from the “Oil For Food” program administered by the UN with the complicity of Kofi Annan and his son. 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. > [@](#): > > There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East - for the most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its Inquisition and its Reformation today, but it is not yet known which will win - the Inquisition, or the Reformation. > > 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 -\*\* not an OPEC dominated by the well-educated and rational Saudis of today\*\*, but an OPEC dominated by the Jihadis. > > You want gas in your car? You want heating oil next winter? You want jobs? You want the dollar to be worth anything? You better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition, loses, and the Islamic Reformation wins. Paints a pretty picture of the Saudis…Those well-Educated, rational people who kill citizens who convert to Christianity. > [@](#): > > We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight the Inquisition, i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda, the Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. We cannot do it nowhere. And we cannot do it everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for the battle now at the time and place of our choosing, in Iraq. 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.” > [@](#): > > Not in New York, not in London, or Paris, or Berlin, but in Iraq, where we did and are doing two very important things. > > (1) We deposed Saddam Hussein. Whether Saddam Hussein was directly involved in 9/11 or not, it is undisputed that Saddam has been actively supporting the terrorist movement for decades. Saddam is a terrorist. > Saddam is, or was, a weapon of mass destruction, who is responsible for the deaths of probably more than a million Iraqis and two million Iranians. > > (2) We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with Islamic terrorism in Iraq. We have focused the battle. We are killing bad guys there and the ones we get there we won’t have to get here, or anywhere else. We also have a good shot at creating a democratic, peaceful Iraq, which will be a catalyst for democratic change in the rest of the Middle East, and an outpost for a stabilizing American military presence in the Middle East for as long as it is needed. > > The Euros could have done this, but they didn’t, and they won’t. **We now know that rather than opposing the rise of the Jihad, the French, Germans, and Russians were selling them arms - we have found more than a million tons of weapons and munitions in Iraq. If Iraq was not a threat to anyone, why did Saddam need a million tons of weapons?** > > And Iraq was paying for French, German, and Russian arms with money skimmed from the UN Oil For Food Program ( **supervised by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan** and his son) that was supposed to pay for food, medicine, and education, for Iraqi children. 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? > [@](#): > > \*\*World War II, the war with the German and Japanese Nazis, really began with a “whimper” in 1928. It did not begin with Pearl Harbor. It began with the Japanese invasion of China. It was a war for fourteen years before America joined it. It officially ended in 1945 - a 17 year war \*\*- and was followed by another decade of US occupation in Germany and Japan to get those countries reconstructed and running on their own again … a 27 year war. > > World War II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full year’s GDP - adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion dollars, WWII cost America more than 400,000 killed in action, and nearly 100,000 still missing in action. > > [**The Iraq war has, so far, cost the US about $160 billion, which is roughly what 9/11 cost New York. It has also cost about 1,800 American lives, which is roughly 1/2 of the 3,000 lives that the Jihad snuffed on 9/11.]** But the cost of not fighting and winning WWII would have been unimaginably greater - a world now dominated by German and Japanese Nazism. 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. > [@](#): > > The bottom line here is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism until we defeat it, whenever that is. It will not go away on its own. It will not go away if we ignore it. In your face “We don’t need to worry about Islamic terrorism” pansies! > [@](#): > > If the US can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq, then we have an “England” in the Middle East, a platform, from which we can work to help modernize and moderate the Middle East. The history of the world is the clash between the forces of relative civility and civilization, and the barbarians clamoring at the gates. The Iraq war is merely another battle in this ancient and never-ending war. And now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to get nuclear weapons. Unless we prevent them. Or somebody does. > > Yes, the Jihadis say that they look forward to an Islamic America. If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your children, or grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs and the Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today. > > We can be defeatist peace-activists as anti-war types seem to be, and concede, surrender, to the Jihad, or we can do whatever it takes to win this war against them. > > The history of the world is the history of civilizational clashes, cultural clashes. All wars are about ideas, ideas about what society and civilization should be like, and the most determined always win. > > **Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win. The pacifists always lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them.** I dabbled in pacifism once…not in 'Nam, of course. > [@](#): > > In the 20th century, it was Western democracy vs. communism, and before that Western democracy vs. Nazism, and before that Western democracy vs. German Imperialism. Western democracy won, three times, but it wasn’t cheap, fun, nice, easy, or quick. Indeed, the wars against German Imperialism (WWI), Nazi Imperialism (WWII), and communist imperialism (the 40-year Cold War that included the Vietnam Battle, commonly called the Vietnam War, but itself a major battle in a larger war) covered almost the entire century. > > The first major war of the 21st Century is the war between Western Judeo/Christian Civilization and Wahhabi Islam. It may last a few more years, or most of this century. It will last until the Wahhabi branch of Islam fades away, or gives up its ambitions for regional and global dominance and Jihad, or until Western Civilization gives in to the Jihad. > > Senator John Kerry, in the debates and almost daily, makes 3 scary claims: > > 1. We went to Iraq without enough troops. > We went with the troops the US military wanted. We went with the troop levels General Tommy Franks asked for. **We deposed Saddam in 30 days with light casualties, much lighter than we expected.** > The real problem in Iraq is that we are trying to be nice - we are trying to fight minority of the population that is Jihadi, and trying to avoid killing the large majority that is not. We could flatten Fallujah in minutes with a flight of B52s, or seconds with one nuclear cruise missile - but we don’t. We’re trying to do brain surgery, not amputate the patient’s head. The Jihadis amputate heads. 30 days? The forces took \*Baghdad \*in 30 days, am I wrong? Isn’t there a word for “amputating heads”? > [@](#): > > 1. We went to Iraq with too little planning. > This is a specious argument. It supposes that if we had just had “the right plan” the war would have been easy, cheap, quick, and clean. > That is not an option. It is a guerrilla war against a determined enemy, and no such war ever has been or ever will be easy, cheap, quick, and clean. This is not TV. > > 2. We proved ourselves incapable of governing and providing security. > This, too, is a specious argument. It was never our intention to govern and provide security. It was our intention from the beginning to do just enough to enable the Iraqis to develop a representative government and their own military and police forces to provide their own security, and that is happening. The US and the Brits and other countries there have trained over 100,000 Iraqi police and military, now, and will have trained more than 200,000 by the end of next year. We are in the process of transitioning operational control for security back to Iraq. > > It will take time. It will not go with no hitches. This is not TV. > > Remember, perspective is everything, and America’s schools teach too little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young American mind. > > The Cold war lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Forty-two years. Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany. > > \*\*World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, \*\*plus a ten year occupation, and the US still has troops in Germany and Japan. World War II resulted in the death of more than 50 million people, maybe more than 100 million people, depending on which estimates you accept. Why did WWII start before the economic crash in '29? > [@](#): > > The US has taken a little more than 2,000 KIA in Iraq. The US took more than 4,000 Killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944, the first day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism. In WWII the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week for four years. Most of the individual battles of WWII lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has done so far. > > But the stakes are at least as high . . . a world dominated by representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal freedoms . or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law). > > I do not understand why the American Left does not grasp this. They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom, but evidently not for Iraqis. In America, absolutely, but nowhere else. You lefties are so greedy. > [@](#): > > **300,000 Iraqi bodies in mass graves in Iraq** are not our problem. The US population is about twelve times that of Iraq, so let’s multiply 300,000 by twelve. What would you think if there were 3,600,000 American bodies in mass graves in America because of George Bush? Would you hope for another country to help liberate America? > > “Peace Activists” always seem to demonstrate where it’s safe, in America. Why don’t we see Peace Activist demonstrating in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, North Korea, in the places in the world that really need peace activism the most? > > The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc., but if the Jihad wins, wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc. Americans who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down on the side of their own worst enemy. > > If the Jihad wins, it is the death of Liberalism. Everywhere the Jihad wins, it is the death of Liberalism. And American Liberals just don’t get it. Again, let’s PLEASE debate the historical authenticity of his claims, not the logic of his arguments. ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/2 "2006-04-27T17:49:34Z")
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.” -Joe ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/3 "2006-04-27T17:51:13Z")
Jeanette Rankin (D-Montana) voted against U.S. entry into both world wars. She is the only one who voted against entering WWII. The rest of it just made me want to vomit in my mouth. ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/4 "2006-04-27T17:54:57Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/5 "2006-04-27T17:59:58Z")
\*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. ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/6 "2006-04-27T18:00:56Z")
> [@LonesomePolecat](#): > > 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. 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. -Joe ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/7 "2006-04-27T18:01:25Z")
First glaring there is already a historical mistake: > [@](#): > > Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and in outrage Congress unanimously declared war on Japan, and the following day on Germany, which had not attacked us.It was a dicey thing. We had few allies. 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. ---
**Author:** ![Sal\_Ammoniac](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8dc957/32.png) [@Sal\_Ammoniac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sal_Ammoniac)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/8 "2006-04-27T18:03:31Z")
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. Bottom line? Mere amateur polemics. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/9 "2006-04-27T18:11:03Z")
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](http://www.hist-geo.com/Carte/France/1940-1942/Armistice-22-Juin-1940-11.png). 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”.) ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/10 "2006-04-27T18:15:25Z")
> [@](#): > > We have focused the battle. We are killing bad guys there and the ones we get there we won’t have to get here, or anywhere else 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. ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/11 "2006-04-27T18:16:19Z")
> [@Merijeek](#): > > 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. > > -Joe 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. ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/12 "2006-04-27T18:21:19Z")
> [@LonesomePolecat](#): > > 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. And in such a case, since he had said weapons and (alleged) terrorist ties there must have been all sorts of CBW attacks throughout the world. What was he waiting for? Bueller? Bueller? -Joe ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/13 "2006-04-27T18:28:05Z")
> [@Merijeek](#): > > And in such a case, since he had said weapons and (alleged) terrorist ties there must have been all sorts of CBW attacks throughout the world. > > What was he waiting for? > > Bueller? Bueller? > > -Joe (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.](http://www.slate.com/id/2108636/) ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/14 "2006-04-27T18:28:15Z")
> [@](#): > > 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 - not an OPEC dominated by the well-educated and rational Saudis of today, but an OPEC dominated by the Jihadis. 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). ---
**Author:** ![Throatwarbler\_Mangrove](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8c91f0/32.png) [@Throatwarbler\_Mangrove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Throatwarbler_Mangrove)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/15 "2006-04-27T18:32:52Z")
> [@](#): > > America’s allies then were England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and Russia, and that was about it. There were no other countries of any size or military significance with the will and ability to contribute much or anything to the effort to defeat Hitler’s Germany and Japan, and prevent the global dominance of Nazism. And we had to send millions of tons of arms, munitions, and war supplies to Russia, England, and the Canadians, Aussies, Irish, and Scots, because none of them could produce all they needed for themselves. 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 ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/16 "2006-04-27T18:33:29Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > 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. 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? ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/17 "2006-04-27T18:34:26Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/18 "2006-04-27T18:35:22Z")
> [@gitfiddle](#): > > And Iraq was paying for French, German, and Russian arms with money skimmed from the UN Oil For Food Program (supervised by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and his son) 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”. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/19 "2006-04-27T18:43:30Z")
> [@LonesomePolecat](#): > > . 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. 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. ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/20 "2006-04-27T18:45:10Z")
> [@DanBlather](#): > > The jihadists are not trying to conquer the west … The hell they’re not. The jihadists’ long-term goal is to bring the entire world under the rule of Sharia, as defined by them. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479.md?page=2)