# 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:** 2
**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, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/21 "2006-04-27T18:48:42Z")
> [@](#): > > 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? Um we don’t ? > [@](#): > > Students at Sharif University in Tehran protest the burial of Iranian soldiers on their campus on March 13… “The students say that the war martyrs are very important and dear to us and we will always respect them,” says Delbari, the student activist. “But this doesn’t mean that the establishment can abuse them. … Under the [pretext] of a renewal of support for the martyrs, universities will be turned into [military zones] by military and militia groups.” > **[Students Protest Burials Of War Dead On Tehran Campuses](https://www.rferl.org/a/1066713.html)** > > Iranian university students are expressing deep concern over attempts to turn their school grounds into burial sites for the remains of soldiers who died during the Iran-Iraq war, saying it is a way for authorities to gain greater control over... ---
**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, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/22 "2006-04-27T18:48:44Z")
> [@LonesomePolecat](#): > > (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/) Maybe you can highlight some parts of the article for me, but as near as I can tell the entire basis of the article is that Abu Musad al-Zarqawi (jihadist) is in Iraq and is believed to be working with the Baathist dead-enders to perform terrorist acts in Iraq. War makes strange bedfellows. They’re working together now. And this proves? Still, though, were Saddam and the likes if al-Zarqawi working hand-in-hand with CBWs why didn’t we have any going off…anywhere? Israel? Mid-east vacation spots? New York? Washington? But I imagine you’ll have some other weak evasion. So, let’s get the thread back on track and let the OP get his questions answered. And in the spirit of that, ths line is precious: > [@](#): > > Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win. The pacifists always lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them. Well, shit. That makes the USA the most ruthless sunsabitches in history. Were we to just nuke the mideast into oblivion we’d be guaranteed victory! Woo! -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, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/23 "2006-04-27T18:58:15Z")
> [@Merijeek](#): > > Maybe you can highlight some parts of the article for me, but as near as I can tell the entire basis of the article is that Abu Musad al-Zarqawi (jihadist) is in Iraq and is believed to be working with the Baathist dead-enders to perform terrorist acts in Iraq. > > War makes strange bedfellows. They’re working together now. And this proves? > > Still, though, were Saddam and the likes if al-Zarqawi working hand-in-hand with CBWs why didn’t we have any going off…anywhere? Israel? Mid-east vacation spots? New York? Washington? … > > But I imagine you’ll have some other weak evasion … (sigh) Go ahead. Bury your head in the sand. I see no point in trying to stop you. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/24 "2006-04-27T19:00:28Z")
> [@](#): > > 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. The U.S. declared war on Japan on December 8. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. on December 11. _Then_ we reciprocated by declaring war on them. It is not as though we volunteered to fight them out of some altruistic spirit of fighting bad guys. > [@](#): > > 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. Wild speculation. Neither Japan nor Germany had any such long term goals. The only reason either of them considered attacking the U.S. was to prevent the U.S. from interfering with the conquests in which they were already engaged. It is remotely possible that had they been successful in defeating the U.S., they might have _eventually_ considered an American invasion, but they had no such plans in 1941. > [@](#): > > America was not prepared for war. True in 1939. Mostly true in 1940. True, but with caveats in 1941. In the middle of 1941, when the draft was first re-instituted ( **before** the attack on Pearl Harbor), many of the new soldiers did train with mock guns and trucks carrying signs that said “tank.” By January of 1942, the numbers of those incidents were already seriously in decline. > [@](#): > > 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. And, clearly, the best way to do this is to overthrow a secular dictator, hated by the Islamists, so as to provide the Islamists a new country to exploit while using the very chaos of the war we created as the best recruitment drive they had had in history–far bettter than the Soviet/Afghan debacle, where the godless Marxists were involved, we now hand them the foremost “Christian” nation as an enemy. > [@](#): > > (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. Cleverly ignored in this statement is that until around 2002, the only terrorists Hussein supported were those directly involved with his war against Iran. After 2002, he made some token gestures of giving money to the families of Palestinian bombers (how many he actually paid is disputed and he never offered a bounty _prior to_ a bombing). In other words, the implication that Hussein had been actively supporting world-wide terror for two decades is a lie. > [@](#): > > (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. It would be more accurate to note that we created a cause for the Islamists to exploit. As to the shot at creating a democratic, peaceful nation, we had the opportunity in Afghanistan (that we abandoned to go play in Iraq) where we actually had some legitimate reason to invade. > [@](#): > > 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. This is simply a lie. The Joint Chiefs demanded more troops and were overruled by Rumsfeld. There was never a question of whether we could fight a battle, but whether we could hold land. The constant disruptions and sabotage that began immediately upon the surrender (and our stupid disbandment of) the Iraqi Army are directly due to an inability to guard key points in the power and communication grids and the water and oil supply systems. As for trying to be nice, Abu Ghraib was trhe direct result of rounding up masses of people without cause and torturing many of them, thus sending a clear message to those Iraqis who had been neutral regrding U.S. actions that we were just one more heavy-handed conqueror who should be opposed by force. Since the U.S. decreed that many of the religious zealots were enemies, we thn created the situation of handing those newly enraged fence-sitters to join the zealots. > [@](#): > > 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. Pure bullshit. We made the assumpotion that we would be greeted as liberators and made no effort to figure out what to do if we were wrong. We disbanded Iraqi army divisions when the commanders who were known to oppose Hussein were willing to surrender, if they could be allowed to keep their troops together to be used as peacekeepers after the battles. So, instead of trained and disciplined allies, we sent them home (with their weapons) to become unemployed guys with no money watching their country come apart because they were forbidden to protect it–easy recruits for those who call for the ouster of foreign invaders. We made wild assumptions on the ability of Iraq to pay for its own invasion, based on speculative (and wholly unreasonable) claims of where Iraqi oil production could be restored. Even if there had been no sabotage, Iraq was going to be unable to produce enough oil to repay the cost of the invasion. And this “strategy” also ignored the fact that Iraq was still heavily indebted to numerous other Middle Eastern countries from Hussein’s war against Iran, countries who are our ostensible allies, but who have first dibs on any revenue accrued by Iraq. The was no serious planning for this war beyond a goal of “proving” that U.S. troops could overwhelm a dispirited and undertrained and poorly armed enemy. > [@](#): > > 1. 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. In which Kraft disproves his own point (2). We intended to do as little as possible to get in and get out, but with so little poor planning, that we were unable to meet even our minimum requirements. It is nice that after three years we have built up a sizable police force, but that hardly acquits us of the charges that we did it poorly. > [@](#): > > 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. Gratuitous slap at Kofi Annan. His son appears to have been a first rate crook, but there is no evidence that Annan, himself, had any part in or knowledge of the skimming. ---
**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, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/25 "2006-04-27T19:10:16Z")
> [@LonesomePolecat](#): > > (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/) But that article does not support the thesis of terrorist ties: > [@](#): > > His main pre-war activity was directed at the Kurdish leadership in that part of northern Iraq that was outside Saddam Hussein’s immediate control. Hitchens relies on a twisted argument to infer that Zarqawi must have been operating with the approval of Saddam because it was so hard to get in and out of Iraq. That’s an interesting argument, but completely ignores the fact that the islamists’ goals are primarily to overthrow the secular (or non-islamic) governments in Muslim lands. That’s a much stronger argument aganst of there being operational ties between the two than Hitchen’s argument is in favor of that proposition. The simple fact is we don’t really know what Zarqawi was doing in Iraq before the war, but it defies logic that Saddam would ally himself with a jihadist like Zarqawi. Claiming that they were allied can only be seen, at best, as a way to shade the truth. ---
**Author:** ![New\_Iskander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/db5fbb/32.png) [@New\_Iskander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/New_Iskander)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/26 "2006-04-27T20:40:11Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > The whole article full of bad-logic, and very sketchy historical assumtions… Agreed. As many pointed out already, the article is a sloppy, ignorant and incoherent politprop. Many commented about US-Germany declaration of war in 1941, appropriately. I am particularly offended by Inquisition (Wahabbism)-Reformation (something progressive) analogy. Reformation was not a progressive movement. It was extreme, radical, stupidly religious and retrograde movement. Protestants were destroying monuments of art and culture, and commiting atrocities everywhere. OTOH, servants of ‘Roman Whore’ were educated, refined, corrupt and devious. If anything, it’s Wahabbis who look like modern day Lutherans, fighting against their own ‘Meccan Whore’. Having said that, I’d be remiss to point out that many here are competing to outdo Mr. Kraft in looniness. **tomndebb** , as always of course, but also others who should know better. Which brings me to the rest of your post, where you are trying to rehash your long debunked nonsensical argument. > [@griffin1977](#): > > 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. By that logic, I’d have to show you many 9-11s to prove that 9-11-2001 was long in preparation. Your request is absolutely loony. In a real world, it is enough to point out that botched NY WTC bombing in 1993 was obviously a precursor to the attack on NY WTC on 9-11-2001, as one example. ---
**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, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/27 "2006-04-27T20:43:02Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Cleverly ignored in this statement is that until around 2002, the only terrorists Hussein supported were those directly involved with his war against Iran. After 2002, he made some token gestures of giving money to the families of Palestinian bombers (how many he actually paid is disputed and he never offered a bounty _prior to_ a bombing). In other words, the implication that Hussein had been actively supporting world-wide terror for two decades is a lie. > > It would be more ac (sigh) Go ahead. Bury your head in the sand. I see no point in trying to stop you. -Joe 😉 ---
**Author:** ![New\_Iskander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/db5fbb/32.png) [@New\_Iskander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/New_Iskander)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/28 "2006-04-27T20:57:01Z")
> [@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? To escape from US cross-hairs? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/29 "2006-04-27T21:09:32Z")
> [@New Iskander](#): > > Having said that, I’d be remiss to point out that many here are competing to outdo Mr. Kraft in looniness. **tomndebb** , as always of course, but also others who should know better. Well, it is pretty easy to stand on the sidelines and make uninformed claims that others are demonstrating “looniness” when one cannot actually point to errors. The broad brush is a pretty good weapon for those who begin with ideology and then move toward trying to warp facts to fit (especially when one does not even have facts). ---
**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, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/30 "2006-04-27T21:15:10Z")
> [@New Iskander](#): > > To escape from US cross-hairs? And that was going to happen, when? The USA has cross-hairs that now cover the ENTIRE GLOBE. Since the concern was that he was going to slip them to Jihadis…why didn’t he? Why didn’t he do it before GW1? Why not after? Why not before GW2? Why not after? He flew a chunk of his fucking air force to Iran before GW1 to keep the planes safe - why not do the same with some trucks or cargo planes full of WMDs? That way his best friends in Iran will have them…the same people whose terrorists he’s supposedly been hand-in-hand with anyways. Occam’s tells us it’s because he didn’t want to. -Joe ---
**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, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/31 "2006-04-27T21:47:46Z")
> [@](#): > > (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”.) Yeah, I know, **jjim** …It was a joke. I found it so hard not to mock this guy, especially remarks that equate questioning/criticizing the war as being against fighting terrorism or not wanting to spread liberty and democracy. There was actually a lot of those little things to begin with, and I erased them, but it was so long and the code got so jumbled that I missed a few. That said…I think we’re getting off topic here. I don’t want to start debating Iraq (I’m even forcing myself not to respond to certain comments that I’m frothing at the mouth to address). Let’s stick with the history. I still don’t think anyone’s addressed whether the European governments were selling arms to the jihadists/al-Qaeda. > [@](#): > > 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. **Voyager** , my friend doesn’t have any cites other than this essay, which has no cites. He just periodically sends out emails about things the “media isn’t showing.” ---
**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, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/32 "2006-04-27T22:15:54Z")
> [@gitfiddle](#): > > **Voyager** , my friend doesn’t have any cites other than this essay, which has no cites. He just periodically sends out emails about things the “media isn’t showing.” No surprise there. As for things the media doesn’t want us to know, a while back I took a book out of the library, published in 2000, full of this kind of CT stuff - it had the moon hoax, various assassinations, etc. The most amusing :rolleyes: chapter was one absolutely proving that the US concern with Osama bin Laden was unfounded, and that he would never be a threat to anyone. Someday I’ve got to see if those clowns ever issued a retraction. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/33 "2006-04-27T22:16:31Z")
> [@gitfiddle](#): > > Let’s stick with the history. I still don’t think anyone’s addressed whether the European governments were selling arms to the jihadists/al-Qaeda. This? > [@](#): > > 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? Well, for one thing, the claim is either incredible ignorance or disingenuousness to the point out outright lying. It would appear that the claim is based on sales of weapons to Iraq by Europeans countries. I am not aware that there were any weapons sales between 1992 and 2003 (I could be wrong on this point). There were, however, sales of material tha could be used in maintenance of older weapons systems. Without a direct citation, I would be reluctant to brand that statement a “lie” depending on how it was phrased. However, while he talks about arms being found in Iraq, his claim is that arms were sold to Jihadists and al Qaeda. That appears to be a double lie: first in claiming that arms were sold to bin Laden’s group and then in equating Hussein with bin Laden. (The last country aside from Afghanistan that I know provided bin Laden with weapons was the U.S., although al Qaeda has clearly found sources for resupply since that time. I have not seen evidence of direct sales by nations and had assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that they were acquiring weapons through the black market and other private sources.) ---
**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, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/34 "2006-04-27T22:18:31Z")
> [@New Iskander](#): > > By that logic, I’d have to show you many 9-11s to prove that 9-11-2001 was long in preparation. Your request is absolutely loony. In a real world, it is enough to point out that botched NY WTC bombing in 1993 was obviously a precursor to the attack on NY WTC on 9-11-2001, as one example. This is a bit of hijaack (I would be happy to carry on in another thread) but… No your logic is flawed. 9/11 was a SINGLE attack (or if you want to think of it that way four co-ordinated attacks, one of which failed), those invovled was tiny, compared to the number invovled in Iraq. To prove those invovled were just as dangerous in 2000 as they were in 2001 you only have to point out the many precursor attacks or attempted attacks (Cole, WTC Bombings, Bojinka). And even if there weren’t specific attacks you could point to, the numbers invovled were small enough they could be easily be swallowed up by Jihhadist struggles elsewhere in the world (Algeria, Kashmir, etc). In Iraq there are around THIRTY sucide attacks EVERY month. The number of Jihaddis invovled in planning and carrying out these attacks must be HUGE. All the other “Jihaddi” struggles in the world combined do not even get close to that number of attacks. If only small number of these were invovled in attacks elsewhere in the world it represent a huge chunk of the islamists invovled, that would have dispappeared when they moved to Iraq. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/35 "2006-04-27T22:55:16Z")
> [@](#): > > (Before Pearl Harbor) 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. Apparently Mr. Raymond S. Kraft never heard of Lend-Lease, passed by Congress in March 1941, in which $50 billion in ships and other materials was sent to a number of nations under Axis threat (Britain got $31 billion from this program). A peacetime draft also got underway before Pearl Harbor. > [@](#): > > 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 was too busy surviving the Nazi onslaught to worry about helping America. In any case, England and Australia did far more to occupy the enemy that actually attacked the U.S. (Japan). Russia didn’t get around to attacking Japan until 1945, by which time we sort of had things pretty well in hand in the Far East. We also sent an enormous amount of aid to Russia during the course of WWII. So when it comes to butt-saving, we were not exactly slouches vis-a-vis the Russians. Mr. Raymond S. Kraft, a lawyer from California and author of that screed, comes off looking like a historically ignorant ass. ---
**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, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/36 "2006-04-27T23:36:59Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Russia didn’t get around to attacking Japan until 1945, by which time we sort of had things pretty well in hand in the Far East. We also sent an enormous amount of aid to Russia during the course of WWII. So when it comes to butt-saving, we were not exactly slouches vis-a-vis the Russians. Did Russia ever attack Japan? I thought it was just a matter of them transferring troops to the east and declaring war so they’d get a seat at the table as well. -Joe ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/37 "2006-04-27T23:49:32Z")
> [@Merijeek](#): > > Did Russia ever attack Japan? I thought it was just a matter of them transferring troops to the east and declaring war so they’d get a seat at the table as well. > > -Joe From [globalsecurity.org](http://globalsecurity.org): “Achieving tactical and strategic surprise, the Soviets launched a classic double envelopment along the Manchurian border on 9 August 1945. Advancing under the cover of darkness and pouring rain, the Soviets advanced along three axes covering a frontage of more than 3000 miles. Using armor-heavy forward detachments and displaying flexibility, audacity and initiative at all levels, the Soviets crushed what opposition the Japanese afforded and achieved impressive advances along what the Japanese considered to be untrafficable terrain.” The war was over less than a week later, but hey, the Russians sure covered our butts in the Far East for those few days. :rolleyes: ---
**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, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/38 "2006-04-27T23:55:17Z")
[Operation August Storm](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_August_Storm) resulted in over a million Japanese killed or captured by the Red Army. ---
**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, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/39 "2006-04-27T23:58:42Z")
> [@Merijeek](#): > > Did Russia ever attack Japan? I thought it was just a matter of them transferring troops to the east and declaring war so they’d get a seat at the table as well. Example of western-european centric history… The Manchurian Campaign (operation August Storm) in 1945 was huge and (some claim) very influenitial on the enventual decision by the Japanese surrender. The number of allied troops invovled (1.5 million), and the number of Japanese causalties (90,000 dead, 1/2 a million captured) were bigger (I believe) than any of the US campaigns in pacific. ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2006, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479/40 "2006-04-28T01:54:31Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > Example of western-european centric history… The Manchurian Campaign (operation August Storm) in 1945 > was huge and (some claim) very influenitial on the enventual decision by the Japanese surrender. The number of allied troops invovled (1.5 million), and the number of Japanese causalties (90,000 dead, 1/2 a million captured) were bigger (I believe) than any of the US campaigns in pacific. I don’t see how those troops would have had a big effect on the war. During the tail end of the war it was all about the islands, and the USA had total control of the sea around Japan. Those troops might have managed to kill some more Chinese and maybe some Russians…but I don’t see how they could have affected the decision to surrender. -Joe [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-a-conservative-friend-an-email-history-from-wwii-to-iraq/354479.md?page=3)