At 1:43 PM -0700 11/23/97, Jim Choate wrote: ...
Any particular methodology you might care to share on stopping WWII? Being an avid amateur historian concerning WWII I am very much interested in any insight you might have.
Not entering the war. There's ample evidence that the U.S. provoked the Japanese in various ways. (I'm not saying the Japanese were blameless, or lily-white, or"nice," etc., only that most historians agree--and Japanese archives support--that the Japanese were motivated to attack Pearl Harbor in the hope that a devastating first blow would sink enough ships, etc., to cause America to back off in its actions in the ironically named Pacific.) Had the U.S. concentrated on its own affairs, on just trade, it is unlikely that what the Japanese were doing in Malaysia, Manchuria, Korea, Indochina, and the Phillipines would have had any major interest for us. As for Europe, this was even less our war than the Pacific war. In a sense, so _what_ if some army from some nation was rolling over other armies? (The "evilness" of Hitler is not the issue, either. Else Stalin and Mao would have been cause enough to go to war.) (And the issue of "alliances" is even murkier. The states of the U.S. have little to fear from Canada or Mexico, so what use have "alliances" ever been? Much could be said about the pros and cons of alliances, but I am persuaded that the U.S. should avoid them. And certainly the monarchic alliances which led to the First World War--a war fought over the Hapsburg Dynasty and assorted intrigues==were completely absurd. Even the proximate cause of the U.S. entry into the war, the sinking of the "Lusitania" and related events, was duplicitous on the part of the U.S. government...the U.S. gov't. was "taking sides" by shipping munitions on the L.) As for the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem...not my war. A tragedy and a horrible atrocity, to be sure, but so were the forced starvation of the Kulaks and others, the decision by the PRC government to deliberately sacrifice a region of 30 million peasants, the "killing fields" of Cambodia, the Rwanda massacres, and so on. Just as invading Cambodia to save a million Cambodians was not justified, just as invading Rwanda to stop the killing of a million Hutus or Tutsis or both, so, too, was an invasion of Europe to save some Frenchmen or some Jews or Gypsies unjustified. If the U.S. had not become "policeman to the world" in the early part of this century ("...but carry a big stick"), or, more to the point, if the United States were (emphasis on the plural "were," not "was") highly authonomous and decentralized, it is hard to imagine Illinois or New Hampshire deciding to send their men to die in the Pacific for some abstract notion of "stopping Japanese imperialism." Ditto for the war in Europe, although no doubt many with relatives in Euope would be pressing for mandatory action. Understandable, but ignorable in a free society. Those who wanted to liberate the death camps, or to push Hitler back into Gerrmany, or to kick the Emperor's butt could, of course, simply go over and volunteer. In a free society, mercenaries are legal. The last justifiable war the American states were involved in was, arguably, the War of 1812. Every war since then has been unjustified. --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."