no. most of the evils it eradicated were either caused by the statecraft preceding it or the war itself. Worldwide the submission to the state and sacrafise of liberty was worshipped like a golden calf. Virtually no tradition of either conservatism or liberalism can be reconciled with this dark, cynical vision of humanity and delight in uniformity.
Was It 'The Good War'? (http://www.lewrockwell.com/buchanan/buchanan76.html)
by Patrick J. Buchanan
"Yes, it was a good war," writes Richard Cohen in his column challenging the thesis of pacifist Nicholson Baker in his new book, Human Smoke, that World War II produced more evil than good.
Baker's compelling work, which uses press clips and quotes of Axis and Allied leaders as they plunged into the great cataclysm, is a virtual diary of the days leading up to World War II.
Riveting to this writer was that Baker uses some of the same episodes, sources and quotes as this author in my own book out in May, Churchill, Hitler and 'The Unnecessary War.'
On some points, Cohen is on sold ground. There are things worth fighting for: God and country, family and freedom. Martyrs have ever inspired men. And to some evils pacifism is no answer. Resistance, even unto death, may be required of a man.
But when one declares a war that produced Hiroshima and the Holocaust a "Good War," it raises a question: good for whom?
Britain declared war on Sept. 3, 1939, to preserve Poland. For six years, Poland was occupied by Nazi and Soviet armies and SS and NKVD killers. At war's end, the Polish dead were estimated at 6 million. A third of Poland had been torn away by Stalin, and Nazis had used the country for the infamous camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz.
Fifteen thousand Polish officers had been massacred at places like Katyn. The Home Army that rose in Warsaw at the urging of the Red Army in 1944 had been annihilated, as the Red Army watched from the other side of the Vistula. When the British celebrated V-E day in May 1945, Poland began 44 years of tyranny under the satraps of Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev.
Was World War II "a good war" for the Poles?
Was it a good war for Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, overrun by Stalin's army in June 1940, whose people saw their leaders murdered or deported to the Gulag never to return? Was it a good war for the Finns who lost Karelia and thousands of brave men dead in the Winter War?
Was it a good war for Hungarians, Czechs, Yugoslavs, Rumanians and Albanians who ended up behind the Iron Curtain? In Hungary, it was hard to find a women or girl over 10 who had not been raped by the "liberators" of the Red Army. Was it a good war for the 13 million German civilians ethnically cleansed from Central Europe and the 2 million who died in the exodus?
Was it a good war for the French, who surrendered after six weeks of fighting in 1940 and had to be liberated by the Americans and British after four years of Vichy collaboration?
And how good a war was it for the British?
They went to war for Poland, but Winston Churchill abandoned Poland to Stalin. Defeated in Norway, France, Greece, Crete and the western desert, they endured until America came in and joined in the liberation of Western Europe.
Yet, at war's end in 1945, Britain was bled and bankrupt, and the great cause of Churchill's life, preserving his beloved empire, was lost. Because of the "Good War" Britain would never be great again.
And were the means used by the Allies, the terror bombing of Japanese and German cities, killing hundreds of thousands of women and children, perhaps millions, the marks of a "good war"?
Cohen contends that the evil of the Holocaust makes it a "good war." But the destruction of the Jews of Europe was a consequence of this war, not a cause. As for the Japanese atrocities like the Rape of Nanking, they were indeed horrific.
But America's smashing of Japan led not to freedom for China, but four years of civil war followed by 30 years of Maoist madness in which 30 million Chinese perished.
For America, the war was Pearl Harbor and Midway, Anzio and Iwo Jima, Normandy and Bastogne, days of glory leading to triumph and the American Century.
But for Joseph Stalin, it was also a good war. From his pact with Adolf Hitler he annexed parts of Finland and Rumania, and three Baltic republics. His armies stood in Berlin, Prague and Vienna; his agents were vying for power in Rome and Paris; his ally was installed in North Korea; his protégé, Mao, was about to bring China into his empire. But it was not so good a war for the inmates of Kolyma or the Russian POWs returned to Stalin in Truman's Operation Keelhaul.
Is a war that replaces Hitler's domination of Europe with Stalin's and Japan's rule in China with Mao's a "good war"? We had to stop the killers, says Cohen. But who were the greater killers: Hitler or Stalin, Tojo or Mao Zedong?
Can a war in which 50 million perished and the Christian continent was destroyed, half of it enslaved, a war that has advanced the death of Western civilization, be truly celebrated as a "good war"?
The very fact that you even bothered to ask this ridiculous question proves how ignorant you are. (my karma better not drop from 202 for saying that)
I am inclined to give you negative karma but I won't...
Because I feel, like many others here, that based on your previous posts, you are truly misguided and/or f***ed up in the head.
What's the point of this discussion?
Is it to argue that the Allies should have not gotten invovled after Germany invaded Poland?
In answer to all the "was it worth it questions" that are asked, the only correct context is to ask "would it have been worth it to do nothing?"
Would the world be a better place now if Germany and the Third Reich been allowed to free reign to conquor?
In other words, I find discussions like these pointless - a bunch of gasbag speculation coming from people who see the world in one dimension.
Why are you guys so hostile? it's just a discussion.
ash- I'm the one who is going to get the negative karma so don't worry!
if you can try to read a little of the piece not just the title
Lester...there is a reason why you have 0 karma.
Learn when to take a hint and don't pursue this topic any further.
lol cuz YOU say so? fat chance. most boards don't have karma and I don't care about it
It beats being nuked by crazy Adolf in 1954, every minority and free thinker in America systematically slaughtered in camps, paying percentages of what's left of our GNP to Germania for 50 years before they crumble beneath their own excesses, Japan raping and slaughtering all of East Asia, the Pacific, and raids on the US West Coast during the Hitler nuking. But that's just me.
I knew who started this thread just by the title.
This is insane. Lester-you seem like an intelligent guy. And I really do understand where your coming from-sometimes-but this is totally off the wall. NO war is good. ALL war has consequences...good and bad. That's the breaks. But appeasment of Nazi Germany would have been totally INSANE. Hitler was a rascist power hungary mainiac,the Holocaust would have been worse. YOU would not be sitting here typing your opinion on this that and the other. YOU would be dead! Do you think a facist state would allow you the freedom to spout your thoughts in a public forum? WWII was not caused by the US...it was ended by us. What happened afterwards ,in many cases,was unfortunate...but I don't think Poland,for example, would have been better off if Hitler expaned his Warsaw Ghetto into the rest of the country!!! Hitler,Mussolini,Stalin...all power hungry meglomaniacs. Some people should die. Those 3 were EVIL.
To answer your question-'Was it a good war?" NO. NO WAR IS GOOD. Was it a nessacary evil? YES. We,as a country,to stand by and do nothing while the Axis butchered millions? We did the right thing. Many died. But I am PROUD to say that my country saved the world. We didn't fix it...but dammit,we DID fight the GOOD FIGHT.
You claim to promote Capitalism? Do you think Stalin would NOT have gained what he did...if not MORE, if we had not interceeded?
What were we supposed to do? Sit on our f#cking hands?!?!? C'mon! Be real!!!
Yes, yes it was worth it. Ask the Korean "comfort women" who were liberated from practically round the clock raping. Ask Eli Weisel or any of the other hundreds of thousands liberated from Auschwitz, etc.
A better question to ask is why France and Britain didn't challenge Hitler early on when he rearmed in violation of the Treaty of Versailles or why they appeased him with the Sudetenland. Even if they had checked him, Japan was on the march and going to clash with the US anyhow. Japan attacked us in large part because we stopped shipping them oil and steel, should we have appeased Tokyo by continuing to supply its war machine in its conquest of eastern Asia? If so, would/did you support doing business with Apartheid era South Africa.
BTW, Pat Buchanan is a populist, isolationist, borderline anti-semite. He wants to believe we are living in the 19th century. I wouldn't quote him on anything.
Quote from: lester1/2jr on April 04, 2008, 09:08:09 AM
Why are you guys so hostile? it's just a discussion.
Lester,
For the record, my comments were aimed at the authors of the articles you mentioned, not at you. I think those kinds of articles are pointless, since they create a false dichotomy.
first, let me say I posted this becausee the topic of ww2 is sometimes brought up by me and others and it is a sort of figure of speech as a "good war". Both my grandfathers fought in it, onee dropped bombs on german cities.
At a certain point, like when hitler declared war on us, we had little choice but to enter. My main point is about he pre war statecraft: specifically the treaty of versailles. The massive debt put on post war germany led to hyperinflation, what zimbabwe has now, where a loaf of bread costs 4000 dollars then 5000 by the time you get to the front of the line. Hitler emerged as a false saviour out of this tumultous experience. i dare say there would NOT have been a nazi party had their not been hyperinflation. and there would not have been hyperinflation had the allies post ww1 not imposed such insurmountable debt on the people of germany.
I'd further ad that had we not intervened at operation barabarossa, stalin and hitler would have in all likelihood fought each other to a standstill, possibly sparing the continent of europe of both of those monsters.
raj
QuoteAsk the Korean "comfort women"
okay, but we didn't enter the conflict to free those women. it was in response to pearl harbor. That happened in no small part because of our cutting of oil to Japan as you note.
things don't happen for no reason. it wasn't just we were smashing evil. things led to world war 2 and, again, it wasn't just evil men.
Quoteshould we have appeased Tokyo by continuing to supply its war machine in its conquest of eastern Asia?
that's a good point. i don't know the answer to that.
QuotePat Buchanan is a populist, isolationist, borderline anti-semite.
I am also an isolationist, except for the revolutionary war and the souths se cession in 1861, but we'll leave that for another day. I'm not a populist or anti semite though
QuoteDo you think a facist state would allow ..
stalin didn't allow it but we sided with him. containing the USSR was no mean feat, it took decades. I doubt the prisoners at kolyma and places likee that were glad Stalin became their judge and jury.
QuoteWhat were we supposed to do? Sit on our f#cking hands
what did somalia do? what did brazil do? are they bad people because they didn't send their kids to die?
QuoteHitler,Mussolini,Stalin
FDR took some pretty extreme measures as well. thankfully, our constitution prevented him from fully implementing his crazy ideas, though we do suffer the stain of having interred japanese people.
tars- anything stalin and mao did puts that stuff to shame and it went on for decades.
but thank you all for indulging me here and I'll stick to lighter fare next time around.
again, at a certain point we had to fight.
My main concern is that i feel the official narraive of this conflict is lacking in facts and leans heavily on nationalism and myth making.
Without commenting on Buchanan's essay, let me challenge you to read Harry Turtledove's chilling alternative history novel IN THE PRESENCE OF MINE ENEMIES for a view of a world in which Germany won World War II. Or, perhaps Thomas Harris' FATHERLAND. One is set early in the 21st Century, the other in the 1960's. Both provide a cogent rationale for our involvement and intervention.
As far as Hiroshima and Dresden and all the rest . . . Hitler started the mass bombing of purely civilian targets with the terror bombing of Coventry, and he reaped what he sowed. The Atomic bombs that ended the war were truly horrible, but they saved more lives than they took. One of the lives they saved was my Dad's. He was 19 years old and scheduled to go ashore in the second wave of the invasion of Japan. Based on the casualties taken at Tarawa, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, his wave was expected to have a survival rate of 1 out of every 132. That's right. One out of 132 American boys who went ashore would walk away without being killed or wounded. What would you have done if you had been in Truman's shoes?
I will agree this far: all war is obscene, all war is evil, yet sometimes going to war represents the lesser obscenity, the lesser evil.
The Second World War rid planet earth of Nazism and Japanese Imperialism. This in itself justifies Allied involvement in World War Two, but if further justification was needed, then it should be remembered that both Germany and Japan (along with Italy) declared war on the United States before the United States declared war on them. The Soviet Union, though hardly an innocent, non-violent nation prior to June 22, 1941, was likewise the victim of German invasion. In short, the west had this war thrust upon it. When attacked by tyrannical totalitarian states, what other logical choice is there but to fight back?
I'll also submit that in our Mideast versus the west struggles we are perhaps involved today in the Third World War and have been for some time now, though we don't recognize this and it will take historians of the future to give our pan-global and so far low intensity conflicts that label.
You know, I have to say it, with our fondness for waging ever more destructive wars, our embracing of violence, our rampant consumption of finite resources, our misuse of other species, the human race might just be the worst thing ever to happen to this little blue planet.
Looking back on Buchanan's essay, I guess I'd have to agree with the questions others have raised. What would the cost of our uninvolvement have been? I am no WWII scholar so have little to add, except that neither I nor anyone who is a friend of mine has ever used the phrase "good war," and I would heap criticism on anyone who did.
Hey Lester I just have one question for you. Can you not read the title of this Forum, it say BadMovies, not Bad Politics. Can you occasionally get with subject.
As much as you would like to say that you are just expressing opinions, I think you just want to rile people up. You might want to consider starting your own political forum so the rest of us can get back to the purpose of this board.
Quote from: trekgeezer on April 06, 2008, 10:23:12 AM
Hey Lester I just have one question for you. Can you not read the title of this Forum, it say BadMovies, not Bad Politics. Can you occasionally get with subject.
This specific forum does say 'off-topic'. :lookingup:
Want me to clean those specs for you? :tongueout:
Yeah, it says Off-Topic, I just get tired of the political trestises. They would be better suited to forum designed for that purpose.
Since I usually try to avoid commenting on those posts, it really doesn't bother me that much, but I can see the potential of it driving some folks away from the site.
Quote from: trekgeezer on April 06, 2008, 10:53:49 AM
Yeah, it says Off-Topic, I just get tired of the political trestises. They would be better suited to forum designed for that purpose.
I don't care for political discussions on this forum myself as it can lead to too much dissention; besides, I can get into enough trouble on my own without politics. :teddyr:
There is a forum I set up for topical subjects, and it even has a cage fights area for really mixing it up. Nobody uses it, but anybody is welcome to use it as they wish.
http://www.dracoforums.com/thecage/
Quote from: trekgeezer on April 06, 2008, 10:23:12 AM
Hey Lester I just have one question for you. Can you not read the title of this Forum, it say BadMovies, not Bad Politics. Can you occasionally get with subject.
No doubt Lester posts OT stuff with regularity; but in his defense, he DOES post on-topic quite a bit, in the appropriate places, as well.
I don't think that war by definition can ever be "worth it".
Is it a good idea to get rid of bastard leaders that make their countrymens' lives miserable? Yes.
Is it a good idea to use those countrymen and/or men of other countries to lay down their lives to get rid of them? No.
Maybe I'm being a little simplistic here, but surely it would be easier to get a sniper in to do the job on the person/people most directly responsible for ugliness? One forehead, one bullet. Bam! Problem solved. Then you could get other countries involved to send in the troops to keep the peace until a new more moderate leader is elected in their place. It would cost less in terms of dollars and lives, which surely has to be a better thing for everyone.
Again, maybe I'm being naive or simplistic or just plain thick, so all counter arguments are gladly accepted.
There were at least four separate assassination attempts on Hitler . . . all failed, though one came close. manical dictators can be surprisingly hard to draw a bead on. I for one wouldn't mind seeing a small handful of heads around the world explode . . . but then, that isn't very nice.
Quote from: indianasmith on April 06, 2008, 11:18:19 PM
There were at least four separate assassination attempts on Hitler . . . all failed, though one came close. manical dictators can be surprisingly hard to draw a bead on. I for one wouldn't mind seeing a small handful of heads around the world explode . . . but then, that isn't very nice.
"Nice" and "right" aren't always the same thing. Of course "right" has to come first.
Quote from: indianasmith on April 04, 2008, 05:18:37 PM
Without commenting on Buchanan's essay, let me challenge you to read Harry Turtledove's chilling alternative history novel IN THE PRESENCE OF MINE ENEMIES for a view of a world in which Germany won World War II. Or, perhaps Thomas Harris' FATHERLAND. One is set early in the 21st Century, the other in the 1960's. Both provide a cogent rationale for our involvement and intervention.
Holy crap, did I miss a potboiler with this thread. :wink:
Anyway, as to Indiana's suggestion of the Harris book.... :cheers:
In addition to what he mentions, FATHERLAND, while fictional, helps people get beyond the newsreels and caricatures, not to mention the dangerous generalizations of tomes like Goldhagen's HITLER'S WILLING EXECUTIONERS, to see just what life was like inside the 12 year reich. For the civil servant, for the homemaker, for children, for the soldier, for the party stooge, for the "full" Aryans, for the "not-so-full", for the untermensch. As with the misguided carping about the film DER UNTERGANG, the fact that these people were not demons, but in fact human beings, makes the whole ordeal(for them
and the world!) much more sad and, certainly, more horrific.
On the flipside Turtledove can be a bit dense(his writing style, that is!) for the average reader. My biggest beef with him is his tendency to over-over-over-over-complicate his plots, and that's in the one off titles. His series' tend work better, but have the drawback of almost being "endless". One thing is for sure though, he never fails to come up with genuinely intriguing what-ifs.
His second civil war book HOW FEW REMAIN was pretty moving and his book co-authored(more ghostwritten, I suspect) with Richard Dreyfuss about a world with an amicable American Revolution settlement, THE TWO GEORGES, while not Hemingway, was clever and a good example of how to extrapolate far beyond an interesting divergence point.
I tend to use his books as springboards for serious investigation into alternate history possibilities. It's quite rewarding, intellectually speaking.
Allohistory is probably my most cherished genre to read in. For anyone here I would suggest Whitley Streiber and James Kunteka's WAR DAY, set (in 1988) five years after a very limited nuclear war with the Soviets. Fictional, yet written as themselves, it's a pretty well thought-out picture of what even a limited national catastrophe would do.
Quote from: Killer Bees on April 06, 2008, 08:57:26 PM
Maybe I'm being a little simplistic here, but surely it would be easier to get a sniper in to do the job on the person/people most directly responsible for ugliness? One forehead, one bullet. Bam! Problem solved. Then you could get other countries involved to send in the troops to keep the peace until a new more moderate leader is elected in their place. It would cost less in terms of dollars and lives, which surely has to be a better thing for everyone.
Again, maybe I'm being naive or simplistic or just plain thick, so all counter arguments are gladly accepted.
It takes more than one person to run an evil empire, and knocking off the leader can do more harm than good. If somebody succeeded in assassinating Hitler, who's to say a bigger psycho wouldn't have taken his place? He was surrounded by quite a few.
And countries don't just lose their will to fight when you kill their leader, no matter how bad he was (and there will be those who didn't consider him bad at all). It's as likely to stir them up.
And with the population stirred up and leadership unpredictable, we also can't forget they have a new martyr and a new reason to fear us.
Quote from: indianasmith on April 06, 2008, 11:18:19 PM
There were at least four separate assassination attempts on Hitler . . . all failed, though one came close.
From an "eyewitness account" I uncovered in my recent research:
"The rumor was that Hitler was getting his daily shots of hormones, but the truth was worse than that. He had a tremendous fear of death, and created a succession of Mr. Hs. There were attempted assassinations. None of the assassinations failed to kill someone---but not Mr. H."
Quote from: AndyC on April 07, 2008, 04:43:40 PM
Quote from: Killer Bees on April 06, 2008, 08:57:26 PM
Maybe I'm being a little simplistic here, but surely it would be easier to get a sniper in to do the job on the person/people most directly responsible for ugliness? One forehead, one bullet. Bam! Problem solved. Then you could get other countries involved to send in the troops to keep the peace until a new more moderate leader is elected in their place. It would cost less in terms of dollars and lives, which surely has to be a better thing for everyone.
Again, maybe I'm being naive or simplistic or just plain thick, so all counter arguments are gladly accepted.
It takes more than one person to run an evil empire, and knocking off the leader can do more harm than good. If somebody succeeded in assassinating Hitler, who's to say a bigger psycho wouldn't have taken his place? He was surrounded by quite a few.
And countries don't just lose their will to fight when you kill their leader, no matter how bad he was (and there will be those who didn't consider him bad at all). It's as likely to stir them up.
And with the population stirred up and leadership unpredictable, we also can't forget they have a new martyr and a new reason to fear us.
Exactly. Hitler's #2 for most of the war would have effectively been Himmler. Though Goering was nominally the second banana, Himmler would've been able to placate him in some other way. Plus, as the war rolled on, Goering became less and less interested in..*cough*...reality. A cold, calculating monster whose singular devotion to the superiority of the Aryan Reich, Himmler was outdone only by the troll Goebbels in the fanatic department.
The funny thing about "Loyal Heini" is that, at the twilight, with the Reich collapsing around them, he was one of the first party stooges, an alterkampfer no less, to start sneaking overtures to the allies. Of course, it was the Brits/Americans he wanted to deal with. The Russians would have turned Germany into a parking lot for the Warsaw Pact offices, if they could've.
The Third Reich was less a monolithic tyranny lead by a singular despot and more a mess of competing offices and martial branches each stuffed with plenty of party faithfull. Decapitation was an avenue that, in this instance, was bound to create more problems than solve them.
The efforts of the internal resistance elements, like the Kreisau Circle, Rote Kapelle and von Stauffenberg's group towards an effort to arrest(or kill) Hitler was to complimented by a coup of large enough scale as to send a clear signal to their fellow countrymen. Something an ops mission by the Allies was lack to it's disadvantage. Though, they did cook up a few plans.
While Tom Cruise is the probably the last actor I would have chosen to play Stauffenberg, it's clear that without him, Bryan Singer's upcoming VALKYRIE (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0985699/), about the July 20th plot against Hitler, would not have been made...and I'll take films about little known intriguing events in history any way I can get them.
In the meantime, may I suggest THE PLOT TO KILL HITLER (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100376/), a great tv movie about the event with Brad Davis(another short American!)as von Stauffenberg. Great assists from Brits Michael Byrne, Ian Richardson, Kenneth(Admiral Piett)Colley and Jonathan Hyde. It gets all the details right(for the most part) and as a Wolper production, it's well made. It does a great job of showing the struggle of officers torn between a nationally ingrained sense of loyalty and overwhelming sense of desperation to save what remained of their people and their cultural dignity.
interesting comments, all!
When I do my introductory lecture on Nazi Germany, I tell the class that seldom in human history has there been a bigger collection of thugs, goons, perverts, and misfits than the entourage that followed Hitler on his ride to power . . . there is not a normal, functional personality in the lot with the possible exception of Albert Speer.
One aspect of Hiter's management style was that he did not allow any one of his subordinates to accumulate too much power, and he encouraged rivalry. Thus he made himself indispensible to the Nazi party. Goring and Himmler hated each other, and Goebbels cordially detested both of them. The most ruthless member of the crew, Reinhard Heydrich (ironically 1/4 Jewish) might have had the moxie to replace Hitler had the Allies not taken him out in 1942.
Certainly Nazi Germany was an evil place, but there were some decent human beings there who tried to save their country. I'm glad someone - even if it's Tom Cruise - is honoring their memory.
This topic reminded me of that piece on psychopaths that came up in a thread a while back, suggesting that Goering fit the diagnostic criteria for a phsychopath but Hitler did not. I'm inclined to agree that Hitler might not have been the most dangerous man in his regime.
From what I know of his life, I'd even go as far as saying that Hitler sincerely believed he was doing a necessary thing for his people, but his perspective was twisted. Kind of a Darth Vader situation of evil deeds springing from good intentions. I mean, at his core, was Hitler different from anybody who fails in his endeavours and blames other people or "the system" for keeping him down? The only difference I can see between him and a thousand other raving s**t disturbers is that he arrived at exactly the right point in history to get the power to fix things the way he wanted. And in doing so, he inevitably attracted every power-hungry sadist in Germany to his cause. Genuine psychopaths who were basically given a licence to indulge their crueller impulses.
Far from making Hitler less of a frightening figure, I think this leads to a more unsettling realization that the world is always full of Hitlers, just waiting for the right set of circumstances to come again.
One of the best speakers I've heard in a while was a Holocaust survivor who spoke in my community a few months ago. She mainly does anti-bullying presentations at schools, and her take on the Nazis is that they were nothing more than bullies who carried it as far as they could. And she presents her message with personal accounts that include Josef Mengele himself (speaking of psychopaths) pointing to the barracks for her and the "showers" for most of her family.
WWII is possibly the easiest war in recent history that can be held up as an example of "We had to fight."
Quote from: indianasmith on April 08, 2008, 08:50:13 AM
Certainly Nazi Germany was an evil place, but there were some decent human beings there who tried to save their country. I'm glad someone - even if it's Tom Cruise - is honoring their memory.
Of note here is a story I happened across on Snopes. The German fighter pilot who, because of his own sense of right and wrong, did not fire on the damaged B-17 bomber, was impressive. Check down at the end of the article for his words on why he didn't open fire and finish it off.
http://www.snopes.com/military/charliebrown.asp
That is a sense of honor.
That was really cool Andrew...thanks for pointing that out.
World War II was the last war we fought that had very clearly defined enemies. The sheer resources that were thrown into that war are amazing. Although the US did attempt to stay out of it first, it was a situation where we didn't have much choice in the end but to get involved.