OJ, only you could think that the greatest victory in the history of our nation in the largest war ever fought is "a national disgrace we can never expunge."

But we've had this argument before.

ask anyone in Eastern Europe who won the war.

They weren't worse off than before the war started, so why would we care? We weren't over there in the late '30s liberating them from the Arrow Cross movement etc. either.

"ask anyone in Eastern Europe who won the war."

We did,of course.

The Germans and Russians bled each other dry,Britain and France lost their empires and fell middle rank power,Japan was prostrate and China in chaos,leaving us more or less supreme.
And all for only 300,000 dead.

Or did you really fall for that "Crusade for Humanity" nonsense Roosevelt was selling?

No, in national security matters one needn't give a fig for humanity. I meant that the Cold War that the loss of WWII left us holding the bag for did more damage to America than beating the Nazis was worth.

Harry:

Of course they were.

"did more damage to America than beating the Nazis was worth"

No,Johnson's bungling of Vietnam did more damage,giving the left more credibility than they would otherwise have earned and underminingg the right for 2 generations(and the right still lacks competent intellectual and politcal leadership today,too many start from a leftist position).

W's bungling in Iraq(if that's happening)would again undermine the right.

Our big mistake was made in 1917.

No Soviet Union in '45, no Vietnam in '68.

If we're playing revisionist history, perhaps you can provide a listing of all the wars we would have had to fight had we occupied the Soviet Union in 1945(46? 47? 52? 55? How long would that have taken anyway?)

Of course by your reasoning, we never should have pulled out of Russia in 1919. But then, that wouldn't really have removed the need to fight Germany nor Japan later on would it?

Brandon:

We never should have been in Europe in '19.

I agree, but that doesn't answer my question.

Why do you assume that, had USA invaded the Soviet Union in 1945, there would have followed a victory so complete that the Cold War would seem the worse alternative?

Because Soviet Russia was much like Nazi Germany.

Brandon:

OJ makes the common mistake of easily identifying the consequences of the path taken while simultaneously presuming benefits of the path not taken.

He is comparing chalk and cheese.

Further, he completely ignores the fact that leaving communism in the guise of the USSR to collapse under its own buffoonery prevented communism from adopting the mantle of martyrhood we would otherwise have handed it.

Yeah, tough dealing with all those Nazi martyrs...

No Soviet Union in 1945, no Apollo Moon landing in 1969.

'No bucks, no Buck Rogers'.

Landing by '69 was a mistake which locked us into rocketry for far too long. Yeager and those guys would be flying there by now.

Doubtful. Now that we are the sole superpower, what is our impetus to invest in space technology? It isn't there. I doubt that we would have done more than launch communications satellites without the Cold War. Even GPS would probably not have been realized. Technological innovations require the challenge of necessity. The Cold War was very wasteful of human lives, mostly in poor nations, but it did advance science and technology considerably.

Robert:

Don't worry., there'd have been plenty of reason to waste resources on the military.

You say of course they were worse off after1945.

Presumably because you consider being murdered without the sanction of the Big Spook is worse than being murdered with it.

Either way, you're dead. Hard for me, at least, to see any difference.

Who was being murdered in 1938?

"Yeah, tough dealing with all those Nazi martyrs..."

Specious comparison. Communism, for whatever reason, had a far different hold on people than Nazism did.

Or hadn't you noticed?

They had identical holds--tyrannical minorities had to control populations by force. Get rid of the minority and Communism would have gone the way of Nazism. No one sides with the losers.

OJ:

I'm primarily talking about communist sympathizers outside the USSR/China. However, had we invaded after WWII, there would have been far more of them within Russia, too.

Your revisionist history utterly disregards the martyrdom effect that would have attended such an invasion.

Martyrdom requires deaths. I'm pro-death for communists.

You fail to understand my point.

By allowing Communisms inadequacies to sink it, far fewer people lamented its passing than had we pushed it over the same brink.

Think of all the Communist insurgencies we aren't fighting now.

I take your point, it's just wrong. Those insurgencies existed because Moscow was there to fund them.

No, you don't take my point.

Had we strangled Communism, many would still mourn its passing and yearn for its resurgence.

Having allowed it die a painful, obvious, ignominous death, nearly everyone outside Political Science departments has taken the lesson on board.

Look at it this way: what would the effect on Christianity have been had Christ died of old age?

What was the effect on Communism of Marx dying of old age? The example you're groping for is the Albigensians. Once they were wiped out, no one wandered around asking to be next.

I dunno about martyrs, but if the US and Allies had crushed the USSR in '45 - '47, other nations at other times would have tried Communism.
Now, it's pretty clear that communism ain't the way to go.

Whether the Cold War was cheaper in lucre and blood than dealing with communistic countries in the 21st century, is unclear to me.

There are and have been plenty of fascist countries since '45. They had sense enough not to emulate the Nazis. Communist experiments like Cuba would likely have eschewed world revolutionn had we made it clear it imposed a regime death sentence.

OJ:

You are hand waving.