Never on the right side of history.
We were that one time, and we’ve been milking it ever since.
WW2, we only joined because Japan attacked. Otherwise, there were elements of the US population that were cheering for Hitler.
We also nuked two cities, for reasons much less honorable or necessary than the one we are told.
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I’m super-fun at parties 😐
Any respected historian on the subject will tell you that it’s way more complicated and nuanced than your average social media user is aware of. If, like Truman, you honestly believed that using atomic bombs on Japan would ultimately result in less loss of life, on a purely mathematical basis it was the only moral decision.
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You’d think one would have been enough
What’s the reason then?
Two reasons, I think:
- So Japan would unconditionally surrender to the US instead of (conditionally or unconditionally) surrendering to the USSR.
- As a warning to the USSR to not spread communism further. The Cold War started even before WWII ended.
Close. What they were worried about was a hot war with the Soviets. There was also a great deal of uncertainty about Japanese willingness to continue to fight. It’s simply not the case that they had clear unambiguous intelligence on Japanese leadership’s intentions, which makes sense since there were several schools of thought among the Japanese.
Japan was not closer to conditionally surrendering to the USSR instead of the US. Even if they were that doesn’t magically make their war with the US end.
The reason for the bombs being dropped is very clear and you’re free to read countless books, articles, papers on it.
The Cold War started even before WWII ended.
Yes but not every choice during WW2 was about countering communism. We supplied them with an absolute ton of weapons and cutting edge vehicles, planes during the war. The threat of the axis/fascism far outweighed the threat of communism spreading at the time.
The reason for the bombs being dropped is very clear and you’re free to read countless books, articles, papers on it.
I’ve read the same arguments & documents as every other red-blooded American, but unlike most I’ve also read the counterarguments.
Weren’t the nukes also dropped because Japan’s highest-level commanders were dead-set on fighting more or less to the end, which would have caused horrific loss of life on both sides?
Also, I don’t remember reading this theory, but I would guess some of those commanders also felt like something ‘magical’ might happen to save the motherland, hearkening back to Kame Kaze’s taifuns that saved Nippon from Mongol invasion on two occasions, centuries earlier.
The US has never opposed fascism - Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany were colonialist rivals threatening US hegemony and influence and nothing more.
People don’t realize that the US used to see fascism as a sort of white utopia. It was really popular up until WW2 when they hard turned on it. Kind of like what happened with communism, actually. It was seen as a revolutionary form of democracy up until the cold war, now people only know it for all the propaganda that came out of the era. (most of which was flat out lies made up on the spot by actual nazis)
It’s a lot of the reason why the modern day liberal is so staunchly both-sides when it comes to anything geopolitics.
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Well, that and Japan was actively murdering massive amounts of people in China.
It was a calculated strategy to stop supporting the Japanese genocide machine.
The Rape of Nanjing made international news. That turned the average US voter against Japan, but the embargo (not a blockade) started after Japan invaded French Indochina (Vietnam) in 1940.
The Embargo was just the US saying that no US owned oil would be sold to Japan.
Prior to Pearl Harbour, the US funded the Japanese as the Japanese committed countless war crimes and genocide in China.
Well that and the fact that there was a huge Irish-American population that was hostile towards the UK in ways that I think a lot of younger people and non-historians have really lost sight of because it’s not really a thing anymore. The idea of taking sides with the British Empire was a very tough pill for a lot of Irish-Americans, most of whom, unlike today, still had direct connections to Ireland. The famine was no longer really in living memory, but the children of the famine survivors were definitely still alive and influential and they absolutely despised the British for understandable reasons.
History is always way more complex and nuanced than some half-baked one-liner trope on social media.
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Yeah, but look how it started. You need to look at the WW1, when both USA and Japan were among the victors and had the same area in their expansion view. For example Lenin predicted in 1918 that the Pacific war will eventually happen, though it ultimately started later than he thought because invasion of China occupied Japan attention.
Interestingly enough for the same reason US-Japan war could be avoided for more time, but it’s actually the US who decided the time, note how they established the embargo on Japan in late june to 1st august 1941, in the exact moment when Japanese military was occupied, their nazi ally pour all effort into invading USSR and Japan even refused to join that war basically breaking that alliance. Said embargo was absolutely devastating for Japan, it would force them to grind their entire empire to sudden halt in half year, so they have a choice between collapse and war on USA. The only thing US was mistaken about was how competent the Japanese military actually was (not weird considering the racism in US) which led to their their initial string of victories in 1942.
So yeah, that was the one time US was on the correct side of history but the motivation was to gobble up the Pacific for their empire, and they pushed up pretty cold bloodedly for it.
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Hollywood war reenactments are a psyop.
When the USA joined the war it was already clear the axis had lost.
While I agree that that it was the Soviet and Chinese people that absorbed the greatest part of the Axis’ powers warmaking ability (which western historians are apt to ignore), it’s not true that the Axis had already lost the war by 1941. It’s accurate to say that the US joined the war at a moment when the Axis forces had hopelessly overstretched themselves.
By the winter of 1941, Barbarossa had failed. By the time the Western Front was opened in 1944, Army Group South had collapsed, Army Group North was failing, and Army Group Center was in the process of being encircled. Germany had lost, it was just a question of when. In the meantime, the entire North African campaign cost the Germans less resources than the Dnieper-Carpathian Offensive.
Friendly reminder that prior to Pearl Harbour, the US was sponsoring Japan’s war crimes in China. The US made up the bulk of Japan’s iron, copper, oil, steel, and wheat supply… Essentials for industrializing and waging war. Even with this massive economic power backing them, Japan had been fought to a standstill by 1940. By 1944, the Nationalists were more concerned with containing the Communists than they were with containing the Japanese.
In the case of both Germany and Japan, powerhouses at the peak of their power were ground down to a stalemate against a rapidly industrializing nation.
Was this lecture aimed at me or someone else?
definitely aimed at you, but also edifying for anyone who might think the USA was solidly on the side of good during the war. The US entered the war in 41, but they refused Stalin’s repeated requests to open a second front against Germany. They went to north africa first and then italy, waiting until the German eastern front had nearly collapsed before landing in Normandy. The US was essentially racing against the red army, trying to prevent the soviet union from liberating the entirety of europe under the banner of liberation for humankind. Once the US reached Germany and peace began, the US almost immediately formed NATO and appointed Nazi war criminals into its upper ranks while putting nazi war ciminals in charge of west germany. The yankee government is bad and always has been. throughout all of its history it only has made good choices when it has been dragged kicking and screaming.
The US entered the war in 41
two fucking years late because they were too cozy with the nazis
Do you have any specific book recommendations on this?
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Typical oversimplified tripe. Soviet bodies played a huge role, but US and British mechanized force projection, naval power and industrial capacity were at least as important.
It’s also just bullshit that the Axis had already lost. That’s the worst kind of historical revisionism. It might be obvious to us looking back, but it wasn’t even remotely obvious to anyone alive then.
Lol no it wasn’t clear. And you’re forgetting about the entire Pacific.
Russians trying to rewrite history, forgetting who supplied half their army while also joining a war against their enemy on another front (at great cost to western lives), overall saving lives as the Germans had to divert resources and ending the war in Europe sooner.
Neither of you are wrong, but Americans should understand that the USSR suffered over twenty million deaths vs ~117,000 Americans on the Western Front. They had their own western cities & infrastructure invaded/destroyed. The undertaking & sacrifices are hard to compare.
Russians trying to rewrite history
Okay my bad: you actually are wrong.
It’s been a very common thing recently with Russian to claim the West basically did nothing in WW2.
They are quite literally rewriting history in their classrooms.
Now I won’t deny they took the brunt of the force and paid an absolutely huge price in lives.
But op is trying to use WW2 as a way to say the US is bad. That we did nothing and only joined when it was basically over. It’s a super common Russian nationalist talking point right now.
Common perception in France right after WW2 was that the Soviets made the single largest contribution against the Germans out of any country. That perspective has been progressively rewritten.
And I’m not trying to argue that they didn’t. I do believe Russia paid the biggest price and contributed the most. Especially in regard to the lives given to defeat the Axis. And I don’t really want to down play that.
But op is using WW2 to attack the US which is dumb. They also paid a large price in the war on both fronts, contributed a ton to allies through lend lease / material goods and were on the correct side of history in this instance.
Not to mention post WW2 was the one time we got nation building done correctly.
Russians trying to rewrite history,
TIL… western historians deliberately glorifying the US and Britain’s role in WW2 = “Russians trying to rewrite history.”
That has nothing to do with the post I replied to and I even agree with western historians / hollywood greatly downplaying the eastern front.
Operation Barbarossa had stalled by the time the US entered the war. German logistics were overextended, they were out of oil, and they were against a larger, rapidly industrializing power defending their homeland.
By the time D-Day rolled around, Army Group North and Army Group South were taking loss after loss and the USSR had reclaimed a significant chunk of the land lost during Barbarossa. The Germans were in collapse. Roosevelt had promised a second front in 1942 but couldn’t deliver until 1944 (when it was clear that the Soviets had a clear shot at Berlin and had the momentum to keep going).
The Dnieper-Carpathian Offensive put Army Group Center in an increasingly precarious position even as Russia continually gained ground in Byelorussia.
It’s been argued that Churchill & Roosevelt wanted Germany and the USSR to grind each other down, saving the them the trouble, because, being capitalists, they had no love for the Soviet State.
It’s telling that the Allies only opened the Western Front after the Soviets had thoroughly defeated the Germans multiple times and were at a real risk of reaching Berlin and then sweeping past it.
The Dnieper-Carpathian Offensive put Army Group Center in an increasingly precarious position even as Russia continually gained ground in Byelorussia.
And don’t forget that during this time the ubermensch were also losing control over the Balkans…
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We were that one time, and we’ve been milking it ever since.
Only until 2006 which is when the UK finally managed to pay the US back the “lend lease” debt it racked up in WWII
Wonder how long it will take for Ukraine to pay back theirs, they’re on a Lend Lease from the US right now.
You & I are the only people who seem to know this. Everyone else is busy arguing whether we can “afford” to give Ukraine “free stuff”, when in reality none of it is free, and whatever few Ukrainians are left alive after this war will be paying onerous debt for generations. They’re already auctioning off many public assets to mostly foreign buyers at fire sale prices, up to and including seaports.
Yeah it’s crazy. Ukraine is a fire sale and the debt will be on the US govt books as an asset.
Makes me realise, a lot of things we read in history books that seem cut and dried, were probably not at all obvious to the people who lived at the time because their perception of facts was probably as skewed as our societies’ perceptions are now.
Imperial America is a death cult.
…In the fields, bodies burning as the war machine keeps turning…
What’s particularly notable is that US vetoed the resolution that Russia put out on the basis that it did not condemn Hamas. However, US also vetoed subsequent resolution by Brazil that did condemn Hamas without giving a coherent explanation for the second veto. The only conclusion that can be reasonably drawn here is that US regime wants people to suffer and die. US is intentionally enabling a genocide in Gaza against the will of the rest of the world.
To sum up, fuck the US regime.
without giving a coherent explanation for the second veto
They said that they vetoed because “Brazil didn’t say that Israel has a right of self-defense”.
That’s not a coherent explanation given that the purpose of the resolution is to have a ceasefire as in both sides ceasing hostilities.
It doesn’t even make any sense period. States are the ones that delineate “rights.” A sovereign state would never need to affirm its “rights” or have them affirmed, unless their sovereignty was conditional.
So, all of this is a show the international (imperial) community plays to endorse the genocide. The US gives the occupier of Palestine the “right” to defend itself from blowback and demands support from its other vassals and victims to solidify the sovereignty of an illegitimate project through their recognition as legitimate players. Yet this seemingly challenges the sovereignty of the project, almost as if it is just a US colony in need of permission…
The US would never - maybe not even rhetorically - rely on rights granted to it by the international community to assert its imperial sovereignty. The society of states is such a fucking joke.
well put
I mean, that’s part of the given justification for the veto, but it doesn’t take a PhD in international relations to figure out that the real reason is obviously that both the US and Israel --and a number of other relevant players-- are currently knee-deep in operations and negotiations and that a cease fire, by changing the dynamic on the ground, would seriously screw those efforts.
My guess is that Israel has a plan that it wants to execute before implementing any cease-fire, and that the US is on-board with it for now.
Unlike most social media users, I don’t feel like I know enough to take a position on whether this veto is morally justifiable or not. On its face it seems kind of lame, but I can easily think of reasons why it might actually be entirely justified. We will see.
My guess is that Israel has a plan that it wants to execute before implementing any cease-fire, and that the US is on-board with it for now.
Yeah, it’s called “genocide”
Or, you know, they want to make sure that the hostages aren’t executed before they agree to a cease fire.
Israeli bombing raids have already killed like 40 hostages
They don’t give a shit
The UN is such a fucking joke
The UN should use resolution 377A and define a plan of action without the US. Give them a taste of their own poison.
Whatever that is on paper, in reality it represents the overthrow of the UN
That was one I didn’t know about before. Someone in the UN, please make this happen. Maybe if China brought it to the general assembly.
The U
NS is such a fucking jokeFixed that for you.
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War is big business…
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all palestinian violence against israel is self-defense.
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I love democracy.
Why is veto even a thing?
@Luccajan basically the UN is a forum for dialogue and we need the big players to be part of it.
If they don’t get veto on the security council they will have a tantrum and leave, which will benefit no one.
The superpowers already flout international law when they really want to, because there is nothing the rest of us can do to stop them, but it would probably be far worse if they weren’t even part of the UN.
basically the UN is a forum for dialogue and we need the big players to be part of it.
Allowing the five biggest arms manufacturers on the planet to decide “security” issues is no different than allowing the five biggest drug cartels in the world to decide “health” issues.
@masquenox I agree apart from the bit about allowing. We literally can’t physically stop them. They will decide “security” issues whether we want them to or not. That’s my point.
It’s not just because of their military might. In the 1980s, France carried out a terror attack in my country which killed two people. We actually caught the terrorists but our “allies” the UK, EU and US told us that unless we let them go (we had wanted to give them a trial and imprisonment) we would no longer be able to trade with those countries and faced economic ruin.
If we had no government able to withstand them, it would be better to be in dialogue with the cartels than not - and good to have a space where they could dialogue with each other, too.
Bodies like the UNFP and UNHCR are valuable. Discussion is valuable. Even with the security council it’s better that the world at least express what we want, where each other can see it, even if it’s inevitably vetoed by US or Russia or China.
I think mostly because the Allied Powers won WWII and got to make the rules. Often the argument is made that, by giving the nuclear-capable countries veto power, they’re less likely to use those weapons, but that might be more of a rationalization than the actual reason.
All it really boils down to is that the UN is toothless when trying to regulate any nuclear-armed country and any country or conflict a nuclear-armed country has an interest in. It absolutely sets certain countries apart in a multi-tiered system of international cooperation.
Because the US only agreed to join the UN on the condition that they would get to veto whatever they like.
That’s just plain wrong. The veto was a feature in the League of Nations (the predecessor of the UN). When the UN was formed, the permanent members (US, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and China) all wanted this feature, ostensibly for unity and have all the major powers act together, but most likely to protect their own national interests.
China and Russia have used the veto to act against US interests as well.
This is like asking for medical advice on a naturopathic forum; sure you might get some vaguely correct answers, but mostly it’s just going to be a lot of feel-good nonsense from partisan idiots who want to see the world in black and white.
Can anyone explain the true reason why US make such decision?
As of October 2023, the United States has 599 active Foreign Military Sales (FMS) cases, valued at $23.8 billion, with Israel.
Money. The answer is always money.
It would put Israel “on the back foot” in regards to the conflict. Israel would be tied up negotiating for hostage release which is exactly where Hamas wants them. It stops being a question of who is winning a battle and turns it into “how much is Israel willing to sacrifice”.
The US does this because Israel exists primarily as a weapons platform for the United States to maintain control over regional resource extraction. Israel does this because their political leadership wants to achieve their dream of a white ethnostate.
Because the indigenous Palestinians keep reproducing and have nowhere else to go, Israel has maintained a state policy of periodically reducing the Palestinian population with the goal of driving them to eventual extinction as a population. For years Israel would euphemistically call this “mowing the lawn”.
The United States and liberals in the Israeli government would prefer that Israel carry out this extermination slowly to mitigate the risk of international interference. Conservatives in the Israeli government would prefer to exterminate the Palestinian population all at once to prevent any possibility of internal resistance. As conservatives now hold power in Israel, state policy has favored more aggressive campaigns of expansion and depopulation. The US vetoing ceasefire resolutions at the UN is part of preventing international interference in the extermination campaign. The US can then maintain control over the rate of the campaign by adjusting the flow of weapons it provides to the Israeli government.
