Posted by Phoebus Apollo on 4/1/2003, 6:13 am, in reply to "Re: Threat of Iraq" Invasion is the starkest of imminent threats, not the only one. Having the capability to provide strong support for attacking and invading Japanese military is more than enough to consider Germany's threat a "serious and imminent" one to the U.S., especially as Germany sat and crushed the few nations who would ally with the U.S. against Japan. Making allies in wartime is entirely justified. ... and still posed no real threat to the United States (invasion wise). With it's ally Japan making air (and had we not acted, land) assaults on American shores, the threat of invasion from German/Japanese allied forces was very high. Sure, they might not have been able to summarily take over the whole of the U.S., but if Japan planned instead of blowing it's wad in Pearl Harbor, the idea of Germans aiding Japanese invaders would not have been unrealistic. I would guess that you support the war against Germany because Germany was allied with Japan, who attacked the United States. On the other hand, you don't completely support George Bush Sr. declaring war on Iraq because Iraq attacked Kuwait, our ally, and you don't completely believe in the war we are currently having, even though Iraq has broken its promises to our nation and has defied a very serious UN resolution to account for its chemical and biological weapons. I differ with the Kuwait situation because one of the primary principles of having a non-coercive government is to not make war allies during peacetime - unless preparing for a war, there is no reason for such allies. Kuwait for instance, what military advantage did allying with Kuwait serve us, that was vital to our national defense? None. Absolutely none, in fact, allying with Kuwait only served to increase our chance of being assaulted and terrorized, not decreased it. Having war allies in peacetime is a guarentee for getting dragged into a war and increases the risk for ugly domestic terrorism. As a sovereign nation, we do not have a right to demand any other one lay down it's arms. This command is nothing short of an ultimatum to surrender, and it's no way for civilized nations to deal with one another. Mandating a united global military force to enact disarming of sovereign governments is not a respectable tactic, and giving a global authority this kind of power is downright deplorable. I won't be supporting that line of reasoning for this war, and I respect U.N. resolutions about as much as Iraq does. The no fly zones of Iraq were put in for very similar reasons, so if you believe that World War II was justified because of the genocide of the Jews (which we didn't even know about until the Nazi regime was almost conquered), then your misgivings about the current war still don't make sense to me. Unlike Nazi Germany, Iraq faces serious domestic and neighboring opposition forces. The people in and around Iraq, by large, can support opposition forces and are capable of effecting change, like the Iraq National Congress. French resistance was a joke and to this day serves more as political propaganda than anything. Polish resistance was crushed. Russia would likely not have fought back Germany to it's eastern border. Britian was unprepared to follow up alone against Germany. With Italy's support, major resistance in the form of neighboring nations was reduced to questionably low proportions. Germany's domestic policies made it hard for movements to form that were anti-Nazi. On the other hand, Iraq has few allies and fueds with nearly everyone it shares it's border with. It consistently has failed to take land, and the people within it's borders, while tortured and terrorized, are still capable of forming resistance groups to Hussein. Sunnis, Shias, Kurds... do you think that even if we can declare Saddam's nation "stable" that it's stability would remain if it got into another war with ANY of it's neighbors, short extremely weak ones, like Kuwait? You said that the Germans "rised" from virtually no military to take over two world superpowers. Do you honestly think that Iraq can do the same? I think the situation here is far different, and I do not believe it can do the same. When we realized the No-Fly Zones actually slowed Iraqi military development, crippling it (as we can very well tell from this war's terrible one-sidedness), and when we realized that Iraq could not easily and blantantly deploy chemical weapons or other WMD's against us without intense retaliation, then we should've REDUCED our tensions with them by backing off, not INCREASED them. A link for you I already am aware of Iraq attacking their own civilians with chemical weapons. If you're out to prove that Iraq is headed by a disgusting dictatorship, consider the argument unanimously favored. It's whether this disgusting dictatorship has justified our pre-emptive strike. We have interests in every part of the world, and we need those interests to maintain our position as superpower, and we have a market that depends on imports and other free markets in the world. It's true we have interests there, but throwing away 500 billion to overthrow Saddam is not in the best interest of our national economy, which is the only kind of legitimate "world interest" you could possibly be referring to. I favor the stance that if we were ever to war with Iraq, it should've been during the '70s, during the Middle East oil nationalization craze. But seeing as how that was 30 years ago and reparations would be next to impossible to exact, I think we're running a bit late in our legitimate war reasoning. I see that you don't think the U.S. should get involved in world politics. If "getting involved" is "launching massively expensive and unnecessary pre-emptive military strikes against foreign nations which do not reliquish all arms in the face of our awe-inspiring military might", then you're right, I don't think we should be "getting involved" in world politics. I also see that you think the U.S. should just sit here, fix all of its own problems, and wait until another World War happens before it feels it must get involved in a conflict that seemingly does not involve us. However, that doesn't mean that the United States can afford to take such a stance if it wants to stay as a world power. What you're implying with relation to the argument, thus, is that if we didn't launch this war in Iraq we would somehow come to lose our status as a world superpower. I'm not going to summarize how absurd that is. He has chemical weapons that he refuses to account for despite no proof that the U.N. has the right to make him account for them. He has broken his agreement to the Geneva protocols especially in wars with nations he did not pre-emptively strike, the Iraq-U.S. ceasefire which no other government in the world would've respected given the terms, dozens of U.N. mandates and resolutions which should mean nothing to someone respecting sovereign rule, and the Arab coalition-Israel ceasefire, which is important because otherwise, if we let Israel defend itself as it has successfully for years, we would only kill Arab sentiment in favor of the international Zionist conspiracy theory dogma. He has been in a constant state of offensive despite rarely being successful, oppressive war throughout his rule which was mostly internal, and he has proven to be incapable of working with the international community because we need his cooperation for what... oh yeah, oil that we let him take in the first place. my additions in bold There were terrorist attacks on the U.S. before Afghanistan or Iraq (have you forgotten the U.S.S. Cole or the Kenyan embassies?) There will be more terrorist attacks on our nation for as long as we are a super power, possibly even after that. Sure, plenty of terrorism to come, especially since we just launched pre-emptive warfare against the most zealous and fanatic terrorists in the world. Smart idea for national security, it's safety through provokation, the most overused military policy in the world. I think North Korea is more irked about being labelled a member of the 'Axis of Evil' than anything really, truly anti-American in the first place. Maybe it's because we never ended our state of war with them? Iraq is a valid target regime for Bush's war on terror, whether I agree that such a war will stave off terrorism or not. I favor simply finding a real example of that terrorism threat beyond events stemming from our own pre-emptive military strikes. (continued)
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Was Germany in WW2 an imminent threat to the United States? Did Germany have the capability to invade the United States in 1939? 1941? 1945?
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