Dukasaur wrote:I started typing out a reply, to do a point-by-point refutation of j2p's post. Realized it involves hours of work that won't be rewarded in any way. Just not expending that much effort.
I'll just leave you with this quote:
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2017/04/06/lessons_from_the_tragedy_of_woodrow_wilsons_war_111118.htmlThe Aftermath of the War and Lessons Learned
President Wilson, having obtained his victory, thus also his seat at the Versailles conference, sought to pursue a peace grounded in a 14-point proposal that he hoped would form the basis for permanent international tranquility monitored through the League of Nations. But the American people quickly turned inward, rejected American participation in the League, and pulled out of Europe.
Meanwhile, the terms of the Versailles agreements were unduly harsh toward the loser countries, and the great British economist John Maynard Keynes predicted in his 1919 book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, that as a result, the war would resume in 20 years. In this, he was precisely correct, as Versailles set forth reparations amounts that the vanquished could never repay (and hence were eventually repudiated in any case), but they were harsh enough into the 1920s to ensure political and civil instability in Germany – that ushered in Hitler.
The participation in the war caused economic gyrations in the United States, too. First and foremost, 135,000 Americans died, and around 200,000 were wounded or maimed (more than half the war-dead died due to various sicknesses, including deadly influenza that swept the world in 1918-19 – Spanish Flu also claimed 500,000 lives inside the U.S.). Thanks to the exigencies of wartime finance and production, the U.S. economy experienced a jump in debt, inflation, and monetary gyrations, and then a punishing post-war recession in 1920-21 that saw unemployment quadruple to 12%, briefly, amidst much human suffering. Wartime regulatory oversight and taxes were challenging for American business, and only when deregulation and the Mellon tax cuts came under President Coolidge did the U.S. economy fully recover a vibrancy stolen in the post-war correction.
When seen especially against the outsized global panorama that was World War II, the First World War has receded in Americans’ collective memory; it is little-studied and even less-discussed. But in the fullness of time, armed with full information of subsequent history, analysts have begun to ask the ultimately uncomfortable questions: beyond the biggest one of why the war was fought at all, the late entry of the great power an ocean away in 1917 is also the subject of honest inquiry. Why did America go to war, and what was accomplished? In any analysis of costs and benefits of American intervention in a European war, was it the right decision?
Here, the answer is now clear: morally, strategically, and financially, the American entry was a disaster. The American effort clearly failed vis-à-vis President Wilson’s own stated war aim: ensuring the spread of democracy and an end to all wars. But the answer and the insights it confers goes deeper than this. While we cannot ever prove a counterfactual assertion, it is safe to say that had America not intervened; the belligerent nations would have likely fought to some draw and negotiated a truce, accepting a status quo according to the position of opposing armies in 1918. The German government would have remained in place and indeed captured additional French and Belgian territory, which is not a major development of import and certainly no threat. A stable German government and society would have meant a faster economic recovery and likely the forestalling of the Nazi regime 13 years later. It is likely Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and others would have recovered faster, too.
There still might well have been an aggressive Communist regime in place in Moscow, menacing western Europe, but here a coalition led by the natural Anglo-German alliance could have bolstered the collective defense. The Baltic states might never have suffered as they did. Moreover, who knows, perhaps across decades, had there been no kinetic war against the Soviet Union, perhaps the absence of American troops would have made the Soviets less paranoid, more accommodating, and more prone to open trade that in time would have liberalized them faster.
The lesson is clear, and similar to one that other wars would teach the American people if only they could be in an open-minded mode, and ready to see plainly what is before them: the secondary and unforeseen consequences attendant with any military or naval project thousands of miles away, done for no clear strategic aim, and/or involving no discernible existential threat, and/or done solely for the benefit of narrow special interests (that might include the “military-industrial-congressional complex,” to use President Eisenhower’s full appellation for the web of Beltway special interests who profit from American wars and might inexorably draw Americans into a war overseas, even if subconsciously), will likely be too untoward to ever suggest pursuit of such projects.
The uncomfortable truth about World War I from an American perspective is that it made absolutely no difference to most all Americans who won the war, short or long term. Had the flag of the Imperial German Reich eventually flown over Paris in 1920, it would have mattered little to most all of us. But it would have mattered a great deal to certain interests, primarily in Washington or New York, at the time. The bankers, industrialists, and power-seeking politicians all had their reasons to want American entry into the war, but of course, no American citizen will ever support the sending of our forces into battle for the sake of corporate profits. So, a fancier and loftier and more sublime war aim was developed by the great manipulator of public opinion, Woodrow Wilson: “Make the world safe for democracy.”
We have seen this political legerdemain several times in American history, before and since. Why did America fight the Spanish in 1898, especially since it is highly dubious that they had anything to do with the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine? Why did America fight in Vietnam? Especially since Communism collapsed 16 years later anyway. Why did America go to war in the Middle East in 1991 on behalf of two Arab dictatorships who were then being menaced by a third? And, similar to the flow of events following World War I, what if America had not fought in 1991: there’d have been no 1991-2003 No Fly Zone War that killed 500,000 Iraqi women and children, or stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia, that enraged Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda. Again, while not provable, it is at least quite possible that American intervention in Iraq in 1991 begat 9/11/2001, which in turn begat wars in the Muslim world in 2001 and 2003 – that continue to rage today.
It is imperative that in a dangerous world the United States possess an impregnable national defense, replete with a powerful quick-strike and mobile army, a navy sustained by carrier-borne air power and a global sub fleet, Force Recon Marines, and their lethality, and a modern air force able to project power globally within hours. All well and good. But based on our considerable history, and the primordial lesson unveiled beginning 100 years ago today, will we ever learn to be more circumspect in our deployment of combat power? Will we learn both the wisdom and humility of mission-capable defense that is second to none, but to be careful in attacking others for no good reason?
This is certainly lots to read, but overall, the reference validates most of my main points. Wilson wanted peace while France and U.K. Wanted revenge and reparations. This set the stage for Hitler, the Nazis, and WW2. The USA was reluctant to enter another war in Europe in 1939.
As far as Vietnam, the main reason for the US support of South Vietnam was to spread the stop of communism. Look up the Domino Theory.
I would welcome a point-by-point discussion with The Duk, but it should be a new thread, as most of the discussion would not be about Israel.
Of course, there are many reasons to go to war and many “players” all with different primary motivations. I think a good example of bad US foreign policy and the overreach of US power is our invasion of Iraq by G. W. Bush. Our failure to leave Afghanistan soon after the killing of bin Laden is another example.
And, certainly, war has many consequences, some unintentional.
ConfederateSS.out!(The Blue and Silver Rebellion)... 
