We have lost the courage to see things as they are
This article features a prescient “letter to the editor.” It was published in the Manchester Guardian on October 4, 1938, right after Munich, and titled “The Funeral of British Honour.”” It was “written by F.L. Lucas, an acclaimed Cambridge literary don, a decorated – and severely wounded – veteran of WWI and recipient of an OBE for his intelligence work at Bletchley Park in WWII.”
Here is part of the text:
I appreciate the Prime Minister’s [Chamberlain’s] love of peace. I know the horrors of war ”“ a great deal better than he can. But when he returns from saving our skins from a blackmailer at the price of other people’s flesh, and waves…a piece of paper with Herr Hitler’s name on it, if it were not ghastly, it would be grotesque. No doubt he has never read Mein Kampf in German. But to forget, so utterly, the Reichstag fire, and the occupation of the Rhineland, and 30 June 1934 [the Night of the Long Knives], and the fall of Austria! We have lost the courage to see things as they are. And yet Herr Hitler has kindly put down for us in black and white that programme he is so faithfully carrying out…
…Mr. Chamberlain, canting of ”˜peace with honour,’ has debased the moral currency of England”¦
The line “We have lost the courage to see things as they are” leapt out at me when I read it. Ever since the Obama presidency began–actually, ever since some time during Obama’s first campaign for the presidency—there has been an almost constant “Emperor’s New Clothes” feeling about the public’s reaction to what he does.
In that letter, Lucas was like the child pointing and crying out that the emperor is naked. Now, as then, we cannot see what is in front of us. We cannot exercise common sense—which we should rename uncommon sense, because that’s what it has become. We cannot stick up for ourselves, cannot look out for our interests, and have given all of that up for a combination of self-righteous moral preening and a lack of critical thinking so profound that most people don’t even know what Obama has done and what it means.
I think it’s fair to say our leaders “have lost the courage to see things as they are.” Not just political leaders, but our media/entertainment, academia, and in some cases, religious leaders.
However, there are still a lot of gobsmacked citizens who have no idea how to live in a world where we’re told things like gender is fluid, Michael Brown was an innocent victim, and that there is no Christian genocide going on in the Middle East and parts of Africa.
Just keep saying “Caitlyn Jenner is stunning and brave” and it will all make sense, eh?
One of my mottos is “I try not to conflate what I wish was true, with reality.” I think a lot of people state what is popular or accepted and act as though it is real. Facing the truth (which is in and of itself a challenge to arrive at) does often take courage and strength because truth can be unpleasant and require responses that are difficult.
One detail: Chamberlain is used as the classical example of the leader who tries to appraise and fails to oppose totalitarian regimes. And that’s true.
But it’s only part of the truth.
In 1941, before Pearl Harbor, only 26% of americans supported war on Germany.
During the 30s, most of British people opposed war with Germany. Chamberlain had had no support at all in case he had decided to declare war.
Times goes by, and it’s easy to look back and make Chamberlain the villain. But truth is that Chamberlain did what most of British wanted him to do. Later on, England forgot it, because England wanted to forget it. It’s easier to point out and blame somebody else instead of looking at the mirror. And however, it was Chamberlain who boosted UK military industry even though he didn’t enter the war. And even though they were in opposed sides in UK politics, Churchill kept him in the war cabinet.
There’s a BIG difference now: Obama’s policies are not supported by US people, neither are Merkel’s ones in Germany. They are way worse than Chamberlain ever was.
They not only don’t see things as they are but they declare things to be the opposite of what they are. For example, I read that the reason so many black men are in prison is not because they commit an inordinate amount of crime but because the racist police target them and let white criminals go free. By that sort of logic since 90% of the people in prison are males the police must be letting all the female criminals loose.
I agree that common sense is so uncommon as to qualify for the list of endangered species. Unfortunately bho is not merely shortsighted and naive like Chamberland. He’s a narcissistic first class villian.
What I find the most frustrating is that bho’s past and his lawlessness as POTUS are readilly observed. Bho gets away with his intentional destruction because we are in 3 monkeys lala land. Lizzy’s “Caitlyn Jenner is stunning and brave” is so sadly part and parcel of our 3 monkeys society.
Yann, sets the historical record straight. However, Neo’s point is well taken.
Chamberlain made the decisions that his
constituency wanted made. So, it was virtually a whole nation that did not see things as they were–with the notable exception of one cantankerous politician. In retrospect, they were grotesquely mistaken. In retrospect.
Neo correctly compares Obama to Chamberlain in the sense that Obama has no excuse whatsoever.
The State-establishment and popular adoption of a pro-choice religious doctrine (e.g. selective-child, congruence/”=”, class diversity, etc.) has had profound consequences for the moral character and viability of America.
Amen, Neo. Short and sweet.
We have lost the courage also to call “bullshit” on abstract notions such as ‘equality’. There where such notions, including justice, and freedom, are promulgated is where someone is up to no good. Ask the Founders and Framers what they had meant by them and you have one thing. Ask Frankfurt School cultural warriors what the terms mean and have another. Consult the Imam and the hadiths and you have a third. Pose the question to the elders of the Dani, the Asmat and the Korowai, tribes of West Papua’s rainforests — a fourth. Ask a ‘victim’ — a fifth.
The courage to say “our way and none other” is paramount. And the courage to say “our way or the biway”. And to say “our laws are your laws; our ways your ways”. And “when in Rome do as the Romans”. And… “adios”.
As I think about what you wrote Neo, I am reminded of an evening last December. My husband and I brought dinner to an elderly couple in our neighborhood. We’ve known them for 38 years; they are in their mid-80’s. I was astounded at their liberal (even police-hating) lock-step point of view on every social and political issue. Not one to be silent, I challenged them vehemently, after which, Ruth calmly requested dessert. I did say at one point that they are drinking a nightly glass of kool-aid each evening as they watch their TV news. Their college educated sons, now have college-educated children, one of whom works for Hillary. This couple was once rock-solid Republicans (and I’m referring to the former opposition party; not our present pretense of an opposition party). Suffice it to say that MSM propaganda (L.A. Times, etc etc) has been very effective.
Referencing the “self-righteous moral preening” is a propos. (I have been calling it “virtue signalling”of late.) It is not merely having to be courageous and be asked to probably give something up if there is war. It means giving up something immediately – the image of oneself as a morally superior individual.
Very expensive.
Chamberlain made a HUGE public relations gaff.
The REAL decider in chief was é‰douard Daladier — and NOBODY ELSE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89douard_Daladier
The issue at Munich was not whether Chamberlain was going to attack Germany — the issue was whether FRANCE was going to DEFEND Czechoslovakia.
“Daladier’s last government was in power at the time of the negotiations preceding the Munich Agreement, when France backed out of its obligations to defend Czechoslovakia against Nazi Germany. He was pushed into negotiating by Britain’s Neville Chamberlain, without which war would have been inevitable at that time…” Wiki
Note how Wiki totally distorts the reality. It was HITLER that pushed the ‘peace conference forward.’ He was threatening general warfare. ( And very foolishly, too. He would’ve lost his head marching into the Sudetenland.)
It was Paris that was ALWAYS expected to be the land power and defender of Europe. London’s angle was always expected to be naval and economic… same as it had always been for the prior centuries.
“…Nevertheless, perhaps discouraged by the pessimistic and defeatist attitudes of both military and civilian members of the French government, as well as traumatized by France’s blood-bath in World War I that he personally witnessed, Daladier ultimately let Chamberlain have his way…” Wiki
He let HITLER have his way.
Great Britain was NEVER in a position to march into Germany… starting with the North Sea. Whereas France was adjacent.
You NEVER hear of the Poles complaining about being let down by London. Their bitterness is almost always aimed at Paris. (Though London was no help, either.)
The Polish campaign is THE perfect example of how utterly impossible it was for Britain to do even the smallest thing until the French Army led the way. The French were just as reluctant to aid Poland as they had previously proved to be for Prague.
It was the French that held all the cards. In 1938 she still had by far the most powerful army in Europe. ( ex-Russia, where Stalin had just castrated the Red Army )
Chamberlain negotiated because the French had ALREADY told him that they were NOT going to war to defend Prague.
The ultimate reason for Munich was that France had virtually no air force — and neither did Great Britain. The planes that would fight the Battle of Britain were not yet built. Spitfire production only ramped up AFTER Munich.
“…the first production Spitfire, K9787, did not roll off the Woolston, Southampton assembly line until mid-1938…” Wiki
Yet the Luftwaffe appeared to be unbeatable. No nation had a plane able to stand up to the remarkable Bf-109. It had been in production for years by late 1938.
Paris was even further behind. Mass production of her answer to the Bf-109 began in April 1940. ( Incredible, I know. )
Something like that is under way with American defense procurement. BHO has shut down our weapons production every where you peek.
We’re back to the daze of Jimmah Carter.
“We . . . have given all of that up for a combination of self-righteous moral preening . . .” calls to mind the full title of a Thomas Sowell book of about two decades ago . . .
The Vision of the Anointed:
Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy
. . . and which I have no qualms about recommending.
Thanks, Blert.
Also, if anyone wants to see the ACTUAL Munich agreement, the very piece of paper Chamberlain was waving as he got off that plane! you can — it is in the Museum of World War II near Boston.
http://www.museumofworldwarii.com/
They have the most extensive collection of actual artifacts from that war in the world, including most of the major papers and agreements.
The Munich Agreement, e.g., has Chamberlain’s small, neat notations, and Hitler’s large, slashing handwriting and cross-outs of same. You can see, right on the paper, the story of who was dominant and who was dominated.
Churchill did say that Chamberlain saw the world through the end of “a municipal drainpipe,” but he never questioned the man’s patriotism.
Neo, have you ever been to that Museum? you’d love it.
I found out about it when they brought a major exhibit of their WWII holdings to New York City’s Grolier Club.
http://www.grolierclub.org/
Chamberlain at least had the grace to admit he was completely mistaken, and tried to ameliorate the situation, too late to avoid war, but he knew he was wrong and said so. No chance of that with Obama.
At least the Brits at that time had the excuse of the horrors of World War I just 20 years before having caused them to want nothing to do with war. They had, after all, lost 700,000 young men in that carnage. What’s our excuse — too busy waiting in line for the next Apple product?
Yann – a slight correction to your comment. Churchill and Chamberlain were not on opposing political sides, they were in fact in the same party. Chamberlain brought Churchill into the war cabinet at the outbreak of war while he was still Prime Minister.
Carly should use that phrase. It sounds like her.
“We have lost the courage to see things as they are.”
Oldflyer Says:
September 25th, 2015 at 3:11 pm
The big difference is that Obama very obviously sides with Islam against the United States. Anyone who denies that is not to be taken seriously.
By contrast, nobody ever accused Chamberlain of being a closet Nazi.
By contrast, nobody ever accused Chamberlain of being a closet Nazi.
True, although FDR was kind of a closet Communist and Stalin lover.
Hussein O is just the end product of the Left’s eugenics and totalitarian decrees. But the Left has always had dictators and tyrants 1000 worse than him. He’s just the best they had to weaponize at this particular moment. There’ll be more. There have been more. There is more just waiting to be deployed by the Leftist alliance.
Hussein is like the gun, a tool or puppet. Even if you shoot the gun and cut it apart, that doesn’t mean the actual threat won’t behead you later on.
A comment someone else posted on another blog, I thought was interesting enough to paste here.
115. BunE22 September 24, 2015 11:37 PM
I question whether the suggested solutions of a white country is only addressing the symptom and not the cause. I think the biggest problems in the country are the democrats and the Marxists hiding among them. They enable people and promote the lowest common denominator.
Even if you had a pure white country you would still have the same problems because the Left will just enable whites. We’ve all seen the mostly white SJWs, do any of us consider them productive people? What about the mostly white feminists today? Do you think either group are conservative or republicans or lean right? Are they religious? Do they believe in small government or support the constitution?
What of the youth that want free college, are okay with political correctness to limit free speech, and are gung-ho to destroy capitalism and embrace communism? They are mostly white.
The Left is the cancer and it has infected plenty of whites through their control of education, the media, movies, literature, psychology, etc. As long as the Left is in control you will never raise IQ, or have a great America, it doesn’t matter if the country is all European white, you may slow the decline but you won’t stop it. If you want a cleansing, start with the Left.
Discussions in the sub culture of other sub cultures, so to speak. The OP being responded to concerned America’s IQ decline as a result of immigration or cultural invasion.
It means giving up something immediately — the image of oneself as a morally superior individual.
Very expensive.
To weaklings, sure, it is an expensive price. To people like Neo Neo or others who have paid the price for truth or who value truth over the sacrifice or price of it, it is merely part of doing business (living).
All the Left had to do was make the people in a Republic weaker and they could naturally take over, because fanatics are still fanatics, even if they are true believers in the wrong things.
Ymarsakar Says:
September 25th, 2015 at 8:42 pm
By contrast, nobody ever accused Chamberlain of being a closet Nazi.
True, although FDR was kind of a closet Communist and Stalin lover.
FDR mistress Daisy Suckley’s diary, which was discovered under her bed in 1991, isn’t a secret, as I discovered by searching the term. But, it sure as hell has not been been publicly aired. I’m talking about FDR telling Ms. Suckley about D-Day details a month prior to June 6th, 1944 (“… technically treason”). I’m talking FDR’s plan to partner up with Joe Stalin after the war, to crate a new world order, with FDR running the planned United Nations. Doris Kearns Goodwin, call you office.
See comments at link….
The Bard tells us, rightly, that the past is prologue. But until America’s greatest military intelligence success – and failure – becomes common knowledge Americans will remain intellectual sitting ducks, herded hither and yon, hoping to build a sheltering future on shaky misinformation.
I’m talking about the Venona Code intercepts: The 3000 encrypted communications between Soviet spies operating in this country and their masters in Moscow, which American and British code breakers began deciphering in 1946.
These KGB messages revealed that the Soviets had agents at the highest levels of the executive and legislative branches of our government – and those of our allies – before, during, and shortly after, WWII.
In just the small fraction of intercepted cables we’re able to decrypt more than 300 American residents are identified as Soviet agents. The enormous damage they did us still affects lives today.
We’ve long known that scientists at Los Alamos handed the Soviet Union the secrets of nuclear fission, enabling Stalin to build his own A-bomb. The geo-political fall-out from that (pun intended) can hardly be overestimated.
Venona gives us extensive detail. And much more.
When the Allies met at Yalta and Potsdam at the close of WWII, Soviet agents were among America’s highest level representatives, helping to send millions of non-Soviet citizens into Stalin’s Gulag, and set up the Soviet take-over of Eastern Europe.
And why was the West blind-sided in 1950 when North Korea invaded the South, starting the Korean War?
Because Willam Weisband, a Soviet spy and language expert helping American code breakers working on Venona and other Soviet codes, told the Soviets in 1948 of our successes. All their military/intelligence codes consequently went black, almost overnight, keeping us from learning they were helping China and North Korea prepare to invade the South.
That intelligence failure kept us from preparing for, or preventing, the Korean War.
Venona decrypts also describe how Soviet spies in America gave them our jet fighter secrets, enabling their MiG-15s to slaughter thousands in Korea.
So why do Americans typically think that Soviet spies in the US were a figment of Joe McCarthy’s imagination; and that the Rosenbergs, Hiss and Oppenheimer were wrongfully accused?
Because the US government didn’t release our Venona evidence till 1995. And then largely because two American scholars, John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, had written about the Russian side of the Venona encryptions they’d discovered in Russia’s KGB archives in 1992.
The US initially had good reasons for hiding what we knew from Venona; like not wanting the Soviets to know what we’d learned and what we hadn’t, so spies we were watching wouldn’t be pulled and replaced.
But not releasing the Venona decryptions allowed forty years of misinformation to mislead American minds; to whitewash Hiss and the Rosenbergs; to vilify Bentley and Chambers, Soviet spies who changed their ways and came clean in the forties.
Still today, when the truths revealed in our Venona decrypts have been out for fourteen years, the general news media, Hollywood in particular (which continues to release misinformation on American spy hunts annually), as well as many in academia, remain strangely silent.
It’s no less dangerous now. Islamic terrorists are a different enemy, but the same intelligence challenges remain. And we seem to be making s similar mistakes: Political correctness whitewashes our enemies; enemy agents distort the facts; enemy friends ignore the truth. So we don’t know what to believe.
These are the lessons of 9/11. Unlearned. Still coded. Ignored. If we don’t learn from Venona – from the handful left who know what happened – the future will be catastrophic.
Venona Intercepts: Still Scary After All These Years
Southwest News-Herald, SALLY WRIGHT
Nothing learned …
G6loq Says:
September 25th, 2015 at 9:38 pm
“Venona decrypts also describe how Soviet spies in America gave them our jet fighter secrets, enabling their MiG-15s to slaughter thousands in Korea.”
The Labour Party of Great Britain sold the rights and technology of the latest fighter jet engine to Stalin. Which was something Stalin thought was incredibly foolish — for Britain.
The heart of the Mig 15 was that engine.
The trick gun sight of the F-86 was not put into the Mig 15. Which does seem strange, as countless downed F-86 fighters should’ve given the game away.
In a similar vein, Clinton betrayed the national trust by giving Red China the technology that solved their ICBM blues. It’s the reason why our carriers are now under dire threat from Chinese homing ballistic missiles.
Until Clinton stepped in, the Chinese just could not solve their problems.
Now the Chinese are under cutting even the Russians in the commercial space launch business.
It’s odd, it just seems American power is diminished and Russia/China/Mideast will have an alliance and will be the dominant super powers. Why this is okay with so many people is beyond me. But so very many people seem to think this is fine. I don’t understand things anymore.
Julia NYC: “Why this is okay with so many people is beyond me. But so very many people seem to think this is fine. I don’t understand things anymore.”
The turning point is easy to identify, albeit their mindset is opaque.
The US-led enforcement of the Gulf War ceasefire terms for Saddam’s Iraq was the definitive post-Cold War mission for American leadership of the free world. Built on that context, Operation Iraqi Freedom was the apotheosis of American leadership of the free world containing the fundamental premises of American leadership.
As such, when they were convinced by false narrative propaganda to oppose Operation Iraqi Freedom, their choice to do so was rejection of American leadership of the free world and what it has stood for, and turning their back – our back – on dependents of American leadership.
Restoring American leadership of the free world must begin with correction at the premise level by setting the record straight on OIF in the zeitgeist.
My wife keeps saying “most of our friends and relatives voted for Obama and still think he is doing a great job.” Now I know what their problem is: “They have lost the courage to see things as they are.”
Her cousin’s husband was in one of the WTC towers on 9/11. He helped people get out. Yet, at a recent family gathering, he was blathering on about how Muslims are discriminated against and their peaceful religion is misunderstood. Another cousin, who had served in the Peace Corps in Malaysia, was in total agreement. My wife bit her tongue until it bled.
The wilful blindness to the threat posed by Islam, be it ISIS in Syria and Iraq, or Iran with its nuclear program and terrorist activities, or Pakistan in its support of the Taliban, or the ongoing invasion of Europe by hundreds of thousands of young Muslim men, is beyond belief.
Our most wonderful President, the Pope’s new best friend, just released one of the most dangerous terrorists held at Gitmo. And this after swapping a traitor and deserter for five top Taliban commanders. Yet another example of wilful blindness? Or, perish the thought and ignore his actions, is he on their side?
That phrase really does seem to be appropriate. Better to be PC than thought an Islamophobe.
Sigh. Common sense is so rare among our so-called leaders that it practically counts as a super-power.
The furtherwe get into this mess/these messes the harder it is for some to admit having supported the issue by voting for Obama and supporting lefty programs despite warnings of the future and failures in real time. Some may admit to themselves but can’t admit to others. Some may not admit to themselves.
Some, I know some of them and am related to some of them, think things are going great except when they aren’t, which is Bush’s fault.
Mixed up in this is people who do think we need a fundamental transformation, and I’m talking about prosperous middle class folks, not OWS types. In this case, I think it’s a matter of them feeling that the best way to be intellectually superior is to take the minority position on whatever it is. But some, who have benefited immensely from America’s position of security, economic power, freedom, influence in the world, think we can and should be taken down. They also think they’ll escape the consequences. A relative thinks it’s prejudice to be concerned about mass Islamic immigration. But she lives in a small, wealthy town as white as library paste and not likely to change. A number of her ideas, and some of her work, make her feel good. But if they go wrong, which they likely will, the costs will be imposed on others. She’ll still be the morally superior type.
IMO, some folks have gone looking for this sort of thing independently of Obamaism and leftyism, but they match. They accelerate each other.
When exactly did we loose the “courage to see things as they are”?
When FDR recognized the USSR in 1933, just after that regime murdered millions of its own people, did he “see things as they are”? Obviously not since he admired his “Uncle Joe” until his dead (*). And he wasn’t the only one. It isn’t only the Germans who have to declare that they “es nicht gewusst haben”.
As for Obama, he didn’t come as a lightning bolt from a clear blue sky. Before you became a “neocon” did you “see things as they are”? Did the anti Vietnam war “Peace movement”? (**) And yet it was in that period that the coming of Obama was prepared.
I think the West has for a very long time not “seen things as they are”.
(*) It is my contention that the moral morass we are in today is because the western after war “super-Chamberlains” didn’t confront Stalin with his crimes but let him get away with them and the loot he got out of it. It gave the extremist left, and the left in general, legitimization. An almost immediate result was the birth of Communist China and of the North-Korean slave state. Another immediate one was that it poisoned the decolonization process.
(**) I was a bit too young to remember much of the protest movement. What I do remember is the fact that it disappeared overnight after 1975 (the communist wonder year). The lives and rights of the Indochinese were miraculously of no importance anymore. While never a lefty it made certain that I will always be on the “right”.
Phil D, I agree. Humankind, including Americans, has never been good at seeing the uncomfortable. The Holodomor, the starvation of the peasants in Ukraine by Stalin in the 1930’s, was sustained by the Ukrainians living in the cities, who bought the lie that the peasants were merely hiding food because they didn’t want change. Sometimes, horribly, even the children of the peasants who had moved to the city disbelieved and disowned them.
As for letting Stalin keep Eastern Europe after the war, it was in retrospect inevitable. Americans tolerate about three years of war, then they want out, whatever the cost. We started fighting in mid 1942, and by mid 1945 wanted no more. (See also: Civil War, VN escalation 1965, protests in 68, etc.)
The “We…” who have lost courage I am most appalled about are the ordinary, well-educated, citizens who continually demonstrate their commitment to the greater good. They are the good liberals who I encounter every day in California. They are too secure in their safe neighborhoods and their personal financial security to have the courage to even “see things as they are”. Within a year or two of 9/11/2001 they went back to their primary concerns of social justice and the environment. Other than Fox News and Wall Street Journal, the MSM reports news of beheadings, etc. without much alarm.
I’ve just put up a new post on a related topic.
Your excuses are excuses.
Want the truth about why? Maybe the people who voted for Obama are every bit as malicious and vindictive as he is.
In fact, that is what they are. Neither complicated nor shocking. The human heart is as it has always been – oft times rotten to the very core. Hannah Arendt had it right about the banality of evil.
Why seek to excuse the behavior away with euphemistic yada yada about losing courage – like it was car keys or something, a simple mistake.
Truth: Rotten hearts do rotten things.
Will set you free: Okay, how do we heal our rotten hearts.
They don’t think, they’re zombies. They don’t even have a soul, they sold that off to their god king for phones and hand outs.
Also, they’re all guilty too. The Left is not such a weak organization that its evil can be counter acted by being an American or a Republican. If you touch evil and stay around zombies, sooner or later you’ll become infected. Then you’ll be just as guilty as they are.
Mike:
Explanations are not excuses. And boy, that last paragraph of mine in the post sure doesn’t sound to me like it’s offering excuses:
In my experience—and I know a LOT of Obama supporters—most people are neither malicious nor vindictive. Au contraire, actually. Of course, some are. But not the vast majority.
I’m getting that “deja vu all over again” feeling. We’ve had this argument many many times before on this blog.
As for letting Stalin keep Eastern Europe after the war, it was in retrospect inevitable.
Hidden deals between USSR leaders and American Communist sympathizers like FDR, are not “inevitable”. What was inevitable is that an alliance between the USSR and America would either save both or destroy both.
Given modern outcomes, it is much closer to the latter than the former.
>>As for letting Stalin keep Eastern Europe after the war, it was in retrospect >>inevitable.
>Hidden deals between USSR leaders and American Communist sympathizers like FDR, are not “inevitable”.
yes, it was inevitable, regardless of FDR’s personal leanings. Why? Because to stop the communist takeover of eastern europe would have required going to war with the USSR. The chances of that happening, while not zero, are remote; and the outcome would have been very ugly.
also, you’re forgetting that FDR died before the end of WW2. was Truman also a communist sympathizer? even if a secret deal had been made Truman could have broken it, especially after the revelation of the atomic bomb.
“As for letting Stalin keep Eastern Europe after the war, it was in retrospect inevitable.”
It is a lot worse than letting him keep it. What Stalin took of Poland as part of the Hitler-Staling pact he retained. The Polish were “compensated” by the German lands east of the Oder-Neisse line, except for the territory around Ké¶ningsbergen which he annexed for Russia (now Kaliningrad). The original German population was driven out (the lucky ones).
This is what was used against the nazis in the Nuremberg Trials;
“Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated”
(wiki: “https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimes_against_humanity#Types_of_crime_against_humanity”)
And while the Russians sat in “judgement” over the nazis they were committing the same crimes as the nazis. And the Western allies were silent and as such were complicit.
“Why? Because to stop the communist takeover of eastern europe would have required going to war with the USSR. The chances of that happening, while not zero, are remote; and the outcome would have been very ugly.”
All what that means is that the Western Allies had the same choices as Chamberlain had (which is rather my point).
I don’t think that Chamberlain was expected to go to war in 1938. What he could have done was to use diplomatic means and simply refuse to accept a fait accompli. What he did after Munich was to make Poland a red line not to be crossed by Germany, and declare war on Germany after they crossed that line.
The Western Allies had the same choice and the choice they made was kissing up a regime of mass murderers who were just as responsible as Hitler for WW2.
“also, you’re forgetting that FDR died before the end of WW2. was Truman also a communist sympathizer?”
FDR sold out to Stalin in Yalta and before. I already mentioned the recognition of the USSR in 1933. Truman wasn’t a sympathizer but he didn’t see “things as they are” so to speak. And one thing he did was founding the UN together with Stalin. Von Ribbentrop of the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop pact (aka Hitler-Stalin pact) would be hanged in Nuremberg for his part, Molotov would go on to become Mr. Njet of the UN. When people lambaste the UN they should remember that the UN is the bastard child of the USSR as well as the USA. A child of mass murderer and idiocy.
In reference to Phil D’s post about the protest movement and to what it extent it diminished in 1975 the communist miracle year. In fact, the protest movement pretty much died out once the draft went away. The bulk of the protest movement was about people who were enjoying sex, drugs, and rock and roll and they didn’t want to have to leave the party.
South Vietnam was the first ally that we completely betrayed (by not providing with the promised materiel once the Democrats had Nixon by the short and curls). But it has become a standard practice.
But I was there and though not a participant I was a keen observer of what my cohort was up to and what motivated it.
And if anyone thinks we were wrong to be involved in Vietnam and justified in abandoning them, I have four words, North Korea/South Korea.
Another laboratory that is conveniently ignored by the powers that be.
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Goodness, I missed these earlier pieces about Mr. Lucas. I regret that I had not read this piece (and the comments) before my comment on Neo’s most recent Lucas posting.
My cleverness is less clever than I had thought. But that usually is the case with me.
Thank you all.