“...I don’t understand why the US fought in the European theater,...Did we attack...Did we attack...Did we attack...
Did we attack...?
The USA fought and won yet EACH ONE of those things have come true during this peace...we didn’t help ourselves by intervening and we didn’t help anyone...What about the UK’s nukes..?...I want to keep the deaths of our men MEANINGFUL.
I can’t believe those men died for THIS Europe.” [gaijin, post 3]
Factually incorrect. Also, intellectually dishonest at its core.
The Allies didn’t attack. They were attacked. Including the USSR. The Allied response - in Western Europe and elsewhere - was mounted to take back what had been taken by the Third Reich.
It’s artful, excessively coy perhaps, but the list of queries presupposes the future was both predetermined and knowable. Your unhappy litany implies that US intervention caused the current situation you deplore. None of those are true.
Isolationism is a fantasy. And it has been, since humans began trading with each other; at the very latest, since the Age of Discovery began.
The United States was founded as a trading nation, splitting off from an empire of trade and transportation. To assert that the USA can succeed in isolation is to misread everything that has happened since Euro explorers began appearing off the coasts of North America.
Suggesting that America should have declined to intervene in both World Wars (and later disputes, such as the Cold War, SEA, Middle East, etc) because the Allies failed to measure up to some moralistic yardstick is not merely unrealistic, it goes beyond hubris to megalomania. Quite apart from the risks to economic activity and national security, any such suggestion reeks of pride - used to be a sin, the sort of transgression so many American conservatives seem endlessly pleased to accuse the Europeans of committing.
So we’re too good for them?
I try to listen to Reagan’s great D-Day speech “The Boys of Point du Hoc every year. The excerpt talks about the failure of isolationism. He talks about the Soviet Union before and after this excerpt.
http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/reagan-d-day.htm
Excerpt:
Today, as 40 years ago, our armies are here [in Europe] for only one purpose — to protect and defend democracy. The only territories we hold are memorials like this one and graveyards where our heroes rest.
We in America have learned bitter lessons from two World Wars: It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We’ve learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.