The New World Map

Townhall.com ^ | June 18, 2015 | Victor Davis Hanson

[Kaslin]

Adolf Hitler started World War II by attacking Poland on September 1, 1939. Nazi Germany moved only after it had already remilitarized the Rhineland, absorbed Austria and dismantled Czechoslovakia. Before the outbreak of the war, Hitler's new Third Reich had created the largest German-speaking nation in European history.

Well before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese government had redrawn the map of Asia and the Pacific. Japan had occupied or annexed Indochina, Korea, Manchuria and Taiwan, in addition to swaths of coastal China. Attacking Hawaii, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Indonesia was merely the logical 1941 follow-up to more than a decade of Japanese aggression.

Fascist Italy, by the outbreak of World War II in Europe, had already been remaking the map of the Mediterranean region in imitation of ancient Rome. Strongman Benito Mussolini had annexed what is now Ethiopia, Albania and most of Libya. He promised Italians that the Mediterranean would soon be mare nostrum, "our sea."

All of these hegemonies had arisen without triggering a global war. Had Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese just been satisfied and consolidated their winnings, there was no evidence that the tired Western democracies would ever have stopped them.

[The Toll]

Nothing to worry about. You see the picture at the top? China has no diversity at all, they must be terribly weak.

[Cincinnatus.45-70]

Oh, I support GW Bush completely, then and now. But the liberals are writing the history books. There were no WMDs according to them, and there was no reason to intervene in the private affairs of kindly Uncle Saddam and his peaceful and just internal governance of Iraq.

America has now re-elected the man who leads from behind, and never anticipates anything. Who, in fact, is destroying the ability of the US to defend itself after an attack, much less take pre-emptive action against a deadly enemy. So, no, I still don’t think VDH has explained things to my satisfaction.