[Peace-discuss] He who controls the past, controls the future

[Morton K. Brussel]

Carl,

I make a distinction between the Iraq, Afghanistan (and Serbia-Kosovo) 
wars and WWII, between Hitler's power and aggression, and Saddam's. You 
seem not to. Although I was young and naive at the advent of WWII, I 
remember the arguments that swirled around, and although I think that 
revisionism is often useful and healthy, that which Kauffman promotes 
is, from my recollection, off the wall.

Regards,  Mort

On Sep 24, 2004, at 11:18 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> Mort--
>
> We were all rightly offended when it was suggested that opponents of 
> the
> Iraq invasion were sympathetic to terrorism or perhaps secretly funded 
> by
> Saddam Hussein.  Yet you seem to have no trouble believing that 
> opponents
> of US involvement in WWII were necessarily Axis sympathizers, which is 
> to
> say anti-Semites.
>
> There was in fact a strong anti-war Left in the US in 1939.  The
> Communists abandoned it suddenly with the invasion of Russia, but it 
> still
> existed, and it certainly took a position on the European war -- the US
> should stay out of it. Anti-war sentiment was such that FDR had to
> maneuver the country into war, probably arranging for other side to 
> fire
> the first shot (as Lincoln had), which turned out to be Pearl Harbor.  
> As
> you say, "the decision to enter the war had already been made."
>
> But to say "The anti-war folks would have been happy to see the Axis
> powers prevail," is roughly equivalent to the current administration's
> claim that we'd like to see Saddam Hussein still in power.
>
> And the US did "profit mightily" from the war: as the only undamaged
> country in 1945, it organized the world -- picking up the British 
> Empire
> in the process, as the Brits recognized -- for the benefit of its
> capitalist class.  This was the triumph of the state capitalism that 
> the
> major countries had pioneered in response to the Depression.
>
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