Fighting Hitler
Again, a longer post is really necessary, but just a quick note on TMcD's comment to the post below. Many, many people like to offer the "was it just/appropriate/necessary to fight Hitler?" argument. Let me just make the following point, people. (Wait for it.)
Hitler declared war on the United States first. After the U.S. declared war on Japan, after they bombed Pearl Harbor and attacked the (U.S.-controlled) Philippines . . . Hitler declared war on the United States. That whole axis thing. We didn't declare war on them until after they declared war on us.
So, from that point of view, we didn't really choose to fight Hitler. The Japanese, his axis partners, chose to attack us, and we got dragged in. Now, sure, the U.S. was helping Britain in its war with the Nazis before that. But actual U.S. entry into the war was not an actual "choice" the U.S. made.
And I'm so-o-o tired of the implication that the U.S. entered the war to stop Hitlerian evil or the Holocaust. That's not how things happened, people. Btw, we were allies with the mass murderer "Uncle Joe" Stalin. Stalin killed more people than Hitler, so there's a great deal of moral ambiguity here.
So, was it just/appropriate/necessary to fight Hitler? Yes. But that's better understood as a defensive war, not the kind of aggressive war of choice I'm talking about below. I can't see the connection to the Iraq war here.
posted by Number Three @ 3:18 PM
5 Comments:
OK, your indignance at the Hitler example is touching, and I'm with you to a point.
The Bushie tendency to equate the Iraq War with WWII is truly grating, not to mention deeply ahistorical, etc. Hitler declaring war on us isn't the real issue, however. As you note, we were already working with the Brits, and FDR had long been preparing for war on two fronts; meanwhile, we've been in a state of ongoing conflict with Iraq since 1991, including wrangling over inspectors and policing "no-fly zones," so it's hard to argue that our agitation there was completely out of the blue. We didn't just freak out on a peaceful and friendly country minding its own business. But you're right that Iraq 2003 was not Germany 1941. Here's the core difference: Hitler was a threat to our allies and eventually to us, whereas Saddam was not, as we knew even at the time. So our decision (which is what it was) to start aiding the Brits, knowing full well where that was likely to lead, was a smart one from practical "national interest" considerations, not just moral ones, whereas invading Iraq was not. Of course, this supports the point I've been making that the most serious objections to the Iraq War were the practical ones of national interest, not the broadly "moralist" ones (illegality, "no blood for oil,", etc.).
That said, I'd be more sympathetic to your complaint about Iraq-Germany comparisons if you hadn't seriously distorted my post in the process. What I actually claimed was that, while fighting Hitler could be interpreted as a moral necessity (and I believe it was, Stalin's crimes notwithstanding), interventions in places like Rwanda and Iraq did NOT rise to the same level. Instead, Iraq and Rwanda occupied a gray area of the "morally permissable" within which we must carefully evaluate and balance moral and practical considerations. The problems in those countries (tyranny, violence, ethnic oppressions, etc.) made them legitimate candidates for outside intervention, unlike, say, the US seizing Toronto to keep baseball "All-American," a morally trivial reason, hence forbidden. My judgment, which I've stated repeatedly, is that, within that moral middle ground, reasoning would have legitimized going into Rwanda but NOT Iraq.
So before you get your back up again, try responding to the argument I actually made, and not the silly straw man argument you wish I had made.
I'm not sure that I was responding to a straw man. I was responding to a common frame applied to the Second World War, which is that the U.S. fought Hitler on moral grounds. Your post made me think of that, so I responded to that common frame, which drives me nuts. I wasn't really responding to your comment's argument, and I don't think that my post misrepresents itself on that point.
Your history is weak here, I'm afraid. No question that there were considerations of national interest at stake in WWII, given Hitler's aggression in Europe and the eventual Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. But there was a strong moral component as well. We may not have known about the Holocaust yet, but we knew that Hitler was a brutal tyrant.
FDR started railing against Hitler's "lawlessness" and "terror" as early as 1937, and, as the situation grew worse, FDR framed the conflict as a war to save democracy. His famous "Four Freedoms" speech was delievered to Congress in January of 1941 as a way of defining what made us different from the Axis powers. Plus, there were strong isolationist voices in the US at the time, including Ford and Lindberg, Sens. Gerald Nye (R) and Burton Wheeler (D), and even progressive historian Charles Beard. Neutrality had long been the dominant and official policy of our government, and we were engaged in diplomatic efforts with Japan in which they offered concessions if we would just cut off trade with China. As late as October 1941, Wendell Wilke, who had previously been sympathetic toward FDR's pro-war moves, started campaigning against FDR on the grounds that the prez wanted to enter an unnecessary war. We could have found a way out of that war if we wanted to, but FDR didn't want to, and he presented our entry as justified by BOTH national interest and democratic ideals. I don't think it was that tough a call, frankly, especially in retrospect. But my point about how the war was recognized at the time as having a considerable moral dimension beyond mere self-defense stands. And I still think you misrepresented the earlier comments by treating them as if I had simply equated Saddam and Hitler, Condi-style.
Correction: Wilkie attacked FDR as a warmonger in October 1940 (obviously), not 1941.
There always are moral dimensions to US warmaking, of course. Whether or not morality drives the decisions to go to war, we always do have to turn the effort into-as Elshtain used ot put it--a moral crusade. It's always "Operation Enduring Freedom," "Operation Just Cause," whatever.
I think you'd have to concede that had Hitler's crimes been entirely internal to his country--dictatorship, extrajudicial killings, repression, even death camps--the US would never have invaded Germany to stop it. It's a profoundly depressing thought. But permitting the US government to invoke "moral justifications" to violate international law is dangerous business. If we, at our sole discretion, can claim the moral authority to depose a government and (attempt to) set up a new one there's an awful lot of the world that falls into your gray area.
Much of the world is still un-democratic, and our leaders could use humanitarian rhetoric to intervene in virtually any autocratic country. Even in places that are democratic, don't you think it'd be pretty easy for US leaders to argue that "protecting freedom" requires us to depose even elected leaders? How hard do you think it would be for Bush to drum up support for deposing Hugo Chavez? It's dangerous business, this logic of abandoning international law to step in and "do justice" whenever our leaders see fit to whip up a moralistic cause for war.
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