Imagine George W. Bush, our current American President, winning the 1932 presidential election. He watches the built up of Nazism and being who he is, he wants to attack it. He starts building up the military. He is re-elected in 1936 and he keeps building the military and he lambastes Hitler at every outrage Hitler attempts. And when Hitler invades Poland, GWB finds a way to get a declaration of war out of Congress. The Japanese, who were STILL not ready to take us on in late 1941, would have folded their tents and sat on the sidelines for the next few years and Russia could have built up a massive force in Siberia and kept the Japanese at bay. In the meantime the vaunted Blitzkrieg would not have resulted in Dunkirk and the fall of France. I haven't figured out what Russia would have done, but it wouldn't have been good for the Germans.
The war would be over by 1942, probably a negotiated settlement, with Hitler going into exile in Uruguay, there would have been no Pearl Harbor, no humongous death camps issue, no D-Day, no atom bombs, etc. There'd still be an Israel, though. (See? I'm so totally a Romantic at heart.)
So is it possible that GWB today is saving us from horrors we can only theorize because based on WWII and what was allowed to unfold as it ran its course? This is twisted logic and only the more "free-form" among you will allow yourselves to follow it.
But I do acknowledge that it's just a pipe-dreamer's game; those of you who need to hate opposition politics and politicians, please know that you won't hurt my feelings by doing so.
Forgive them (fill in the blank), for they know not what they do...
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7 comments:
I don't think America was as forgiving of candidate's years of drunkenness in the 30s, especially as they would have occurred during Prohibition, making Dubya an unlikely candidate.
Plus, despite all his warlike bravado and "service" "in the National Guard," Laura Bush is the only one in that immediate family who's ever killed a man. Who says librarians aren't tough?
Pistolero, you're not supposed to dredge up 'facts' in these type of exchanges... And anyway, that's not what I'm driving at. I want people to consider (shudder) that George is saving us from a ghastly future by taking unpopular action now. There will never be anyway to know, but I like raising the issue. It's on a par with giving a bulldog a new chew toy...
My apologies, Bert-o-rama (now in Cinescape!). I just really like writing that sentence about her killing a man. It's the sort of thing that the namby-pamby Democrats shy away from, which is why they always lose at everything, including their own primaries. "Romney? What the hell happened here?"
I think your point is worth debating, but that it suffers from the Eurocentric view of the Middle East that got us into the trouble in the first place. These are not natural nations, but randomly assigned countries made to make British maps easier during the Great Game. The "Iraqi" people come from nomadic tribes that don't care a whole lot for each other, and while Saddam was unquestionably evil, the country required that level of dictator-based fear to unite it (see Tito and Yugoslavia).
I understand that people want to defend George Bush, because as a Redskins fan, I also root for a lost cause. Were I in that leaking boat, I too would say (as he regularly does), "But in time, I'll be proven awesome." But I believe that Saddam and a united Iraq posed less of a threat to the U.S. than our failure to build a safe state there ultimately will. We need bad guys to blame and stand against; when we replaced him, our failures made us the bad guy to Iraqis and any Muslim who fears U.S. invasion of their region.
Ultimately, Bush : U.S. Foreign Policy :: Limp Bizkit : Popular music. It's going to be a hard few years and we might want to just turn our radios off for awhile and pretend nothing's happening.
I apologize again: I have many friends with international affairs degrees and related jobs, and sometimes I forget that outside of that small cabal, no one cares in the least. In the interest of being interesting again, I'd like to insert a cheap fart joke here and rejoin the peanut gallery.
Hey, I don't care either, I just like being mischievous. I have an uncontrollable urge to kick against the pricks.
Understood. It's why we can get along: we both like mocking everything.
Speaking of, your wife let you outside your house in that shirt?
You know something Bert, I can buy this! It's a possibility.
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