"Tony Volk" wrote:

The US was a neutral, you know, like the Swedes, the Swiss, etc. We had
just recently completed the clean up of a euro mess (WW1). The fact that
the French screwed up the Armistice was getting them into another mess.
We, quite reasonably, decided that, since Europe had evidently decided
that a war every few years was a good thing, we would decline to
participate.

You didn't answer the question. The U.S. ignored the need to defend
"peace, freedom, etc." as the Germans and Japanese began the war. They only
got involved when they themselves were attacked.

That was a mistake that we learned from, although we still
were not wont to be speedy and decisive about it.


So why would you blame
France for not wanting to join a U.S. fight when France wasn't attacked (no
one was actually, but assuming you're going with the Bush 9/11 line of
garbage). Why is it "quite reasonable" for the U.S. to back out of a war
they're not involved in, and cowardice/betrayal for France to do the same
thing? France just fought in GW 1, US starts GW 2, and sits out. That's as
close to an exact parallel to your WW1 and WW2 comments as you could get!

Not a bad parallel, but we must ask why France would offer
assistance of the Foreign Legion and a few jet squadrons for GW1, but
not for GW2 ? I don't think, competent as French intel has been
historically, that they had significantly better info than the US/UK
did. They were going through a bit of an intransigent phase though
both with the USA and many others - I think that had as much to do
with the French refusal to participate as anything else. Not exactly
the noblest of concepts. The USA going into Iraq to clean up a mess we
had contributed to was only marginally better, but it was *somewhat*
better.

Your answers strike me as deeply hypocritical.

Ditto the concerns about the French. They cetrainly had plenty
of national interest in cleaning up the horrors of Iraq. For all the
noise made about the companies in the USAID group making money in
Iraq, so it goes for the French oil and technology markets.
It's entirely their choice to participate or not - they have
often been rather troublesome as allies - once in, they are highly
motivated fighters, but it can be tricky to get them to commit...


wonder what you think of the actions of the U.S. in early WWII when the
stakes were much higher, the need much direr, and the evil much worse.

I think it was less clear at the time. The Jewish deportations
and pogrom were just getting underway, for example. It's not too hard
to understand why there was hesitance to enter another conflict that
was assumed to be like the trench war horrors of WW1. But eventually
we realized that wait was a mistake. I think US attitude to someone
like Hussein is a reflection of that lesson learned in the 1940s.



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