For 829 days the US sat and watched.
Comment on Russia is at war with Britain and US is no longer a reliable ally, UK adviser says
LilB0kChoy@midwest.social 3 weeks agoCan you articulate why, with what they knew in 1939, the US should have declared war and not after they were directly attacked?
It baffles me how you don’t see the hypocrisy of both complaining about the US not joining WWII until they were directly attacked and also complaining about American hegemony today.
MapleEngineer@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
LilB0kChoy@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
I didn’t think you could.
MapleEngineer@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
829 days. Canada was there for 820 of those 829 days.
MapleEngineer@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’ve been around long enough that I recognize bad faith and fallacious arguments, pedantism, and particularly expressions of Danth’s Law and choose not to take the bait. I stay on message which was that it was obvious to the UK who their true and trustworthy friends were (for example Canada which joined the Second World War 9 days after its outbreak and sent young men to fight to stop the spread of fascism and defend Britain) and weren’t (for example the US which sat on its hands for 829 days while Europe burned) at it should be today. It should be horrifying (but not at all surprising) to the UK, and to the rest of the free world, to see that fascism has taken hold in the US.
ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
At the time the prevalent belief initially was that the mighty British empire, together with the French, would beat back the Germans and Italians. Remember that these countries had fought a destructive war already which an at the time more powerful German empire lost. US sentiment also was against direct involvement in the war, and many in cabinet were more concerned with the rising threat to their west: Japan.
That’s not to say the US did nothing. The US supplied China via the Burma road agains the Japanese, supplied the Allies with arms and they also did the destroyers-for-bases deal. The US also held their first peacetime draft in 1940, well before it officially entered the war.
At the time, the belief was that the US would have to defend the west (against Japan) and that the UK could defeat the Germans. It’s why the US moves the fleet to Hawaii, to hopefully pressure the Japanese into backing down.
The US had both domestic and geopolitical reasons to not declare war immediately. It’s fair to criticize that, but to characterize the US as doing nothing in that time is just a falsification of history.
humanspiral@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
The US joined the war in Europe as a war on USSR. To limit their gains. Colonizing the western part.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Can you articulate why, with what they knew in 1939, the US should have declared war and not after they were directly attacked?
I’ll let prime minister Neville Chamberlain do so.
“We and France are to-day, in fulfillment of our obligations, going to the aid of Poland, who is so bravely resisting this wicked and unprovoked attack upon her people. We have a clear conscience. We have done all that any country could do to establish peace, but a situation in which no word given by Germany’s ruler could be trusted and no people or country could feel themselves safe had become intolerable.”
LilB0kChoy@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
That explains the UK and France since France and the United Kingdom were the two dominant players in world affairs and in League of Nations affairs, and usually were in agreement.
However, the US was not part of the League of Nations, had not been attacked, had adopted an isolationist approach to foreign policy between WW1 and WW2 and had already fought in one European war. There was no UN, no NATO, no mutual defense agreements like exist today because WW2 was the catalyst for many of those things.
“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” – attributed to Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yes. We know why the US didn’t join initially. I was answering why they should have done.
LilB0kChoy@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
No, he’s not. Your quote is from a radio broadcast on September 3, 1939 where Chamberlain was speaking about England and France declaring war.
Note, this is also the same Chamberlain who made a speech in 1938 after signing the Munich agreement where he said, “My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time….”; The speech would later seal Chamberlain’s reputation as the chief architect of appeasement..
What I’m gathering is that everyone here seems to think the US had some moral obligation to declare war earlier, which is easy to say in retrospect but history doesn’t support that idea when viewed in situ.
Gammelfisch@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Technically, the USA was not directly attacked. Hawaii and Philippines were US colonies. The situation in the Philippines was worse, and it was not mentioned in FDR’s speech while they were getting pounded by the Japanese.
LilB0kChoy@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
No?
During the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941, the USS Arizona (BB-39) and the USS Oklahoma (BB-37) were sunk. The Arizona, a battleship, exploded and sank after a bomb hit a powder magazine, resulting in the deaths of over 1,177 officers and crewmen. The Oklahoma was sunk by multiple torpedoes, causing it to capsize and resulting in the loss of 429 crew members.
That sure seems like an attack on America.
Saryn@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
There is nothing to be baffled by. You’re just misrepresenting the argument.
It’s only baffling if you assume ab initio that the only possible kind of intervention is the imperialist, interventionist one, and that that is the only way of describing the country’s (or any other Allied country for that matter) entry into WW2. More generally, its only baffling if you assume that involvement naturally equates to “hegemony”, and the behavior that implies, in the long-term. This viewpoint totally negates the normative side of power which is why it has been all but abondoned by contemporary IR scholars, political scientists, sociologists, etc.
In short, you misrepresent (deliberately or otherwise) your opponent’s argument by assuming that all exercise of power is “hegemonic”, an assertion that is not grounded in reality. At this point, you should also be able to see the moral issues with some of what you said and the overall image you presented of the human condition. Classical geopolitical thinking is simply not valid and tends to reproduce highly unstable and dangerous systems by ignorant human who reify it into reality.
Sure (and you too should be able to - its real simple). It starts with an f and with a ascism. Though I’ll give you that policy analysts at the USDOS at the time didn’t see it in those terms. I’m also willing to bet they knew a lot more than you think you know but do let me know if you think I’m wrong.
LilB0kChoy@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
It’s plenty articulate but wrong on both accounts. It’s hypocrisy to criticize (wrongly in OPs case) the US for not involving themselves fast enough in one breath and then criticize the US for being “world police” in the next.
Especially considering what the landscape might have looked like had the US remained on its isolationist track and not joined the war.
As for articulating why, with what they knew in 1939, the US should have declared war; you typed a lot but failed at the task. You say fascism like it carried the weight in 1939 that it does today. Fascism rose to prominence in early-20th-century Europe. Hmm, wonder who that was.
Swing and a miss!
Saryn@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You obviously didn’t read or understand a thing I wrote. If you did, you wouldn’t have simply doubledowned on the same fallacies and false assumptions.
But let’s be real - this isn’t about assessing what’s true and what’s not. Its about individual psychology and our desperate need for self-affirmation to build confidence. It’s part of the reason why you’ll just keep repeating the same thing over and over and over, regardless of evidence, regardless of substance, regardless of logic, ultimately abondoning any notion of intellectual honesty.
Once you adopt that whole mentality, you cannot be reasoned with on the rational level, which is why some compare it to a mild psychiatric disorder. And looking around what’s been happening with communities around the world vis-a-vis the media they consume, it’s easy to understand why.
Best of luck to you on your journey. Don’t stop resisting the ego. Never stop resisting the ego. The most important fight is the one inside our head.