Yes, (World War II) Was a Good War

[woo me with science]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/31/AR2008033102149.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Yes, It Was a Good War

By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, April 1, 2008; Page A17

Nicholson Baker, a supremely talented novelist, has written a surprising book of nonfiction titled "Human Smoke." It is composed primarily of snippets taken from contemporary newspapers in the run-up to World War II and makes the daring argument that the war -- our supposedly "good" war -- was not good at all. We shouldn't have fought it.

To my mind, the book is dead wrong and very odd. This, though, has not stopped it from getting a respectable front-page review in the Los Angeles Times Book Review -- "It may be one of the most important books you will ever read," wrote Mark Kurlansky -- or from grabbing the bottom perch (No. 15) on the New York Times's important bestseller list. Baker's a hit.

It takes a fair amount of audacity to challenge the conventional wisdom about World War II. This is especially the case since the war has become conflated with the Holocaust, the evil of which cannot possibly be argued. If you throw in the atrocities committed by the Japanese -- everything from massacres to the conscription of local women in conquered territories as sex slaves -- then World War II not only seemed right and urgent at the time but right and a bit too late now. Hitler could have been stopped earlier.

Baker, though, is a pacifist. He dedicated his book to the memory of "American and British pacifists" who, he writes, never really got their due. "They tried to save Jewish refugees, feed Europe, reconcile the United States and Japan, and stop the war from happening. They failed, but they were right."

No, they were not. But that, for the moment, is beside the point. A contemporary context for Baker's book may not be World War II but the war in Iraq. The former, of course, is the good war, and the latter is the bad one, but in Baker's view they undoubtedly are both wars that made things worse, not better....

[e-mail]

[1monster]

1. No war is a "good" war. However, World War II was probably the ONLY war that

was necessary and justified. At least on the Allied side.

[Aristus]

2. When Studs Terkel titled his book of the oral history of the conflict,

he made sure to call it: The "Good" War, with 'good' in quotation marks...because it wasn't really...

[Beregond2]

3. War

WWII was the inevitable consequence of the Versailles Treaty that ended WWI. Had we kept our noses out of that one, that outrageously unfair settlement might never have happened, and WWII probably wouldn't have either. Every war leads to unintended consequences.

[Octafish]

4. We're still fighting World War II.

The Nazis never went away, they went legit.

Know your BFEE: Nazis couldn’t win WWII, so they backed Bushes.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1547206&mesg_id=1547206

[Selatius]

5. I divide war, like killing, into necessary vs. unnecessary. World War 2 was a necessary war, but...

no war is ever a "good" war. I would also say that if the US had not entered World War One, the war in Europe may have ended with a negotiated settlement both sides would be willing to live by. As it stands, the Treaty of Versailles was something characterized as rapacious and cruel for the defeated side, a view that would help animate the rise of Nazi Germany, bent on seeking retribution for the humiliation.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

6. Until it became obvious 50 years later that we had in fact lost.

The fascists weren't defeated. They merely took a little nap until the time was ripe for them to complete their work, this time aided and abetted by a few American traitors.

[tuckessee]

7. Only if you forget about the vast crimes of the Soviets.....

.....who were handed half of Europe on a silver platter built of Lend-Lease materiel.

[rockymountaindem]

8. And what alternative to that outcome would you have proposed?

Let the Soviets fold so the Germans could acquire all their vast material resources for themselves *and* turn the full might of their army against the western allies? Or do you have some magic bullet that would have gotten the Soviets to withdraw from all the territory on which they had their armies stationed on May 8th, 1945?

[tuckessee]

9. It's history. I propose no "alternative".

I only point out facts.

[NutmegYankee]

10. What a wasted topic.

Both Japan and Germany declared war on the US. There never was an option to not fight the war.