Text 3900, 73 rader
Skriven 2010-01-28 12:17:00 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
   Kommentar till text 3860 av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
Ärende: Britain -- England -- UK
================================
Hello Robert,

On Wednesday January 27 2010 18:46, you wrote to me:

 MV>> But keep in mind that my generation was the first to have no first
 MV>> hand knowledge of WWII.

 RB> Really? You're not much younger than I am, and I still remember
 RB> getting boxes of Hersheys (chocolate bar) from a friend of my dad who
 RB> was in the navy during WWII. Chocolate was rationed then, and we kids

I was born in 1946. Just over a year after the end of the war. There is no way
I can have first hand knowledge of it.

You are five years older than me and that makes all the difference.

 MV>> My generation was the first not having to carry the traumas and
 MV>> hence not saddled with "we must be grateful because they freed us
 MV>> from Hitler".

 RB> Do we have to get into that again?

Yes we do, because it is relevant for the matter at hand. Those that have first
hand knowledge of WWII have - or at least had - a tendency to look the other
way when the US did something that did not fit in with the US being "the good
guys". My generation was the first to not have that particular blindness.

 MV>> That "stabilising influence" has done more harm than good over the
 MV>> years.

 RB> Really?

Definitely. Look at the mess in Korea. They are still shooting at each other
because of the mess that was made over half a century ago. Look at Vietnam.
look at Haiti, look at all the places where the US has military intervened.

 RB> A matter of opinion, I guess. We'll all wonder whether Stalin
 RB> would have stopped in Berlin if neither the Americans nor their allies
 RB> had been on the other side.

That is a big what if, but I think it would not have made much difference in
the long run. The Russians didn't stop at the Polish border. They did not stop
at the Czech border. They did not stop at the Hungarian border. all these
countries are EU members now.

 RB> And without the Americans, there definitely would never have been a
 RB> D-Day -

True. But would that have made much difference in the long run? Hitler had
already lost in 1942 when he was defeated at Stalingrad.

 RB> although the Germans in their panic might have finally launched an
 RB> invasion of England to get away from the Russians: that would have
 RB> been interesting.

After 1942 they never had the resources to invade England. They should have
tried before that. After the failed Russian adventure, the game was over.

 MV>> Not true. Not only US politicians are citicized for doing nothing.

 RB> When I see the way the Germans are twisting and turning, trying to get
 RB> out of Afghanistan without losing face, I have problems accepting
 RB> that. The German on the street would like nothing better than for the
 RB> government to do absolutely nothing - retroactively.

So the German government is not criticised for doing nothing, they are
criticised for getting involved in the first place.


Cheers, Michiel

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