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A shocking view of Military Tribunals from a Liberal
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by The_Tom: [QB] We're going well off-topic, but seeing as I am a history student, I can't bear to let some of this stuff go unrebutted. Not that the world will be a better place if I do. First of all, First, you prescribed a nuclear knock-out punch that would reduce the Soviet Union to the point where it would collapse with little or no conventional fighting. And that's not one half-kiloton bomb in Moscow and one half-kiloton bomb in Leningrad. Hell, a nuke in New York and a nuke in Washington would bring down neither the US government nor the US people's willingness to fight off an invader. Two bombs would only unify an already-incredibly patriotic people ever closer and the Soviet Union would only fall after an incredibly bloody conventional invasion that still might have been unwinnable. If you wanted to "lop off the head" of the USSR in 1945, I'd imagine you'd want to rapidly launch a surprise attack and obliterate at least the dozen largest cities, followed by a quick ground campaign and occupation. And that would be monumentally amoral, regardless of how one interprets history would flow from then on. First's comparison of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and a Nazi victory in WW2 is also rather flawed. While the Eastern bloc had no shortage of horrors, I think it's safe to say that I'll take an Allied + Soviet victory over Nazi victory any day. A Europe from Madrid to Moscow to the Middle-East under Nazi rule with perhaps a destroyed and very timid Britain still independent would be far, far worse than what ended up transpiring in Eastern Europe. We'd certainly be looking at extermination numbers as high or higher than Stalin's purges of the thirties. And that's assuming the Second World War would have been stopped somehow. If Hitler had conquered Europe, who's to say there wouldn't have been a nuclear war between Germany and the US, or at the very least a Cold War between the two similar to that between the Allies and the Eastern Bloc with the exception that Nazi Europe would probably have the advantage? In other words, we should be thankful for the Soviets, much as they themselves were a nasty bunch, too. But hey, so long as we're playing the "what if" game... [i]A subjugated, then democraticized and reindustrialized Russia could have led to a stronger UN[/i] Well, one must assume that you're defining a stronger UN as one with fewer disagreements on the Security Council level. Which isn't necessarily a good thing, especially for those of you who subscribe to the "efficient government = dictatorship" theory. Doesn't Jeffersonian thinking dictate that there should be someone on the security council scrutinizing the Western powers, as well? Besides, the UN today with a non-communist Russia could hardly be said to be significantly more effective, now, could it? [i]no large-scale nuclear arms race, no Cold War,[/i] Granted. Probably no Apollo program either, while we're at it ;) [i] likely no Korea or 'Nam[/i] Well, if you assume that the USSR's occupation of Korea north of the 54th would never happened and that Communist China wouldn't have moved in anyway, then I guess no North Korea and therefore no Korean War. I'd venture the thought that Nam could have happened without the USSR. Actually, I think it would. [i]No Communist Cuba[/i] Actually, Castro most likely would still have come to power. It's just he wouldn't have found a major ally post-Bay-of-Pigs in the form of Russia and therefore probably never would have gotten labeled "communist." [i], no brush wars in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and who knows what else.[/i] Socialist Revolution would continue to gather grassroots support in impoverished nations ruled by wealthy dictators that were puppets to American business and political interests. You'd have to knock off Marx a hundred years earlier to make a dent in that, and even still there'd be no guarantee that a similar doctrine wouldn't arise. When you look at the amount of aid that the Soviet Union actually gave to the various guerillas/freedom-fighters/terrorists/insurgents/rebels (choose your term), I don't think it could be fingered as a major factor in ensuring their survival. And now for an interesting counterpoint to all this talk about nuclear weapons. It's been speculated by numerous noted historians (AJP Taylor and Richard Overy, for starters) that the use of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima was exactly what caused the Cold War in the first place. Stalin met Truman (yet another evil Democrat, yes. Because they spill blood for fun) at Pottsdam and wasn't told that the very next day the Americans were going to drop an A-bomb on Hiroshima, or even that the Americans were working on an A-bomb. Stalin was an incredibly paranoid character, and rightly or wrongly took this as mounting evidence that the West planned to rebuilt Germany and then invade Russia for the third time in a half-century. (Had Rob been in power, Mr. Stalin would have been right.) And this directly led, or so say the evil liberal America-hating historians, to Soviet hegemony over its occupied territories and the descent of the Iron Curtain. But what would they know, not being librarians? A final alt-history puzzle: Wasn't it a lucky thing that the Japanese didn't have intelligence telling them that the Americans only had the two bombs? For all Truman knew, they could have called his bluff after Nagasaki. And then the war would continue (at least until the Americans managed to build more A-bombs or alternately firebomb the Japanese until they were scared (or terrorized, *ahem* *ahem*) into surrendering. And many more people would die and the civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have died in vain. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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