[BRIGADE] PJB: Was It 'The Good War'?
Published: Fri, 04/04/08
"Riveting to this writer was that Baker uses some of the same
episodes, sources and quotes as this author in my own book out in
May, "Churchill, Hitler and 'The Unnecessary War...."
Brigade, see Pat's column below.
Also, as mentioned before we have a Forum on Pat's site for
discussing his columns and current events. The old forum
software is not very sophisticated. Once I complete the projects
I'm working on now [including a new site for all of Pat's books], I
will set up a full featured forum for your use. Stand by.
For the Cause, Linda
PS -- If you are active in political forums on the net, let me know
which of them you prefer for ease of use or other features.
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Was It 'The Good War'?
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Friday, April 4, 2008
"Yes, it was a good war," writes Richard Cohen in his column
challenging the thesis of pacifist Nicholson Baker in his new book,
"Human Smoke," that World War II produced more evil than good.
Baker's compelling work, which uses press clips and quotes of Axis
and Allied leaders as they plunged into the great cataclysm, is a
virtual diary of the days leading up to World War II.
Riveting to this writer was that Baker uses some of the same
episodes, sources and quotes as this author in my own book out in
May, "Churchill, Hitler and 'The Unnecessary War.'"
On some points, Cohen is on sold ground. There are things worth
fighting for: God and country, family and freedom. Martyrs have
ever inspired men. And to some evils pacifism is no answer.
Resistance, even unto death, may be required of a man.
But when one declares a war that produced Hiroshima and the
Holocaust a "Good War," it raises a question: good for whom?
Britain declared war on Sept. 3, 1939, to preserve Poland. For six
years, Poland was occupied by Nazi and Soviet armies and SS and
NKVD killers. At war's end, the Polish dead were estimated at 6
million. A third of Poland had been torn away by Stalin, and Nazis
had used the country for the infamous camps of Treblinka and
Auschwitz.
Fifteen thousand Polish officers had been massacred at places like
Katyn. The Home Army that rose in Warsaw at the urging of the Red
Army in 1944 had been annihilated, as the Red Army watched from the
other side of the Vistula. When the British celebrated V-E day in
May 1945, Poland began 44 years of tyranny under the satraps of
Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev.
Was World War II "a good war" for the Poles?
Was it a good war for Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, overrun by
Stalin's army in June 1940, whose people saw their leaders murdered
or deported to the Gulag never to return? Was it a good war for the
Finns who lost Karelia and thousands of brave men dead in the
Winter War?
Was it a good war for Hungarians, Czechs, Yugoslavs, Rumanians and
Albanians who ended up behind the Iron Curtain? In Hungary, it was
hard to find a women or girl over 10 who had not been raped by the
"liberators" of the Red Army. Was it a good war for the 13 million
German civilians ethnically cleansed from Central Europe and the 2
million who died in the exodus?
Was it a good war for the French, who surrendered after six weeks
of fighting in 1940 and had to be liberated by the Americans and
British after four years of Vichy collaboration?
And how good a war was it for the British?
They went to war for Poland, but Winston Churchill abandoned Poland
to Stalin. Defeated in Norway, France, Greece, Crete and the
western desert, they endured until America came in and joined in
the liberation of Western Europe.
Yet, at war's end in 1945, Britain was bled and bankrupt, and the
great cause of Churchill's life, preserving his beloved empire, was
lost. Because of the "Good War" Britain would never be great again.
And were the means used by the Allies, the terror bombing of
Japanese and German cities, killing hundreds of thousands of women
and children, perhaps millions, the marks of a "good war"?
Cohen contends that the evil of the Holocaust makes it a "good
war." But the destruction of the Jews of Europe was a consequence
of this war, not a cause. As for the Japanese atrocities like the
Rape of Nanking, they were indeed horrific.
But America's smashing of Japan led not to freedom for China, but
four years of civil war followed by 30 years of Maoist madness in
which 30 million Chinese perished.
For America, the war was Pearl Harbor and Midway, Anzio and Iwo
Jima, Normandy and Bastogne, days of glory leading to triumph and
the American Century.
But for Joseph Stalin, it was also a good war. From his pact with
Adolf Hitler he annexed parts of Finland and Rumania, and three
Baltic republics. His armies stood in Berlin, Prague and Vienna;
his agents were vying for power in Rome and Paris; his ally was
installed in North Korea; his protege, Mao, was about to bring
China into his empire. But it was not so good a war for the inmates
of Kolyma or the Russian POWs returned to Stalin in Truman's
Operation Keelhaul.
Is a war that replaces Hitler's domination of Europe with Stalin's
and Japan's rule in China with Mao's a "good war"? We had to stop
the killers, says Cohen. But who were the greater killers: Hitler
or Stalin, Tojo or Mao Zedong?
Can a war in which 50 million perished and the Christian continent
was destroyed, half of it enslaved, a war that has advanced the
death of Western civilization, be truly celebrated as a "good war"?
SOURCE: http://buchanan.org/blog/?p=976