Re: Best intentions != right
@FormerKowloonTonger
From what I can tell, your post amounts to:
(North) America came and saved your behinds twice so how dare you have a go at us for trying to protect our own country!
First up, the US involvement in WWI was orchestrated by the banks and the arms/munitions manufacturers. It was motivated, quite simply, by greed.
You can deny that, but that finding (by Nye) was the very thing that set the US to the isolationist position (and associated Neutrality Acts) that saw them initially stay out of WW2, and that you seem to be advocating now.
What brought the US into WW2 is a complex question but one simple truth is that Hitler's Germany was an aggressive, ruthless, expansionist, intolerant, genocidal, totalitarian military machine.
And, in the year between the French surrender and the dissolution of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Britain and the Commonwealth were shouldering the lion's share of the burden of defending against that threat.
FDR knew that and saw the defeat of Germany as essential for the safety and prosperity of the USA. He said as much and was in talks with Churchill even before Pearl Harbor.
As you remember that period "vividly" I expect that you will also remember how the increasing financial and materiel involvement in the war slashed the unemployment rate in the US (which was as high as 25%), and the eventual full involvement all but ended the Great Depression.
I appreciate that you experienced that period first hand while I did not, but so long as you aren't suggesting that personal, subjective experience is the same thing as objective, dispassioned analysis, we can still have an intelligent discussion.
Trying (and probably failing) to keep to that dispassioned ideal, if there was ever a war that could be seen so starkly as 'good-vs-evil' it was World War 2. Britain and the Allies tried diplomatic means to avoid conflict, realising that war with Germany would be devastating for everyone. Once it was clear that nothing short of war would stop Hitler, the Allies had no choice.
The North American position of viewing that situation as 'not their fight' is not a great deal dissimilar to someone walking past a mugging and not getting involved because it's on the other side of the street and, therefore, 'not their problem'.
FDR understood that and polls at the time show that, even prior to Pearl Harbor, the US public were starting to understand that too. (Maybe you didn't feel that way but records from the period show that you would have been in a minority, albeit a not insignificant one.)
You evidently have different views than I do, but it's hard to make out the specifics between the malformed ellipses, omnipresent square-brackets (I favour parentheses), melodramatic gasps, belittling of those younger than yourself, repeated exhortations to alternately notice and ignore puns, and, of course, your all-consuming fear of Islam.
Perhaps that is the sum of your views - that you are continually disappointed by youth, unfailingly devoted to the bracket and the period (full-stop), never-endingly surprised and shocked, internally conflicted about puns and constantly scared of Muslims.
If so, then you are, of course, entitled to your opinions but it would be nice if you stopped declaring that people who disagree with you are, ipso facto, know-nothing youngsters. Proximity to an event does not automatically bestow understanding of that event and age does not automatically bestow intelligence, or wisdom.