We are watching the NBC feed.
No Sound….Ah there he is. Very furrowed brow.
Wow, he is admitting that his plan didn’t work. (9:02)
Background information but still not calling it a Civil War (9:03)
He’s taking responcibility but then he is the determiner
Sound problems(9:04)…and we are back.
Invoking September 11th again. Panic and Fear runs the streets yet again.
So if I am understanding this he thinks that if we secure Bagdad then we secure the Iraq? (9:06)
So this is what the Iraq military will do but what will our commitment be?
20,000 more troops from where? Where are we finding these troops? A question not answered(9:08)
Sounds like a scorched earth policy with Iraq help. Didn’t work in ‘Nam too well did it?(9:08)
So more death will help the progress in the country? Sounds like he is covering his kister for many more American troops that will be killed(9:09)
Build up the Iraq troops and give money to the reconstruction getting the money from where? (9:11)
Brings up the ghost of Bin Lauden again along with Al Quida to again raise the fear level.
Notice that he keeps bringing it back to what might happen here if we don’t do something there. Let’s leave the mess there (9:13)
And we are now onto Iran again and the threat that is Iran (9:14)
At least he said “nuclear” correctly.
Condi is going to Iraq again. Hope she packs her flak jacket. (9:15)
Are we going to cut and run or stay and mire? (9:16)
Dehumanizing the enemy yet again (9:17)
Changing what Victory is. I think this is a good example of factiness. (9:18)
He still can’t say the words “Civil War” can he?
So by sending more people in, we can get the troops out faster? I am flashing on the last days in ‘Nam. (9:19)
Yet another bi-partisan working group being formed to join all the other groups that have gone before them.
Kath is not happy with the troops are great part of the speech. She has friends who have lost brothers, sons, daughters and even grandchildren as recently as yesterday. She feels he really doesn’t get it.
And we are back to the commentary…..
• 
floated a “Mission Accomplished” banner behind Bush when he made a speech 01 May 2003, less than 2 months into the invasion.
Time is relevent because Bush made it relevent.
****
I am still amazed at the silliness of this post.
Mission accomplisged makes whether the mission was accomplished at issue, not time. But given that he has said the mission is not accomplished, and given that, except for that moment, he has almost always said it would be a long, tough fight, its obvious he doesn’t feel mission was accomplished. so even that isn’t relevant. If he was still saying it, yeah then it would be.
Either way, the comparison is absurd. “Ha. you didn’t get your war done faster than WWII.” “Yeah but I could if I used WWII tactics. and hey I still got the war for independence beat.”
Hatred clouds your thoughts, my friends. You are unable to judge things impartially.
As for the military experience thing, if I were going to build a house, I’d talk to a carpenter, an electrician, a plumber, etc. People with experience in that area. It was going looking for legal advice, I’d talk to a lawyer. If I was looking to start a war, I’d talk to people who have actually fought in one. The fact that he systematically cut out the advice of people with combat experience (because they wouldn’t tell me what he wanted to hear) in favor of those (including Rummy, who was in the military but never saw combat) without any such experience is just ludicrous.
****
Tyere are plenty of people with combat experience who he had advice from , and plenty of people he didn’t. There are also myriad opinions amongst them about everything. Follow the newspapers, and you’ll see throughout this war, they’ve disagreed on everything. There are literally millions with combat experience I suspect, so yeah, there are a ton of opinions. There are also a ton of opinions among those who continued their careers after getting combat experience. There’s also such a thing as people with combat experience fighting the last war, which is something you also look to. not to mention ideals like civilian control of the military.
He established an expectation of the mission being accomplished that was established arbitrarily. As measured by time.
We track time by numbers. Time is therefore measurable. As he established the expectation of the mission being accomplished, by standing in front of gigantic words saying “Mission Accomplished,” the actual time of the war exceeding the accomplishment of an Allied victory in WWII gives us a scale of how wrong he was.
You repeated the proof is in the pudding, the proof is in the pudding. You aren’t interested in proofs of any kind.
Been busy. Haven’t had time to read most of the posts in this thread, and I’m not gonna post any opinions about the topic until I have.
But Captain Naraht, please don’t apologize for writing lengthy posts. Yours are always thoughtful, well-reasoned and worth the time it takes to read them.
Spiderbob, you are clearly smart enough to deflect arguments against the war when they are built in the form of slogans, which unfortunatly they often do. But behind the slogans there are real issues thtat need to be discussed seriously.
Bush led a war in Iraq with a certain set of justifications and political-strategic assumptions. Even if we leave aside the justifications for the war — since it’s already too late to discuss them — it seems clear that Bush’s strategic assumptions about how the war should be conducted were wrong, and that it took several years before even that was admitted, and as a result the situation deterioted even more. Now Bush comes and asks to continue this war based on a supposedly new set of strategic assumptions. Considering past performance it is quite reasonable to ask:
1) Are this really a new strategy, or is it more of the same strategy that has not worked so far?
2) Does this supposedly new stratey have any chance to succeed? Wishful thinking is certainly not enough.
3) Why should anybody trust Bush to do a better job with this new strategy he’s proposing considering his previous peformance? Doesn’t he owe it to the American public something more before he can ask him to put even faith in him as a war leader?
It may be true that yje proof is in the pudding, but I think most people will be very hesitant to try another dish cooked in Bush’s kitchen without better assurances.
Dear God Bill, hurry up and post. If I have to listen to spiderrob and Den squable over minutia…..
ARRG!! Squirrels!!
–Captain
Don’t worry, I’m not going to argue minutiae because Spiderrob is wrong. Sure, there were lots of people with military experience who gave Numbnuts advice.
And they were all ignored.
Finaly point: There’s a difference between heading the advice of people who are experts in their field and ceding civilian control over to them. We’ve now seen the results of what happens when Numbnuts decided to do the latter w/o doing the former.
Posted by spiderrob8
Well if our goal was to annhilate everything in Iraq like in WWII, and defeat the people totally, I am sure we could have ended it in two seconds by dropping a few atomic bombs like Truman did. (which i’ve actually heard a couple of WWII vets advocate, knowing nothing but total war). Otherwise, I don’t see what the relevance is to the length of the war vis a vi WWII. Two different wars, times, goals. Modern warfare is more difficult, both in goals, and in tactics allowed, even as technology and training improves
Having just demonstrated that you apparently know nothing of World War 2, history in general and warfare, total or otherwise, would you please explain to me why anything you say should be any more credible on those subjects than anything the Shrub – who exhibits the same symptoms – says?
Word War 2 was hardly “total” war – within twenty years of its end, the biggest losers were well on their way to becoming world-dominating economic and industrial powers. After a “total” war, they’d have been lucky if the grass was beginning to grow everywhere in that amount of time.
The dropping of two nuclear bombs obviated the need for an invasion of the Japanese Home Islands (which would have been “total war” and resulted, quite possibly, in as many US casualties as the rest of the Pacific War taken together – or perhaps even more; and what would have happned to Japan doesn’t bear contemplating.)
I doubt that any sane WW2 vet is advocating nukes in Iraq – there’s nothing to target.
Go away, play somewhere what you say might actually mean something.
Mike Weber, with respect,and without getting into Spiderbob’s other arguments, the term ‘total war’ was used to describe WWII at the time of the war. The term ‘total war’ has a history from which it derives its meaning.
That said, no person that uses the term ‘nuke ’em’ in a serious onversation should not be taken seriously.
I didn’t watch the speech and I hardly think he said something new. The idea of increasing the number of soldiers over there is a way to avoid saying, “We’re getting hammered from sides there, we don’t know who is our enemy; there’s no front lines; etc.”
In my humble opinion, sending more men to Iraq is away to establish some kind of perimeter in Baghad. A place where one can say, “See? We stopped the terrorist. Look how peaceful this city looks!”. The battle, of course, would still happen in the rest of the country and the number of casualities would grow.
It’s quite obvious that Bush is losing control of his military advisors and he doesn’t have the courage to stand to them and say “enough is enough”. He doesn’t look a man that can say anything without checking with someone else.
Again, the situation for the US is a lose-lose deal. Send more men and take the risk of not accomplishing anything and just lose more young men and women or leave Iraq to Iran and their fanatics, giving them a chance to create a real terrorist state with a lot of oil to use?
There’s the choice I see. Doesn’t look good.
Oh, by the way, sorry for any grammar mistakes.
“In my humble opinion, sending more men to Iraq is away to establish some kind of perimeter in Baghad. A place where one can say, “See? We stopped the terrorist. Look how peaceful this city looks!”. The battle, of course, would still happen in the rest of the country and the number of casualities would grow.”
This sounds right. This seems to be the plan. It even makes some sense from a military standpoint if:
a) Bush has 21,000 extra troops.
b) He has the support necessary to send them.
c) They actually succeed in securing and rebuilding Bagdad,
d) He can maintain political support while this is being done.
e) He is able to leverage this supposed success in order to get and hold control of the rest of Iraq.
That’s sounds nice, but there are a lot of if’s. Considering Bush’s past performance and the state of American and global public opinon, it is hard to believe that Bush can get support for such an iffy plan, even if it has some theoretical military merit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerilla_warfare#Counter-guerrilla_warfare
Counter-guerrilla warfare — Classic guidelines
7. Methodical clear and hold. An “ink spot” clear and hold strategy must be used by the counter-insurgent regime, dividing the conflict area into sectors, and assigning priorities between them. Control must expand outward like an ink spot on paper, systematically neutralizing and eliminating the insurgents in one sector of the grid, before proceeding to the next. It may be necessary to pursue holding or defensive actions elsewhere, while priority areas are cleared and held.
“That’s sounds nice, but there are a lot of if’s. Considering Bush’s past performance and the state of American and global public opinon, it is hard to believe that Bush can get support for such an iffy plan, even if it has some theoretical military merit.”
Micha, it’s obvious that such plan won’t get any support anywhere. Bush has proved incapable to show leadership and some shred of control over the situation in Iraq. It’s a plan that, in theory, would work, but, we would be talking about creating checkpoints and stopping anyone, civil or otherwise to go further. As you said, creating sectors and eliminating the threats, sector by sector, demands a great deal of soldiers.
What’s not said, of course, is the rate of casualities of such operation and how difficult would be to avoid civil casualities. It’s difficult already, when there’s an internal conflict happening at the same time a – I’m sorry about using the term, but that’s what I think – an invasion force tries to establish a frontline.
Quite a challenge for any military strategist, don’t you think?
I could swear Bush talked about the forces of “Freedom in moderation” at one point–though the official text reads “freedom and moderation.”
But I heard it as “in” and thought: well that’s not a very pithy bumpersticker: Operation Qualified Iraqi Freedom.
The US has two options:
1) To decide that it does not want to lose more soldiers’ lives and money in Iraq and leave.
or
2) Try to find a way to change the situation in Iraq before leaving.
In order to do the second, they wil have to use diplomacy in order to get the Baathists and other Sunis to share power with the Shia.
But in order to have to clout necessary to do anything diplomatic (which in itself is uncertain to succeed), the US has to have military successes in Iraq, or else they will have no credibility with both their allies and enemies. The enemies wil prefer to hold out for the victory of seeing the US run away rather than negotiate with it.
Acheiving a military success requires a new strategy, and even then will be difficult, but I wuld like to think that it is not completely impossible. But then, I am not a military strategist, so I can’t really say. Any military attempt will probably involve something like securing Bagdad according to the inkblot clear and hold approach outlined in the quote above. I don’t know how many soldiers are required to accomplish that task, but as I understand it, its merit is that it requires less soldiers than trying to control the whole country at the same time. The only things I can say for certain about this option is that there will be more American casualties, more Iraqi civilian casualties, and (I’m pretty certain) checkpoints.
So we’re back to square one: are you willing to risk tthe lives of more American soldiers, or do you prefer the risks involved in leaving Iraq in the current state.
From the point of view of purely American interests, leaving probably will be the lesser risk, since the US will recuperate from any diplomatic harm caused by the withdrawl, and the military risk to the US itself (from armies or terrorism) will not increase immediatly and so dramtically. The US will remain a super power, even with its feathers ruffled.
From the point of view of the Middle East, I think the US leaving is the greater risk. Although I cannot be 100% certain about that. But this is my unlearned assessment.
>Posted by Micha
Abe Lincoln:
Q: If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog?
A: Four, because calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one.
They called it “total war”, msybe, but it wasn’t.
What they were referring toi was a level of commitment, not the level of acton.
As David Drake says, in his incredible novel, Rolling Hot, as the viewpoint character, a civilian reporter who had made a two-day cross-country dash with Hammer’s Slammers to relieve a provincial capital, stands behind his gun in the back of an armored car as they roll into the capital, and hee sees some broken windows and bullet holes is building fronts “…it obviously hadn’t been too bad here. By now, he knew what things looked after someone had been really serious…”
“Total war”, no matter what they called WW2 is “shoot-the-women-and-kids, burn-the-buildings, sew-the-fields-with-salt stuff.
We haven’t seen actual “total war” since the dawn of modern military tech.
I’m not going to get into semantics. Total war is the term used historically and by historians to describe wars like WWII. If you want to write a book saying: you know what, it could have been worse, that’s fine. You can also try to come up with another term to describe a worse kind of war. But at present historical discourse as well as primary sources, the term total war refers to WWII and conflicts conducted in similar ways. Saying that they were using the term erroniously will render it meaningless, and will make reading hitorical primary and secondary sources difficult.
(There are historians who challenges the use of the term feudalism. But that’s not the same, since feudalism was a construct of later history, and their challenge was that previous historians were misinterpreting the sources There was also a historian that showed that there was no actual evidence for the existence of a cathedral school people were writing about since the late 19 century. But here too the mistake was not in the definition but in the interpretation of evidence.)
“Total war”, no matter what they called WW2 is “shoot-the-women-and-kids, burn-the-buildings, sew-the-fields-with-salt stuff.
Mike, I believe that “total war” has to do more with the dgree of social and political commitment to the achieving victory than it does to the actual tactics used.
When Goebbels invoked total war after the defeat at Stalingrad it was to inform the Germans that it was all or nothing, victory or utter defeat and every person had to be a part of the war effort. Any factory or service not directly involved in the war was superfluous.
(Considering how Speer was able to increase German armament production late in the war, despite the Allied bombings, you have to wonder if the Nazis would have been stoppable had they adopted a total war policy early on).
It’s almost impossible to imagine the USA or any other nuclar power engaging in a total war, since the economic and political costs would be higher than simply ending said conflict with a nuke or two.
I’m not sure what y’all are disagreeing about. All I know is after Bush set expectations for immediate relief — by giving a speech in front of a air-craft-carrier-sized “Mission Accomplished” banner — it’s been a length of time longer than US involvement in WWII. If someone has a clearer Proof of Pudding™ why don’t they simply share it with us?
“Considering how Speer was able to increase German armament production late in the war, despite the Allied bombings, you have to wonder if the Nazis would have been stoppable had they adopted a total war policy early on).”
It is hard to imagine an alternative scenario in which germany could have won against a country the size of the USSR and a country with the industrial power and geographical location like the US.
There was a little movie based on a book — Fatherland I think it was called — that depicted a future in Which Germany won. The scenario was that D-day failed and then the US stepped out of the war, and the Germans were stil caught in a war of attrition with the Russians. I wonder what would have happened if the Russians had to start fighting on their own against the Germans. Would it have turned the tide for the germans, or would the Russians simply have continued marching into France?
In any case, the US is not fighting a total war in Iraq, not according to WWII standards or Mike Weber’s Roman standards. a nuclear war is not really an option even if the US was willing to contemplate braking the taboo on the use of nuclear weapons.
I just read an interesting article on Iraq in Newsweek. It is from a few months ago. I don’t think I agree with his conclusions, but it is quite illuminating nevertheless.
The guy who wrote the article is Fareed Zakaria.
Posted by Iñaki at January 11, 2007 04:36 AM
More fear to justify the killings… that’s sad. remembers me of the Megadeth song “Blackmail the universe”
How about “Symphony of Destruction”
You take a mortal man
You put him in control
Watch him become a god
Watch peoples heads a-roll
Just like a Pied Piper
Lead rats through the streets
Dance like a marionette
Swaying to the symphony
of destruction
I don’t think Shrub quite got the message. And he still seems to believe that he still has a House full of rubber stampers and rim ticklers who will OK any idea he drops on them.
Posted by Micha
I stand by Abe Lincoln – words have meanings, and Humpty Dumpty ogic doesn’t change that meaning.
As if termoinology used by “historians” wasn’t already usually erroenous.
Posted by Bill Mulligan
Not the way spiderrob8 used it.
Using Goebbels to define the discourse sounds rather akin to using Mengele to define medical ethics…
Something interesting about both this war and the first Gulf War. According to all those social studies classes that I was the only one awake through, the best way to win a war is to have the entire country on a war footing. Hence the rationing and war bonds circa WWII. I’ve long wondered why it didn’t happen for either of these wars. I think part of it, part of the reason Bush didn’t say “Listen, this is what worked before, this is what we’re going to do NOW,” is because too many of his supporters would’ve looked at him the way the REST of us seem to look at him, as though he hadn’t even dusted himself off after he fell off the turnip truck. There are a lot of people that consider it a HUGE emergency if the local supermarket doesn’t have the right size lobster or the proper merlot to go with it. Can you imagine rationing now? Only ONE cup of Starbucks per week?? What do you MEAN, I can’t fill up my Lexus’s gas tank, you…you government person?
That might be what’s needed, for this entire country to be on a war footing. Have you seen Rosie the Riveter lately? Guess that’s why the Hummers didn’t have the right armor. Seriously, since this war started, what’s really changed homefront wise? Not much that I can see. From everything my parents told me, people felt like they had a personal stake in WWII. I can still go over to Wawa, get Brian’s chocolate milk, go home and have the lights on all night. Maybe that’s something that needs to change. Or is it that the people in Washington know that they couldn’t do something like that now and still get elected again? A shame people in DC are more interested in keeping their jobs than doing them.
“I stand by Abe Lincoln – words have meanings, and Humpty Dumpty ogic doesn’t change that meaning.”
I wish it was that simple. Philosophy of language is mind boggling 🙂
“As if termoinology used by “historians” wasn’t already usually erroenous.”
That’s an overstatement and oversimplification of what historians do. Historians make mistakes in the interpretation of the material, not in the terminology.
But that’s really not the issue, is it? Nobody is disputing that wars can be more brutal than WWII, or that Iraq is neither like WWII or the hypothetical more brutal war. The question is not semantics but how to handle Iraq with relation to the military tools available?
Why do political discussions shift so many times into semantics?
Sean, the United States is so rich and powerful that it expects itself to be capable of fighting wars without the degree of energy that was used in WWII.
I’m not exactly sure how much energy was required to do a better job in Iraq — I don’t know how many soldiers the US has and how many were required — but I doubt it would have required the level of energy used in WWII. It seems that the failure in Iraq is more a result of mismanagement of the power the US had at its disposal without going on a war footing.
In the case of the war of terror, your success is measured in your abiility to maintain normal life as much as possible.
Spiderrob tried to make the point that Bush could have met “Mission Accomplished” immediately if we used nukes, Mike Weber pointed out that nukes wouldn’t have worked because what would you nuke, and you’ve been trying to get Mike to rephrase his point with more formal semantic consistency.
If your point in arguing is to minimize semantics, you could simply stop arguing semantic issues. There, I’ve solved your problem. Is there anything else I can help you with?
It is hard to imagine an alternative scenario in which germany could have won against a country the size of the USSR and a country with the industrial power and geographical location like the US.
Well, there’s the very possible scenario of the Germans developing nuclear power. With their already having rockets and jets that would have been Game Over, for the European theater at least.
Once the Americans also developed the bomb would we have settled for the stalemate of a cold war or used it against a nuclear Germany?
Fortunately the Nazis chased out some of their best scientists into the welcoming arms of teh American military which, along with the bombing of a Norway heavy water plant and the fact that the Gernmans did not commit enough resources to research into nukes because they didn’t think the war would go on that long, made history work out the way it did. Thank God.
Bill, did you see the play Copenhagen?
I saw it in London. It’s a play about a half-imaginary meeting between Niels Bohr and Wener Heisenberg during the war concerning the development of nuclear weapons.
“Well, there’s the very possible scenario of the Germans developing nuclear power. With their already having rockets and jets that would have been Game Over, for the European theater at least.
Once the Americans also developed the bomb would we have settled for the stalemate of a cold war or used it against a nuclear Germany?”
Good point and interesting question. A good starting point to some alternative history sci-fi books.
I think it would have been something like:
Britain surrenders (similar to Japan).
The US stops the war in Europe and shortly afterwards Japan.
Russia, I don’t know
Cold War with Germany and Japan, but probably more brutal for Europeans and Asians.
Interesting questions: what would have happened in India, Afrika, and the Middle East. What would have happened to decolonization.
wow, this is much more fun than thinking of Iraq. But escapism is not going to solve the problems there. I don’t know what will. Most of the plans I hear have a hope for the best kind of feel to them.
There’s an ancient Jewish expression: a stone that one fool threw into a well, ten sages can’t take out. (sounds better in the original).
In all truth, I really don’t quite get what failure would amount to there . . . considering we were successful in our alliance with Saddam a few decades back. Shiite by any other name still smells the same, imho.
Bill, did you see the play Copenhagen?
Haven’t seen it but it’s a very intriguing premise.
I think it would have been something like:
Britain surrenders (similar to Japan).
The US stops the war in Europe and shortly afterwards Japan.
Russia, I don’t know
Cold War with Germany and Japan, but probably more brutal for Europeans and Asians.
Interesting questions: what would have happened in India, Afrika, and the Middle East. What would have happened to decolonization.
A lot depends on when this imaginary scenario takes place–before or after Normandy, for example.
Realistically, the Germans would have had teh bomb relatively late in the war and they would have been hard pressed to manufacture them in large numbers.
So…the likliest scenario in my opinion is that he would have used them on Russia, take out Stalin and Moscow and hope that the resulting power struggle (and threat of further bombings) would take Russia out of the equation–basically go back to the old bordwers despite Germany having gottebn the worse of it, pre-bomb.
I don’t think he would have needed or wanted to destroy much of Europe with nukes. No fun in ruling a radioactive wasteland. The French would go back to vassal status without much trouble. The English would have to agree to a cessation of hostilities; Churchill and the Royal Family woul probably end up in America as leaders in exile.
If Hitler allowed the Americans to evacuate Europe it’s possible we would end up with a kind of cold war. But why would he after Dunkirk? If large numbers of US troops were killed or captured I don’t see how the country would have accepted any kind of peace.
And within a short time we would have had bombs, lots of them, with the advantage that it would only take one to decapitate the Reich.
So I think the eventual end would have been close to what we got, albeit with far more casualties. The question marks are in that time between Hitler having the bomb and us getting it.
“Bill, did you see the play Copenhagen?
Haven’t seen it but it’s a very intriguing premise.”
I highly recommend this play, but I don’t want to mislead anybody. It is not a what if play as much as a metaphorical play.
It takes an actual historical event: a meeting between Niels Bohr and Wener Heisenberg, and then starts to build a Rashomon kind of story in which, in some later time, Bohr, his wife and Heisenberg discuss what happened in this meeting. The discussion has four levels: a scientific discussion about quantum physics; a discussion about what happened in the meeting; a historical discussion about related historical events; and a moral discussion about the development of nuclear weapons. All this using Heisenberg principle of uncertainty as a metaphor.
Very artsy, which ordinarily I wouldn’t like, but which I really liked this time.
About WWII, I suppose we could speculate for hours how things could have happened differently. It is a recurring theme in sci-fi.
I heard on the radio yesterday evening that Bush would admit that his mistakes have led to the mess we and Iraq are during an interview on 60 Minutes, but CBS is running a football game right now.
If D-Day had failed we would have simply coerced Germany to surrender with nukes. Germany stopped funding nuclear weapons research long before D-Day, and Heisenberg was telling the Germans a nuclear bomb would need fissionable materials not in kilograms, but in the tons.
If the Nazis had developed the bomb earlier, they could have destroyed the Soviets easily and, with the V2, they could have wiped out Britain as well, assuming they were able to build enough bombs. With them out of the way, they could have concentrated on the US then and the result would have most likely have be them nuking Washington and NYC while we nuked Berlin and Dresden.
The driving out of their best scientists was probably the luckiest break humanity had ever had. The only significant one that stayed was Heisenberg and whether he collaborated with them or dragged his heels is still a matter of historical debate.
I think he might have spared the British, at least early in the war. The threat alone would have been enough to force a change in political regimes and he would have needed as much of Europe whole as possible for the rebuilding and rearming of germany.
The V2 was still a long way from being an intercontinental missle but there’s no way we would have been sure of that and this would have played a role in any decisions that Roosevelt had to make.
Any serious what if scenario would also have to consider that if the nazis were actually getting close to the bomb we might have found out about it and doubled and tripled our own efforts. I don’t think the gap between german aquisition and American aquisition of nuclear power would have been long.
More interesting to me is wondering how, assuming a German victory in Europe, they would have been able to maintain order. True, they would have had no problem ruthlessly suppressing any rebellions but with an enemy across the seas with a virtually untouched industrial complex and a depleted army stretched from the Atlantic to Asia how well could even Nazi efficiancy have coped?
(One happy thought is that I suspect Hitler would have been taken out by ambitious underlings, leading to a nice intracine bloodbath among the Nazi “eliet”. Though…that might have resulted in more competant German leadership, not an altogether good thing. has there ever been an alternative story where someone does the old “Go abck in time and kill Hitler” fantasy only to have it result in a new leader taking over, one smart enough to, for example, not strap bombs onto newly invented fighter jets, thus eliminating their speed advantage?)
No, the V2 could not have been used to hit the US, but I meant only that it could have been devastating to the British. To hit us, he would have had to have used a more conventional bomber or perhaps figure out how to launch a V2 from a sub.
As for killing Hitler, I’m in the camp that a major conflict in Europe during the 30s and 40s was inevitable. Had Hitler not have been there, some other leader would have risen to power. Maybe the war would have taken on a completely different character in which this leader avoided some of Hitler’s major mistakes, but probably making many of his own instead.
Posted by: Luigi Novi at January 14, 2007 08:11 PM
I heard on the radio yesterday evening that Bush would admit that his mistakes have led to the mess we and Iraq are during an interview on 60 Minutes, but CBS is running a football game right now.
And a dámņ good football game it was. Quite exciting, to the very end. Unfortunately, I missed Bush’s interview on 60 Minutes. It was inadvertant, I assure you!
Anyway, I read about the interview this morning. No surprises, really. Bush and Cheney say they’re going ahead with their plan regardless of its lack of popularity.
I wonder how this will play out. On the one hand, history has shown that a president cannot win a war without the support of the American people, and right now Bush lacks that support.
On the other hand, I wonder if the Democrats can really get away with cutting funding for the war as some have threatened. Even if they could muster up the votes needed to make it happen, it leaves them open to the charge of being “anti-troop.” Public sentiment may be against the war, but the public can be fickle. If people perceive that the Democrats are cutting are troops off at the knees — whether that perception is fair or not — Bush could use that as a political weapon.
P.S. Den, I blew it with my NFL predictions. San Diego’s not going to the ‘Bowl after all. I may also have cursed Chicago by predicting their success. Although I don’t care about that — I root for the AFC.
P.P.S. Don’t give up on Philly, Den. In the era of NFL parity, it’s only a matter of time.
For Philly fans, there’s always next year.
And BTW, I don’t consider my response to Spiderrob to be a “mistake”. Some things just need to be said.