Originally Posted by Trollheart

I'm intrigued. I know you think in absolutes, often esoteric absolutes - war should not exist, people shouldn't pay for goods, there should be no politicians etc - but man has been at war probably since one cave dissed another, or one tribe wanted the land of another. War is hard-coded into our genes, it would seem. So, while we all wish it wasn't, war is a part of the human makeup, and horrible, bloody wars have been fought down the centuries, and back as far as human history is recorded, and probably before.

So, given all that: World War II. You had a jumped-up little ****er thumbing his nose at the world and invading where he liked. The circumstances that drove him to this - or perhaps more accurate to say, gave him the excuse and the licence to do so - were of course already in place, and the Allies have that to deal with forever, so hardly blameless. Nevertheless, stepping outside of your box of absolutes for a moment, what would you have done, as Hitler annexed country after country, making a play for world domination? Do you not think, horrible as it was, that it was right and also necessary, even imperative, to stop him? And could that be achieved any other way? He lied through his teeth to get what he wanted, then turned on countries that were essentially defenceless. How would you have stopped the threat of the Nazis coming to power and taking Europe?

You can call FDR and Truman war criminals, and certainly they would have had cases to answer had the Germans won the war (as is always the case, the victors call the vanquished war criminals and dictators, and ignore the fact that they are, at bottom, as bad as them) but didn't they also have a duty to stand up to the evil of Nazi expansionism and take Hitler on?

Many wars can be described as unjustified, but WW II, to me, was not one of them. I hate war of course, but sometimes it's the only option, would you not agree?