Do you put your hand over your heart during the National Anthem?

[CajunBlazer]

191. You need to spend some time with some good histrory books

The British Ilses would have been successfully invaded by the Germans had it not been for the United States military. Hitler ordered his troops to invade Russia in September of 1941 precisely because he did not regard the British as a sufficient threat, but he was wrong because the Japanese were stupid enough drag the United States into the war in December of 1941 before his German troops had time to dispatch Britain.

The US was providing significant military aid in the form of supplies and military equipment to Great Britain as early as September of 1940. Three entire fighter squadrons of the Royal Air Force (RAF) were made up of volunteer pilots from the United States prior to America's entry into the war.

The British fought bravely and held off the Germans until the American military arrived in Britain, reinforcing the island with men and material which made a German invasion of Britain impossible. The US aircraft operating from Britain pounded the German military from the air which effectively kept the Germans from concentrating all of their military might on Russia. The British Ilses also provided an launching pad for the Allies invasion of Europe. Most of the troops involved in that invasion were American. Even the threat of that invasion, which the Germans always knew would be coming, kept the Germans from concentrating all of their attention on defeating the Russians.

And let's not forget about the Japanese. The Japanese military rolled the dice in their attack on Pearl Harbor and lost. They hoped to wipe out most of our naval forces in the Pacific, but failed. Their surprise attack sank several of our battleships, but fortunately none of our aircraft carriers were in port, and that ultimately made all of the difference. The Japanese spent the rest of the war trying to fend off the ever advancing American forces. This kept the Japanese military from also attacking Russia on a second front.

As any historian with a knowledge of World War II will verify, is was America's involvement in the War which spelled the difference between defeat and victory for the Allies. Had the US never entered the war, the Axis powers almost certainly would have been victorious on the European and Asian continents. If they had then been allow to recoup and consolidate their conquered territories and rebuild their armed forces we would certainly live in a totally different world, though how different we cannot be sure.

If the US had not entered the war early on, it is hard to say if the Germans and the Japanese would have ultimately been able to successfully invade the United States. The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans would have presented significant barriers to such an invasion, but we and the Canadians would have essentially been fighting alone.

In addition, if the United States had not entered the war, it is likely that Germans would have had time develop atomic weapons first, and they certainly were way ahead of us in the development of rockets capable of delivering such weapons over long distances. Maybe the use of atomic weapons, or even the threat of the use of such weapons would have made an armed invasion unnecessary. We frankly don't know what would have happened if the Germans and Japanese ruled all of Europe and Asia. However, since the German-Japanese agreement on how to they would divide the US between them predated our entry into the war, at least their intentions were clear.

Look you hate war, I get it. But no one hates wars more than military men who have experienced its true horrors. I was in the military during the Vietnam War, but I have come to view that war as a huge mistake and waste of far too many American lives. As Bush and his evil cronies built up forces in Kuwait prior to our invasion of Iraq, I preached everyone who would listen that war was both unnecessary and would ultimately be unwise given the history and ethnic make up of Iraq. My favorite saying in those days was, "It is a huge mistake to remove the evil stopper (Hussein) out of the evil bottle", but most Americans were not in mood to listen. They were taken in by Bush's lies.

However, as much as I hate war, I fully understand that until the world is a very different place, there are likely to be leaders of countries who will be believe that they can take what they want by force of arms. The sad truth is that someone has to be prepared to stop them