It's a provocative essay. Here it is.

His inexlicable antics are no longer amusing. First Newt, than Ken Starr and now pugnacious Pat again? What the hell is up with conservatives? Are we determined to implode?

If the objective of the West was the destruction of Nazi Germany, it was a "smashing" success. But why destroy Hitler?

What a fucking evil nutjob.

Pat's off his meds again

I'm looking forward to Cedarford's comments

Or......maybe.....Cedarford is Buchanan?

Just in case he forgot, the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor and Germany declared war on us three days later.

But maybe Pat's right, all we had to do was tell them we're very sorrry and we could've stayed out of it all. Chessch!

72 raisins sees a group of conservatives making comments on the web and on television.

BUCHANAN
World War II didn't need to happen!

STARR
The filibuster is sacred!

NEWT
What they said!

72 raisins and Ace watch them rolling on the ground in a fight to the death. 72 raisins sighs, solemn. He looks up at Ace.

RAISINS
We're not gonna make it, are we?
Conservatives, I mean.

ACE
It is in your nature to destroy yourselves.

Raisins nods, depressed.

RAISINS
Yeah. Drag, huh?

Trotting out the Pat is an anti-Semite card may have its place, but not here. Nothing in the piece can be construed as the least bit anti-Semitic, other than the sin of omission. But let's be honest: We did not go to war in WWII to shutdown Auschwitz and Dachau. Not one bit.

Nor were we very much successful even by accident in preventing the Holocaust. (The Final Solution wasn't even promulgated until after our entry, so one can argue that we actually hastened German plans for Jewish eradication.)

This is not to say Buchanan is right, but that the usual trope for discounting his opinion isn't valid here.

Now, as to what he did write, where are the problems? The biggest is "If to liberate Germans, it was not worth it. After all, the Germans voted Hitler in."

But that's true. The Germans didn't want liberation.

And it's also true that the Eastern European countries that were the immediate causi belli wound up being dominated by just as bad dictators for half a century.

One doesn't have to agree with everything Buchanan writes here, but his points aren't whacked out, anti-Semitic bullshit either. Rather, it's a viewpoint that can lead to re-examination and debate.

Moreover, PB is just an easier target, stalking horse here. They're really going after the President's remarks in the Baltics.

Pat's a guy who started off as a smart, blue-collar conservative, but for the last decade or so he's more or less been sailing off the edge of the world. He's kind of the mirror image of moonbats like Ramsey Clark--or, these days, Wesley Clark.

In any case, Buckley's right. Pat might be personally charming (as long as you're not Jewish), but he no longer represents anything respectable about American conservatism. His long conservative history doesn't mean he deserves to get a pass for essentially contemptible views. Which is one more difference between conservatives and moonbats.

You know, if he wants to debate ancient history, why doesn't he pick WWI? No one remembers it, no one alive today was in it, and a lot of the people who care anything about it agree that getting into it was a bad idea. Which it was. It produced Hitler and Lenin, for chrissake.

Plus, it was a Democrat that got us in it, right after he was elected on a "He kept us out of war" platform."

By focusing on WWI, he could play the scholarly politician, criticize a deeply unlikable Democrat, and beat the non-interventionist drum all day long without crapping on anybody's aging grandfather. It's really a win-win.

There was a time when Buchanan was pro-Israel and pro free-trade. He started this nativist, isolationist journey in the early 90's after the Berlin Wall came down and as he ran for President. The first hints came when he was among the first to attack the "neocons" within the Republican party. Back then, a neocon was usually defined as a former, usually jewish, liberal who had been "mugged by reality" and became a Republican.

Nicholas,

Uh uh. It's fair enough to point out that WWII wasn't fought to save the Jews, but Buchanan isn't just focusing on motivations, he's focusing on effects (including unintentional ones). To ignore the fact that the defeat of Germany prevented a permanent system of "cleansing" in a large part of Europe speaks volumes.

The Germans didn't want liberation.

Some of them (i.e. the Jewish ones, among other groups) probably appreciated it.

"[T]he usual trope" about Buchanan applies quite nicely here.

Actually, Phinn, I think Buchanan took on WWI in A Republic, Not an Empire. He thought American involvement in that one was a lousy idea too. Admittedly, that's a much more defensible thesis.

Pat's views are basically pre-FDR American conservatism in terms of ideology, with a significant strain of European rightism. But all of that's overlaid with identity politics. I don't think his anti-semitism is really ideological at all. He's just an Irish Catholic who likes Germans, hates the British, and really, really hates the Jews.

I second Nick. I don't think Buchanan is right, but the anti-semite toss off is cheap and lazy. I don't think Ward Churchill is right either, but it's not enough to call him a fake Indian.

Wait, wait . . .

I don't know what came over me.

I'm . . . well . . . I'm appalled.

RAISINS
Yeah. Drag, huh?

RAISINS But whenever I get discouraged like above I always remember the episode of Firing Line in the late 70's in which William Buckley was pointing out to Malcom Muggeridge that Communism was winning all over the world and he quoted Nixon as saying: "I believe it will be a Communist world someday" and Kissinger said: "the west is dying, the only thing we can do is to make the patient feel better." Muggeridge replied: yes we are losing all over the world and it doesn't look good, but that is where the faith comes in. God will not let the Soviet Union plunge the world into darkness and the west will triumph over communism.

The good news is that National Review reads him out of the conservative movement every time his name comes up. The bad news is that every time his name comes up, the MSM is there to talk about the controversial conservative firebrand who says what Republicans really think.

This comment of his isn't about Jews this time. What he's arguing, on the margins, is that Teutons and Celts deserve to look out for their racial interests; that Hitler was a champion of such interests, but shouldn't be viewed a hero because, you know, he lost; and that other races should be viewed as expendable where they get in the white man's way (here meaning, Slavs).

Sam Francis died this February, on a related note. He's the clown whom the Washington Times fired for arguing for an identity politics for white people that would rule out, e.g., intermarriage with non-whites. I did not send flowers.

Hubris: Sure, but a minority in America wants "liberation" from Bush, too, and thinks he's just like Hitler.

We did not go to war for the Jews or concentration camps at all. Britain and France declared war because of Germany's insatiable devouring of its eastern neighbors. All of whom wound up being devoured by the Soviet Union (more or less).

We went to war because Hitler was stupid enough to give us the excuse after Pearl Harbor by declaring war on us first.

Would we have been better off letting the Soviets and Nazis bleed each other dry? I think not, but it's an arguable position, rather than one indicative of a nutjob.

Raisins...I'm with you sometimes. I look at the actions or inactions of Republicans and wonder whether we have a tic or something that forces our elected officials to do stupid, counterproductive things.

Hitler viewed America as ultimately the biggest threat to his global ambitions. His scientists were feverishly developing the long-range technology to bring his madness to our shores. Our choice was to face him with allies or face him later all alone. The isolationists never want to wrap their minds around that reality.

I agree with Hubris. Buchanan's column isn't neccesarily anti-semitic, but taken with his overall politics the last 20 years it seems to fit. It also ignores the fact that the spread of Nazism could have reached much much farther had the US not stepped in, and whether he things "germans didn't want freedom" or not, that would not have been a good thing.

Nicholas,

If Bush actually starts gassing people, I think that it would be justified for other countries to intervene.

You're continuing to focus on our motivations while ignoring the actual effects of taking Hitler down.

I would direct you back to Buchanan's title:

Was World War II Worth It?

In discussing the answer to that question, to ignore Hitler's genocide makes him, yes, a nutjob. Unless anyone wants to argue that in retrospect, that isn't something that should be weighed in the final reckoning.

This is one of those things where people think it's cool to "think outside of the box," but it's actually just fine inside the box. Get back in the box.

I disagree with most of what he says, but Kronos has a point. Pat spews this bile on a fairly regular basis, and it's not all that newsworthy. The main reason this is getting media play is that it's a way to hit back at Bush for his remarks in the Baltics, saying that WWII didn't end all that well for mos of central and eastern Europe.

Plus, like David Ross said, the MSM can describe Buchanan as a "controversial conservative," regardless of how many times the conservatives have disowned him.

Trotting out the Pat is an anti-Semite card may have its place, but not here. Nothing in the piece can be construed as the least bit anti-Semitic, other than the sin of omission.

Er...that is a GIGANTIC omission. Sorry, but you just can't waive it off as nothing.

But let's be honest: We did not go to war in WWII to shutdown Auschwitz and Dachau. Not one bit.

We could get into this complex issue, which involves a lot of "who know what and when" type of stuff, but it doesn't matter because Buchanan's piece is all about looking at the bottom line of what we did and did not accomplish in World War II. While going through all the good and the bad, he comes to the conclusion that there was more bad than good. OK, fine, but when he completely neglects to count saving the Jews from complete extermination as a good thing, that is one hell of an omission.

It is so blatant an omission that I think the anti-Semite charge is relevant here...

Seems to me that he was implying that there was no reason to stop with Hitler. At the end of the day, "Uncle Joe" was a bigger threat to us, and indeed was a bigger monster.

I don't think that his column should be an endorsement of Hitler. If you are anti-communist, understand that the Nazis were too. Bigtime.

So in a perfect world, both the Nazis and the Commies would have gotten taken out in 1945. But that didn't happen. I think Pat is saying "Why is it that we went to war to fight the Nazis to keep them from dominating Europe and killing millions, then handed over half of Europe to be dominated, killing millions?"

From that perspective, what he is saying makes perfect sense, unless you are somehow assigning to Hitler's victims lives more value than Stalin's victims.

There were many, many commie/Stalin symps in the United States and Europe. Hell, there still are. FDR was one of them. Churchill was not. And Churchill warned about the Iron Curtain.

What exactly did Buchanan want Churchill to do? Winston did what he had to. He saved his beloved England. As was his job and responsibility. Was England to go against Stalin alone?

Too many Alger Hiss types in America to be able to count on them.

Andy the Squirrel (still not sure where the hell that name came from).

If Bush actually starts gassing people, I think that it would be justified for other countries to intervene.

Knowing Europeans, the practice would probably earn concerned visits from foreign diplomats, followed by tours of the facilities and nice dinners, followed by handshakes, and topped off with agreements for them to ship their undesirables to our gas chambers.

I'm surprised nobody's pointed out Buchanan's biggest logical error, which makes his essay totally fall apart.

If the Brits, French and Dutch had let Hitler have Eastern Europe, does anyone honestly think he would have never come after them?

Ridiculous. Hitler wanted it all, baby. Waiting until he had a network of mines and factories spread across a dozen different countries, serviced by millions of slaves, out of range from our bombers, would have made him undefeatable.

That, plus an extra couple of years to perfect the atom bomb?

Geez, you would think Buchanan would have considered those two things...

Wish I could hear PB's comments, but I'll give newsday the benefit of doubt,

my "WTF" moment was reading that Pat said this: "Britain and France drew Germany into the wider conflict".

I mean, WTF?

Hubris: We didn't stop the Holocaust, however, and (as I said) one can even argue we accelerated the genocide (just as in Kosovo).

Further, how much did our intervention hasten the German collapse? Many historians argue the Soviets were going to defeat them anyway, and they were certainly going down by the time of the Normandy invasion. Then there is the question of whether life under the Nazis versus life under the Commies. Stalin 1945 to 1953 in particular was no great humanitarian.

If Bush actually starts gassing people, I think that it would be justified for other countries to intervene.

We have capital punishment here, and by the standards of the contemporary world community that is unacceptable. Blacks are disproportionately executed. As long as Americans are happy with their government, could the external community use that as a reasons as justification to attack us under the guise of liberation? Of course it's not comparable to me and you, but obviously many in the world see it differently. More to the point, we didn't intervene in Germany to stop the gassing.

I don't think 60 years ago--just as in Rwanda decades later--we would have considered anything Hitler was doing to the domestic population while supported by the majority justifying an external invasion. We've countenanced as much from too many other regimes that had less support of the domestic population. That last is imperative in evaluating Buchanan's statement; at best we "liberated" a small minority of Germans.

As you mention, however, we need to be discussing was it worth it, rather than did we have a moral reason. After the fact, was WWII worth it? Hell, yes. By going in we were able to help shape the post-WWII world and keep the entirety of Europe from domination by a single victorious power. And, on the off chance Hitler had triumphed, I think the Nazis would have been more formidable than the Soviets because they would have gone for outright confrontation with us, rather than decades of Cold War. Finally, it was worth it in how it makes us feel about ourselves as a country. We stepped in and did the right thing. To use an historical analogy, even if your neighbor's house might burn down and not affect yours, do you really want to be the guy who just stands there watching it burn?

But that's something you and I can discuss the particulars of without either of us coming to believe the other is insane or in need of meds.

I'm telling you, if a lefty wrote something similar--Was the settling of America worth it, considering how many Native Americans died?--the cow over it would be much smaller. Buchanan is tagging onto what Bush said in the Baltics, but has just taken it a step farther--it's what hard-right, isolationist conservatives have said about Yalta for decades. We went to war to stop a tyranny from dominating Eastern Europe, we won, and the tyranny happened anyway.

Nicholas,

The thing you're skipping over is that he didn't even mention it. It wasn't even something to be weighed.

Let's say I decided to walk to work one day. My sole reason to do so was to save money on gasoline. Unfortunately, on the way to work it rained and I got soaked, making me question whether it was worth the trouble. About five minutes later, I happened to walk by someone getting raped and stop the rapist.

I then write an essay titled "Was Walking To Work Worth It?"

I don't mention that I happened to stop a rape as an unintended consequence of my walk.

Was I fairly considering the question in my essay title?

I don't care what a lefty would write and what the relative reaction would be - one nutjob at a time.

And I use that word again, deliberately. With respect to Buchanan, not you (since you're not making the same omission he is).

one can even argue we accelerated the genocide (just as in Kosovo).

Best to let it happen, but more slowly?

Er...that is a GIGANTIC omission. Sorry, but you just can't waive it off as nothing.

What you are saying is that anytime anyone makes an argument about any facet of WWII they have to make the necessary hoseannas about the Holocaust, or be labelled an anti-Semite.

Buchanan is arguing about our reasons for going to war versus the outcome we achieved. We didn't fight the war for the Holocaust. And we didn't prevent it by fighting the war.

Do you think the war is justified by the necessity for avenging the Holocaust and that because Buchanan neglects to mention that he's an anti-Semite?

Percentage of Jews killed in Final Solution:

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/killedtable.html

Bearing in mind also which countries were liberated by the Western powers, rather than the Soviet Union, how many Jewish lives do you think we (inadvertently) saved?

There were 260,000 Jews left in France, and that's a significant number even by WWII quantities, but the reason so many were still alive is the Vichy Republic--which the Nazis did not overrun until after the North African invasion (1943, IIRC).

What you are saying is that anytime anyone makes an argument about any facet of WWII they have to make the necessary hoseannas about the Holocaust, or be labelled an anti-Semite.

Strawman. It isn't "any facet," Buchanan is asking about whether or not the overall war was worth it.

America's entry into WW II certainly did not stop the Holocaust in German-occupied areas - I mean, it was pretty much complete. Still, had the Germans won, or even won more before being defeated, then they might have had access to the Jews of then-Palestine, more of Russia, and possibly even Britain.

America certainly did not enter the war to save the Jews - but with a man like Hitler and a system like Nazism, it's not about one ethnic group per se, but rather, do you want to live in a world with an empire capable of doing that to various ethnic groups? You might not care for the Jews, but a Polish or Ukranian -American might have been a little bit pissed had the Germans been able to implement their larger de-population programs for the Slavic lands. The Jews were just the first step - the canary in the coal mine (as per SOP).

People (and I use the term loosely) like Pat are just too damned selfish and short-sighted to grasp this.

All that said, Yalta was a huge betrayal - America could have saved at least the Czechs, and maybe some of the Poles, but instead they were traded away - not out of malice, but rather because of wooly-headed illusions about Unka Joe.

Amen, Hubris. How Buchanan could just not mention the Holocaust is beyond me, as is anyone that would try to claim such an omission isn't meaningful. Give me a break.

If Buchanan had argued that the Holocaust somehow happened because of our intervention, or that it was made worse, or whatever, then that would be one thing. But he's supposedly adding up all the good and bad things, and he neglects to mention that.

I'm not sure how we're supposed to draw any conclusion from that other than Pat Buchanan considers the Holocaust to be roughly neutral, neither a good nor a bad thing. Or perhaps he even counts it as a good thing but didn't want to mention that. It's certainly hard to conclude that he feels the Holocaust was an unbelievable horror, that it was a supremely good thing to stop it, and that, whoops, he just forgot to include that in his article.

Are All These Jews Worth It?
by Patrick J. Buchanan

In the continuing debate regarding World War II, I realize that I forgot to mention that "killing the Jews thing" Hitler had going.

I try to be pragmatic as part of my America First! philosophy, so we need to think about the pros and cons here.

Pros:

1. Jewish delis. Those Jews really can make a great sandwich.
2. Jews are skilled accountants by birth.
3. Seinfeld. That was a great show.

Cons:

1. See #2 above. An unfortunate side effect is that they have their dirty Jew hands on the secret international levers of world power.
2. Jews are stealing traditionally Gentile manufacturing jobs.
3. The improvisation on Curb Your Enthusiasm seems forced at times.
4. Swarthy Jews looking at my wife Shelley Ann.

I think the correct conclusion is obvious.

I cannot believe you havent posted on this Ace. What the hell is wrong with you. My god the bits you could do off of this one.

http://www.redstaterant.com/archives/519-WHOA-.......mule!.htmln this

Unfortunately many Democrats and liberals see the right as made up of Pat Buchanans. At least I did, until I started reading this and other conservative sites. It's comforting to know you all don't share his views.

Nicholas,

Er...that is a GIGANTIC omission. Sorry, but you just can't waive it off as nothing.

What you are saying is that anytime anyone makes an argument about any facet of WWII they have to make the necessary hoseannas about the Holocaust, or be labelled an anti-Semite.

No. I'm saying that anytime someone is listing the plusses and minuses of the U.S. fighting World War II you'd expect them to consider the Holocaust.

Buchanan is arguing about our reasons for going to war versus the outcome we achieved.

Ah. OK, for me this actually does clarify what you are saying. You are saying he is strictly looking at what we hoped to accomplish when we first entered the war and then comparing each goal with with how it actually turned out. You are saying that since "stopping the Holocaust" was not one of our original goals, that when evaluating whether we accomplished our original goals it simply does not come up.

I could buy this in a strict technical sense if Buchanan's article was truly about whether we accomplished our original goals. But I don't think it is. The article is asking if it was "worth it", and I don't think you can assess that while ignoring everything that happened that wasn't part of the original plan.

If we're going to go that route, then the whole article is pointless, because our original goals had to do with defeating Hitler specifically, not keeping countries free of any manner of oppressive rule. So it makes as little sense to ignore the Holocaust as it would to ignore what happened shortly after WWII.

We didn't fight the war for the Holocaust. And we didn't prevent it by fighting the war.

Do you think the war is justified by the necessity for avenging the Holocaust and that because Buchanan neglects to mention that he's an anti-Semite?

No, we didn't prevent it. But we stopped it before even more people died in it.

Bearing in mind also which countries were liberated by the Western powers, rather than the Soviet Union, how many Jewish lives do you think we (inadvertently) saved?

There were 260,000 Jews left in France, and that's a significant number even by WWII quantities, but the reason so many were still alive is the Vichy Republic--which the Nazis did not overrun until after the North African invasion (1943, IIRC).

You lost me here. Is your point that we didn't save that many Jews? Or what?

Ace, you have a bizarre site. My above message was rejected to a content warning. I had to change this:

"not keeping countries free f.om all manner of oppressive rule"

To this:

"not keeping countries free of any manner of oppressive rule"

It didn't like the phrase "free f.om". In fact, it still doesn't like it, so I had to replace the "r" with a ".".

No WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction)? Not necessary, instead the greatest weapons of our enemies are our own WLLB's (Whiney Little Liberals Bitches).

Kronos, there are so many misstatemnts in your last post that I hardly know where to begin. Let's take them one at a time:

What you are saying is that anytime anyone makes an argument about any facet of WWII they have to make the necessary hoseannas about the Holocaust, or be labelled an anti-Semite.

Wrong. The Holocaust is a relevant factor in weighing the merits of fighting WWII; taking it into consideration is hardly making the “necessary hosannas,” and ignoring it is a significant omission.

We didn't fight the war for the Holocaust. And we didn't prevent it by fighting the war. Do you think the war is justified by the necessity for avenging the Holocaust…?

We didn’t prevent it, and it was never a top priority compared to defeating Fascism and rescuing the Western European democracies, a goal which was successfully achieved. Still, half of Europe’s 12 million Jews were saved from Hitler’s goal of total extermination. That’s a significant difference, and not at all the same as vengeance.

Bearing in mind also which countries were liberated by the Western powers, rather than the Soviet Union, how many Jewish lives do you think we (inadvertently) saved?

Since the the Western powers and the Soviets were allies, this dichotomy seems a little simplistic. For that matter, so does the notion that since shutting down the camps wasn’t a top priority, any Jewish lives were therefore saved “inadvertently.”

There were 260,000 Jews left in France, and that's a significant number even by WWII quantities, but the reason so many were still alive is the Vichy Republic--which the Nazis did not overrun until after the North African invasion (1943, IIRC).

The Vichy government remained the de jure government of France until the Allies liberated Paris, and they cooperated more fully with the Nazis than almost any other occupied country. (And before or after the North Africa invasion, France was never fully occupied by the Nazis.) Certainly they cooperated when it came to rounding up the French Jewish population and sending them to camps—an area where Mussolini was more effective in foiling Hitler’s plans. Both points are documented in Paul Johnson’s Modern Times and elsewhere.

Slublog

Buclkley et. al. have made the point that conservatives were out of power for so long that they don't really know how to use it once they get it. He said it used to be the job of a conservative to lose as slowly as possible. And Republicans are still scared of the press, they're acting as if the First Felon were still in the White House and the Liberal MSM Monolith was still ruling over public opinion. But those days are gone for good and to paraphrase Admiral Halsey: When you're in command, COMMAND!

pooter

I just felt like saying that ...

There's another group that Buchanan ignores, to his own shame:

anti-Nazi Germans.

Contrary to popular belief, Hitler was not elected by a majority (the Nazi share of the vote was Ubermenschen, but as human beings. These individuals struggled against the Nazi evil, frequently at the cost of their own lives. Without belittling the unimaginable horror of the Holocaust's victims, these honorable Germans endured enough suffering themselves to justify virtually any Allied effort to rescue them.

Reasonable people can disagree about whether Roosevelt and Churchill were correct when they decided that they could not save Eastern Europe from Stalin. I fail to see how a reasonable person, with the knowledge of 2005, could view any sacrifice too great to stop Hitler.

When in doubt, ask InstaPunk!

Had the U.S. opted out of the war as he elsewhere argues we should have, we would have become in short order a continent-sized island of democracy surrounded by barbarically murderous totalitarian empires in Europe, Russia, and the Far East.

Cedarford is Einhorn!!!!????
Einhorn is Cedarford!!!!!!!!!

OMG!!! Ace slept with a man.........................

I have to agree with ultron that Pat Buchanan sorta lost it it seems after he ran for President many years ago. He made sense then. But as the years have gone by, he goes off on this unecessary rants. I find it sad really because he use to make wonderful points for our side.

If the Brits, French and Dutch had let Hitler have Eastern Europe, does anyone honestly think he would have never come after them?

Just ask the Russians about this one. They even had a non-aggression pact for all the good that did.

One thing that everyone, including Buchanan, fails to ask is, "Was it forseeable that Eastern Europe would spend the next 40+ years under comunist rule?" Buchana's premise is that Stalin was worse for Eastern Europe than Hitler was for Germany. Arguably, that is a good point, but...ONLY IN HINDSIGHT. At the time, the Soviets had been living in peace and harmony with their neighbors (more or less) since the end of the Revolution. Hitler had remilitarized the Rhineland (which just happens to abut the French border,) annexed Austia through threats and intimidation, annexed the Sudentenland, and finally, captured the remainder of Czechoslovakia. He had already lied once, saying that his dreams ended with the Sudetenland. When he attacked Poland, that was the last straw. No one was surprised to see him attack the West or Russia.

Buchanan would have us believe that the Soviet conquest of Eastern Europe was forseeable which is arguable. I don't know of any evidence that is was, but that doesn't mean that is wasn't.

Also, Hitler brought Russia into the war well before we were involved. He launched Operation Barbarrosa in July 1941, five months before Pearl Harbor. In fact, it could be argued that our presence could have saved Western Europe from the same fate as Eastern Europe. The British and French could not stand alone against Germany let alone Russia. After the Soviets pushed the Germans back into Germany, what would have stopped them from moving on to the Low Countries and France. If the goal of the Soviet Union was to create a global workers' paradise, wouldn't that argue for them to keep rolling west?

Buchanan is a whack job and his essay was grossly flawed, but not from the perspective of the Holocaust. People have a very hard time looking back on an event knowing the outcome and trying to judge the actions of people and nations before that outcome was achieved. That would be like saying that you shouldn't have bought that lottery ticket after you learn that you didn't win. The rationale for buying it was valid at the time and it is unchanged by any subsequent events.

David Ross wrote:

What he's arguing, on the margins, is that Teutons and Celts deserve to look out for their racial interests; that Hitler was a champion of such interests, but shouldn't be viewed a hero because, you know, he lost; and that other races should be viewed as expendable where they get in the white man's way (here meaning, Slavs).

Exactly.

Now Cedarford needs to come in here and nuzzle Buchanan's asscrack, and the world will be complete.

Where's Cedartroll?

I agree with RWS -- I actually voted for the guy in that '92 primary, back when he seemed pretty normal.

Pat Buchannan is like an inarticulate white Alan Keyes-was going along good for a while, but went off the deep end. Notice how both these guys went publicly nuts after they ran for office? They had to find a way to stand out from other conservatives, but unlike true politicians, they actually had to believe in their positions which caused them all sorts of trouble.
In the end Who cares?

Buchanan's argument is just a bigger-scale, more lame-ass version of 30s appeasement policy. Hitler viewed taking over Eastern Europe as a stepping stone to taking over Russia. That, in turn, would give him enough resources to take on the Western powers, and ultimately the US. (Seems to me Hitler even wrote a book laying all this out.)

Instead of appeasing the jerk, France and Britain should have slapped him down the moment he sent troops into the Rhineland in 1934, when he was too weak to do anything but back down. If they hadn't appeased him then, we wouldn't even be arguing about WWII and the Holocaust, and how appeasement should have been given time to work. Buchanan sounds like Satan's version of Hans Blix.

I can't believe you guys are asking for him to show up.
Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice!

Anyhoo.

I think it was a bit more than a nonagression pact. Weren't the Soviets building weapons, planes, etc. for the Nazis before they were double-crossed? I seem to remember that they were.

One other thing. Let's say we had stayed out of WWII, and let Stalin pound Hitler into the ground (as "some historians" have said would have happened).

The Soviets could have had The Bomb long before we did, had that been the case. They would have also had von Braun and his crew. That means long-range missiles tipped with 30-40 kiloton warheads.

The Cold War didn't come about because the Soviets were nice. It came about because we had The Bomb first, and the Soviets liked breathing and not glowing in the dark.

Had they gotten The Bomb first, there would be a hammer and sickle flying over every part of America that wasn't a glass parking lot.

That's not fair, lauraw. Beetlejuice was a creep, but he had his entertaining moments. This is more like looking in the mirror and saying, "Candyman. Candyman. Candyman. Candy--"

ACE - Is that you with the red hair in the Conservative T-Shirts ad?

I thought you were that skinny guy in your ACE OF SPADES T-shirt ads?

Thats me in the white towel (from the back) in THE POINT ad.

Sorry, should have enunciated better;

BeatAllJews! BeatAllJews! BeatAllJews!

There, that shoud bring him running like a cat to a can opener.

NAZIs - Everyone knows the ACE has a weight problem (300 lbs and counting) which is why he takes so many amphetamines, then to come down has to take Wild Turkey enemas, and all sorts of tranquilizers, downers, and opiates (like at his table in the in the incompetance room) and chain-smokes Camels.

Thats me in the white towel In your dreams Nazis!

I'm betting Beetlejuice is better looking.

Vodkapundit does a nice job refuting Pat's arguments.

Warning, though - the word "fisking" is used.

MONKEYS - Well, I do look like that guy though. I have hair like, well maybe not guy, I have arms and shoulders like, well maybe not but I still have a tight little butt, well maybe more a big jellow butt. But I do like like a male model.

NAZIS

The PILLSBURY DOUGH BOY?

Buchanan's foreign policy worldview is stuck in a 1930's worldview, which he probably got from his father.

NAZIs

Why are you obsessed with these male models?

(not that there's anything wrong with that)

WHERE'S DUSTY!!!!

The notion that the Soviet Union would have defeated the Nazi's without our intervention is ludicrous. With additional resources made possible without having to fight the Americans, Moscow would be having Oktoberfest instead of May Day.

27 DYSLEXIC VIRGINS - I'm not, but the eternal mystery of the real identity of the ACES OF SPADES is so intruiging that I'm trying to trick him into unwittingly revealing some clues, so I ask if that's him in the ad. Clever, eh?

Are All These Jews Worth It?
by Patrick J. Buchanan

hubris, that was darn funny.

Starry-eyed Soviet apologists in the American media had been painting a rosy picture of Uncle Joe and life under the hammer and sickle for at least a decade when war broke out. Duranty wasn't alone in that effort.

holdfast correctly described this as "woolly-headed illusions" about Stalin. I don't know if FDR shared them - I do think based on intelligence reports regarding German advances in weaponry (hell, and news reports of missiles in London), he believed we had to get to their scientists before the Russians did.

NAZIS - You need to get a life!

The ad changeover this morning was a little disorienting (no pun intended). I'm not criticizing--equal opportunity and all that--but it still looks like Ace and Downtown Lad have signed their own little nonaggression pact.

How come my beefcake went away? All I see there now are words. Useless words.

utron

Umm, which is the ACE and which is the Downtown Lad?

If I had to guess, 72Nazis, I'd say Ace is the guy with the shirt. The guy in the towel seems to have a much nicer apartment.

Hubris and Holdfast have nailed it. This isn't a question of what our motivations were in going to war, it's a question of whether IN HINDSIGHT it was worth it.

Whether we considered the Holocaust as a motivation is pretty much irrelevant. Had we not stopped Hitler he would have taken his genocide to other parts of Europe and beyond.

Because we entered the war, that didn't happen.

This would be like going to a pool to swim laps. You get there and find a kid drowning and get in and save him. After waiting for the paramedics, etc. you don't get to swim your laps, the reason you came. But you saved a life. Would you say going to the pool that day wasn't worth it?

Buchanan does because the particular lives saved don't matter to him.

LauraW, you never disappoint. BeatleJuice: BeatAllJews. Are you available for parties?

Green's always a good read. Thanks for the link, Slub.

And yeah, Buchanan has pretty much always been a disgusting Nazi troll.

Beetle not Beatle, no relation to Paul

What do you mean, MyCountry? What am I, a clown, for to amuse you? A little conservative minstrel show for your Green Party friends to laugh at while you down tofu shots and smoke your disgusting clove cigarettes cut with banana peels?

Yeah, OK, sure.
But I ain't cheap.

Aww, Laura, you're the best. At the party, I mean at the Beat Poetry Jam, I'll hand out People Who Think Vote Republican party favors and I swear I'll wear underwear under my jeans... and a BRA!

And, I swear, my friends would never let you burn Marie Claire magazine in the corner by your lonesome.

It is nice of you to attempt to simulate my natural habitat, even if you'll only be wearing those things with a sense of ironic amusement.

Don't forget the trucker caps.

(Long haired smelly hippie points at MyCountry)

"look, A BRA AND UNDERWEAR!!"

All the beatniks and hippies erupt in titters.

"MyCountry, you are TOO FUNNAYYY!"

We still need 3 more things Ace will say "yes" to.

and while we're taking turns reading Whitman aloud make sure to keep an eye on your purse! In fact, wrap it around your chair Laura. Damn hippies. Damn meth fix every two days... snark

BTW, what the Hell is Marie Claire magazine?

It was launched in France, Laura. For goodness sake! Know your enemy! :) The magazine's had a U.S. edition (I mean NY!) for 10 years now. It's safe to say it's liberal.

Enemy? I'm American. I don't have any enemies...for long.

Iblis,

#10-Will you tell Rightwingsparkle who you are so she will stop trying to figure it out?

I want a yes on that one.

Did I mention I hate mysteries?

as a Democrat (leftist?) I'm supposed to say you'd say that....But let's stop talking now before somebody (hobgoblin, you in here..) yells at me

RWS, that will probably require that nudity you were mentioning before.

LauraW, Nobody is taking us seriously here. We are demanding a return of the beefcake and they brush us off.

How about you and I mobilize and begin the "Beefcake Revolution"?

Funny, he came back for a while and now he's gone again.
Prolly went to see his boyfriend.

"Prolly went to see his boyfriend."

Or shave his chest.

HISTORIANS:

What general said when asked by his administration the (beforehand) chances of winning the war:

We can raise hell with them for a year, after that we'll begin to lose.

72- a bad paraphrase of Adm Yamamoto - I think it was "I will run wild for a year..."

holdfast, he was misquoted, he actually said "I slice like a f'n' hammer"!

for the people way up at the top who were dissapointed in ken starr, check powerline for his side of the story

Regarding Buckley on Buchanan:

National Review defended Pat Buchanan when he ran for President in 1992, and William F. Buckley sympathized with his candidacy at that time, as many people were frustrated over the policies of the Bush 41 administration.

In 1999, Buckley defended Pat from criticism over his views on WWII. Here is the pertinent Buckley column.

Goaddammit, for the eight BILLIONTH time, the Germans did NOT "vote Hitler in!!!!!" The old fart Von Hindenburg, who was President, appointed him Chancellor. Yes, there were a couple of parliamentary elections afterwards in which the Nazis gained control of the Reichstag, but they were rigged.

This is in no way a defense of the German people, or anything else other than me being sick of a historically inaccurate meme.

CraigC, you're right, von Hindenberg named him chancellor..

I was letting it ride on the "the German people voted National Social*sts to power" angle. Prior to the rigged elections.

AndrewF - From that perspective, what he is saying makes perfect sense, unless you are somehow assigning to Hitler's victims lives more value than Stalin's victims.

The problem is how the American MSM has portrayed WWII to assign some of Hitler's victims more value than others, and all but ignore not only Hitler's other victims, but the victims of the Japanese in that War and all the victims of Communism.

Perhaps 85-90% of the American coverage of the actrocities of WWII deals with the Jews. If you ask schoolkids, the reason WWII was fought was to save the Jews. It's all about them, according to the MSM. Articles, movies on the 27 million Russian dead, 30 million Chinese butchered by Japs, 1/4 of all Latvians murdered? 7% of all Greeks dead? The all out butchery in the Balkans?

Practically zip.

The Soviets liquidated 25 million Russians, and perhaps 5-6 million Europeans to the West of Russia. The ChiComs? Up to 60 million dead by liquidations of commie created famines.

Coverage? As little as possible. Universities, MSM, Hollywood are determined to give the mass graves of Communism a pass.

But the Holocaust...those lives are more important! And must be discussed and memorialized endlessly and even make one country of 191 Above All Criticism, to hear some Americans...

I think Nazism was slightly more evil than Communism....but if it wasn't for the spectre of the tens of millions of mass deaths of Bolshevikism that occured before Hitler slew his first victim, I doubt Nazism would have arisen as such a vicious countervailing force.

Buchanan definitely gives the impression that he hated Communism more than Nazism in his essay, but on the numbers - 125 million murdered by Communism vs. 10 million or so by Nazism outside actual Warfare - Buchanan has a point, unless you are willing to argue that the life of a Chinese doctor ended at a Commie death pit, a Slav town wiped out to the last baby by the Nazis, a Filipina bayoneted for fun by a Jap soldier, or a Russian gentile starved and then frozen to death in the Gulags is worth less, much less, than the life of a Jewish victim of Hitler.

Buchanan also reminds us that WWII was fought in main for reasons that had little to do with the Jews. It's origins were about confronting Communism, advancing German national destiny & lebensraum, and the Japs trying to create a colonial Empire. Killing the Jews was a policy that evolved well after WWII was completely underway. Initially, the German goal was expelling all the Jews of Europe to Palestine or Africa...and they worked with Zionist organizations to accomplish that, but were thwarted by the Brits.

Buchanan is dreaming though if he thinks the US should have just stood aside. Germany would have been beaten by the Soviets without US or Brit assistance. If we hadn't come in, the Red Army would have still made all of East Europe communist, and added West Europe in the bargain. OK, so the East Euros lost 2 generations of freedom. WWII had kicked most of the bloodthirstyness out of the Soviets. It was a fucked up time for the Poles and friends, but East Europe never saw the mass liquidations the Russian population did. And freedom regained after only 40 years of Commie repression without a huge loss of life to regain that freedom is a pretty good bargain. Only 2 generations of Soviet Occupation. The Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank are in their 37th year of Occupation under their oppressor, and their chances of throwing out the hated Zionists and regaining their homes and lands are much more dismal than the future Lech Walensa and Havel foresaw coming in the early 80s.