Was United 93 an inspirational movie?

[Judge Hades]

There are bad guys and even worse guys. There are no good guys.

[Fenghuang]

Like Sin City! )

[metadigital]

I'm a good guy.

[Nick_i_am]

And that's why we love you and want your babies.

 

Seriously though, Germany's overall objective was NOT world conquest, it was to build an empire. Taking over most of mainland europe would constitute that.

[~Di]

I meant that, IF TRUE, FDR's decision cost the lives of thousands of U.S. sailors, for no real reason....

 

~Di, of course Hitler was a bad guy. There's no perspective there, he was an inhuman bastard...with one ball and a leather fetish. FDR, IF THIS CONSPIRACY HAS ANY MERIT to it, isn't much better. Letting your own soldiers die for so moronic a purpose is nothing short of mass murder. He'd of signed their death warrants the second he made his decision....

 

Above emphasis mine, of course, but frankly that is entirely my point. Over the years I've seen dozens of WW2 discussions and nearly all of them seek to shift blame around by ignoring the reality of what really happened in the context of those times and what really led up to WW2 (which some say was inevitable after the deliberate humiliation of a defeated Germany following WW1)... and to shift that blame to the scapegoat de jour, all these concocted speculations and conspiracy theories are created, then repeated ad nauseam until some people actually begin to believe them.

 

The reality is that the USA, exhausted and broke from helping European allies during the first WW only to see Europe fall into chaos yet again, had become the isolationist nation in those days that most people say they wish the USA was today... although back then the USA was rounded excoriated by Europe for not leaping back into the fray immediately. The reality is that FDR did not want to see Hitler's plans come to fruition, and secretly sent arms and supplies to our European allies.

 

The reality also includes Japan, which had already embarked on a brutal invasion of Asia, including China and Korea, to which the USA had expressed extreme umbrage by imposing various sanctions that displeased the Japanese almost as much as their brutal invasion displeased the Chinese. The reality is that Japan and the USA were handling their dispute through diplomatic means (supposedly) and were in the process of negotiating a peace agreement, which turned out to be a deliberate distraction as Japan planned its sneak attack, hoping to destroy enough of our fleet that we would be crippled long enough for them to solidify their foothold in the South Pacific.

 

It makes me utterly nuts to hear people solemnly discuss ways to transfer responsibility for Pearl Harbor by either insisting that the USA economic sanctions and embargos against Japan were really the first act of war, so nobody can blame the poor Japanese for the sneak attack, or pretending that FDR was the bad guy because he knew what the Japanese were planning and let it happen for his own vile purpose. Sheer, unadultrated bovine excrement.

 

I'm old enough to have spoken with people who lived through WW2, people from both the USA and several countries in Europe. They would be aghast at this revisionist history and fabricated blamemongering. Any out-of-context fact can be manipulated to make black appear white, and white appear to be purple. That is exactly what goes on during so many of these discussions, pounding on facts which support the position one wants supported while totally ignoring any facts which do not support that position. Pretty soon, facts become so muddled with speculation that reality isn't even an issue anymore. People begin to believe what they want to believe, and what it's comfortable to believe.

 

You know we dropped the A-bomb as a show of power, right? And because the Japanese just didn't want to give up their Emperor. An ancient position, and a major part of the tradition and culture. They were willing to negotiate a surrender, but weren't willing to lose their emperor. So...Hiroshima. We slaughtered innocent civilians (Yes, they were innocent. I don't give a flying **** if they worked in a "munitions factory". They were people, just doing their jobs...) there, and in Berlin. Carpet bombing the damned city!

 

Ah. My point exactly. The A-bomb was not dropped as a show of power, although I know that's a popular theory. No one who ascribes to this theory has ever, to my knowledge, offered a shred of evidence to support that. To the contrary, the evidence, as in documents and transcripts of the day, show that the A-bomb was dropped to avoid an invasion of Japan which estimates indicated would have cost over 1 million lives. Whether Truman should have made that decision or not, in hindsight, is debateable. However, your understanding of the surrender negotiations is at best... lacking. It's not my job to educate you, but I strongly suggest if you are interested that you Google up both sides of the issue. You may also want to Google up the Dresden thing, since you are determined to ignore the fact that it was Germany that started carpet bombing of London and other UK cities... and that the entire Dresden operation was Churchill's baby, not the USA's. But golly gee, once a face has been picked for fashionable demonization, so much easier to stick with it.

 

America is no more the "Paladin of Truth and Valor" than are the Japanese and Nazis. (No, I'm not comparing America to those two, but we're not the beacon of goodwill and justice that we're taught in school.)

 

At this point I'm not sure what you were taught in school. America is no different than any other country, in that it has done good things and bad things in its history. Some people attempt to declare the USA as different for various reasons, not the least of which is to validate a global double standard. I am NOT justifying the USA's current-day operations, btw. However, hating what the USA is currently involved in does not justify rewriting history by mistatement of fact. If you feel the USA is the bad guy today, and many do, fine. That doesn't mean that history should be revised to make the USA out to be the bad guy then, too. I'm not WW2 expert and am the first to admit that. But it really is depressing to see the reality of history... the good, the bad, and the ugly... distorted with half-facts, no facts, and blatant conspiratorial speculation until reality dissolves into a half-baked caricature of the bad, the vile, and the really evil.

 

I initially made a sarcastic comment to avoid boring y'all with the bloated and boring trestise above. Obviously brevity is simply beyond my ability. Or maybe the devil made me do it. My apologies. :D

Edited May 6, 2006 by ~Di

[Krookie]

There are bad guys and even worse guys.  There are no good guys.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

What? Stop trying to seem like everyone is a terrible person. Your attitude towards just about everything is negative. The world has plenty of good people, sure there might be a lot more bad people, but that doesn't mean that everyone alive is going to try to kill everyone else.

[kirottu]

Ah.  My point exactly.  The A-bomb was not dropped as a show of power, although I know that's a popular theory, although no one who ascribes to this theory has ever, to my knowledge, offered a shred of evidence to support that  The evidence, documents and transcripts of the day show that the A-bomb was dropped to avoid an invasion of Japan which estimates indicated would have cost over 1 million lives.  Whether Truman should have made that decision or not, in hindsight, is debateable.  However, your understanding of the surrender negotiations is... lacking.  It's not my job to educate you, but I strongly suggest if you are interested that you Google up both sides of the issue.  You may also want to Google up the Dresden thing, since you are determined to ignore the fact that it was Germany that started carpet bombing of London and other UK cities... and that the entire Dresden operation was Churchill's baby, not the USA's.  But golly gee, once a face has been picked for fashionable demonization, so much easier to stick with it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

My professor at uni told us at that point japanese had already agreed to all the points of peace treaty, except stripping emperor off all his power. So USA bombed Japan. When MacArthur was in power in Japan he said it wouldn

[~Di]

Did your professor also mention that this power the emperor wished to maintain was power over the Japanese military, and a refusal to bow to the direction or wishes of the conquering army? That's kinda like saying, okay we'll stop playing now, but you go away and let me rebuild my army; then we'll talk. Now I'm not a military person, but the conquered are not usually allowed to dictate terms of surrender in which they maintain their own military power and refuse to accept the authority of those who have conquered them. That is spelled "insurgency". That would have required either a full-scale invasion, or going back to war in another year when they'd rebuilt their military capacity. Either way, nasty stuff.

 

You see, when people are educated only from a single perspective, in-context reality is the first casualty. Too many professors, I fear, have dosed history with their own bias. There are lots of books out there that will insist Truman and Churchill were just so damned evil that despite the poor little emperor screaming, "I give up, don't hurt me" they decided to wipe out a few hundred thousand people for poopies and giggles.

 

Worst part is how many people are willing to believe that without a question.

 

Edit: Some 'Light' Reading on the Subject This trestise, The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II: A Collection of Primary Sources from the National Security Archives probably contains the most complete information available, based upon source documents of the day rather than the opinions of those who, shall we say, have a bit of a disagreement with decisions that were made in that era. A quick perusal shows that everyone will find something to support their own pet theories; however, they'll have to plow through stuff that supports other people's theories to get there. In other words, both sides of a very complex issue.

 

Enjoy.

Edited May 6, 2006 by ~Di

[Lucius]

But did anyone get tried for firebombing Dresden? Noone doubts that Nazi Germany started the whole, lets kill civvies thing, and many got punished for it after the war, some executed.

 

If anyone did get jail time for Dresden, then it is clearly not anything I've read about.

[~Di]

So you're just going to ignore all that, yank out one word... Dresdan... and go back to trying to hang a horror label on it. *sigh* Makes my point, sadly, about people hearing only what they want to hear and ignoring everythingelse.

 

I don't know who got jail time for Dresdan. Ask Churchill. He ordered it. Then go find out who got jail time for the Rape of Nanking.

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

What? Stop trying to seem like everyone is a terrible person. Your attitude towards just about everything is negative. The world has plenty of good people, sure there might be a lot more bad people, but that doesn't mean that everyone alive is going to try to kill everyone else.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Hades believes that people are basically evil and only kept in check by various means of social control.

[Lucius]

So you're just going to ignore all that, yank out one word... Dresdan... and go back to trying to hang a horror label on it.  *sigh*  Makes my point, sadly, about people hearing only what they want to hear and ignoring everythingelse.

 

I don't know who got jail time for Dresdan.  Ask Churchill.  He ordered it.  Then go find out who got jail time for the Rape of Nanking.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Who's talking about ignoring it, they got punished already. Noone got punished for Dresden as far as I know. You're the one being ignorant right now.

[~Di]

No need to take a personal, insulting tone. Ignoring something is not the same as being ignorant. First, perhaps you can explain why Dresden was not a legitimate act of war, and therefore a criminal act for which someone should have been punished as opposed to all the other cities that were bombed by both Allies and Germans for which no one was 'punished'.

 

This BBC website, British Bombing Strategy in World War Two, which is quite sympathetic to the citizens of Dresden but manages to recognize the rationale of Churchill's decision nonetheless, may help you out.

 

The Nuerumberg Trials were, IIRC, more concerned with the Holocaust than the Blitzkrieg.

 

Added on Edit: Although the above link is primarily sympathetic to your views, Lucius, I did find another which goes out of its way to offer both sides of the "Was Dresden a War Crime" debate, and which you may find interesting. Bombing of Dresden in World War II

Edited May 6, 2006 by ~Di

[kirottu]

very complex issue.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Heh, selective quoting.

 

Anyways, I get this wierd feeling when people are so sure of their own point of some issue in world politics. Hell, if I would believe those guys, it would seem I have more thoughts about should I buy orange juice or coke than some world leader had when he invaded some country or dropped A-bomb. "He did it because of this and because of this only!"

 

I posted my professor

[~Di]

Kirottu, Oh I know and appreciate that. There are obviously several points of view, and the link I selected showed evidence for and against all of them. That was my point; there is more than one legitimate basis for opinions, and it's not the one-sided stuff that we normally see tossed on forums.

 

We are pretty intelligent people here, IMHO, and able to look beyond the dancing rhetoric of our own internal propaganda. Yes, mine too!

[Lucius]

No need to take a personal, insulting tone.  Ignoring something is not the same as being ignorant.  First, perhaps you can explain why Dresden was not a legitimate act of war, and therefore a criminal act for which someone should have been punished as opposed to all the other cities that were bombed by both Allies and Germans for which no one was 'punished'. 

 

This BBC website, British Bombing Strategy in World War Two, which is quite sympathetic to the citizens of Dresden but manages to recognize the rationale of Churchill's decision nonetheless, may help you out.

 

The Nuerumberg Trials were, IIRC, more concerned with the Holocaust than the Blitzkrieg.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Ignoring/ignorant, whatever your language calls it. My point is that almost the entire inner city was completely destroyed and around 30.000 civilians dead makes it pretty clear to me that this was, just like the nuking of Japan, a war crime.

 

And don't think the allies didn't try to pin as much as they could on German officers after the war, perhaps not at Nuremberg, but over 1000 cases was made at the Dachau International Military Tribunal. And of course they did, they won the war after all, but we're looking back at it now and I think perhaps it wasn't all 'fair'. (of course I'm not talking about holocaust trials here)

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

And don't think the allies didn't try to pin as much as they could on German officers after the war, perhaps not at Nuremberg, but over 1000 cases was made at the Dachau International Military Tribunal. And of course they did, they won the war after all, but we're looking back at it now and I think perhaps it wasn't all 'fair'. (of course I'm not talking about holocaust trials here)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Harris believed he could break the Germans spirit through bombing. Fore runner of shock and awe if you like.

 

Same was true of the A bomb. Only in the case of the A bomb it actually worked.

[~Di]

So, your view of a war crime is strictly how many civilian casualties there were? Then This link should be right up your alley! Seems like everybody involved in that wretched war should have been nailed for war crimes...

 

Allies

 

Great Britain + Commonwealth 60,000

France 360,000

United States Minimal

USSR 7,700,000

Belgium 90,000

Holland 190,000

Norway Minimal

Poland 5,300,000

Greece 80,000

Yugoslavia 1,300,000

Czechoslovakia 330,000

China (from 1937 on) 10,000,000

 

Total 25,410,000

 

Axis

 

Germany 3,810,000

Austria 80,000

Italy 85,000

Rumania 465,000

Hungary 280,000

Bulgaria 7,000

Finland Minimal

Japan 360,000

 

Total 5,087,000

 

War isn't fair, Lucius. War is in itself an atrocity, which is why I feel that the Neurumberg Trials were an exercise in futility. When the world goes through years of committing crimes against humanity, how can a single set of crimes be viewed as more heinous than others? Yes, the Nazis slaughtered millions upon millions of people; but the Japanese slaughtered over 10 million in China, and I didn't see them on trial. Nor do I see angst over the injustice of Japan not being tried for its crimes when this topic inevitably arises.

 

You say 30,000 civilians died in Dresden, and that makes it a war crime? Twice that many died in the UK. Overall, Germany lost over 3 million civilians. Bombing Japan, which took 360,000 lives was a war crime? Yet 360,000 civilians died in France, and millions more throughout the rest of Europe. Russia's loss at 7 million was the worst of the war, with the exception of the basically-ignored atrocities in China.

 

Selective statistics is an interesting game, but not terribly productive, IMHO. As I've said, war is in itself a crime against humanity. Trying to shift blame and second guess the participants more than a half-century later has become a bit of a parlor game, but it serves no purpose beyond trying to use mistakes of the past to prevent repeat occurrences in the future.

 

And for the record, "ignoring" means a lack of attention; "ignorant" means uninformed or uneducated.

Edited May 6, 2006 by ~Di

[Calax]

And don't think the allies didn't try to pin as much as they could on German officers after the war, perhaps not at Nuremberg, but over 1000 cases was made at the Dachau International Military Tribunal. And of course they did, they won the war after all, but we're looking back at it now and I think perhaps it wasn't all 'fair'. (of course I'm not talking about holocaust trials here)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Harris believed he could break the Germans spirit through bombing. Fore runner of shock and awe if you like.

 

Same was true of the A bomb. Only in the case of the A bomb it actually worked.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

go team...

 

 

From what I was taught, everything in the war hinged on americas actions

 

now this isn't necessairly true but heres what the average 10th grader is taught in HS in my area of america.

 

The reason the japanese attacked us was because we imposed an oil embargo against them AND because we were the only thing in the pacific that could have stopped them from setting up a grand empire. So they tried to hit the pacific fleet to turn us into a toothless tiger. They miscalculated and missed the carriers AND underestamated the industrial capacity of the united states. With Europe we weren't taught much... just a good guys kicked the bad guys in the behind with D-Day.

 

Really the european war was more like the last few lines of Saga Begins

 

"in the end some russians died, some ships blew up and some allies fried, alot of folks were chokin' the 3rd reich was broken"

 

Dresden I don't know much more about than the fact that they napalmed it to hell and that the writer of Slaugherhouse Five kept harping on it...

 

sigh... why we learn oh so much more about the depression and WWI than WW2 I don't know.

[LoneWolf16]

...It makes me utterly nuts to hear people solemnly discuss ways to transfer responsibility for Pearl Harbor by either insisting that the USA economic sanctions and embargos against Japan were really the first act of war, so nobody can blame the poor Japanese for the sneak attack, or pretending that FDR was the bad guy because he knew what the Japanese were planning and let it happen for his own vile purpose.  Sheer, unadultrated bovine excrement.

 

I'm old enough to have spoken with people who lived through WW2, people from both the USA and several countries in Europe.  They would be aghast at this revisionist history and fabricated blamemongering.  Any out-of-context fact can be manipulated to make black appear white, and white appear to be purple.  That is exactly what goes on during so many of these discussions, pounding on facts which support the position one wants supported while totally ignoring any facts which do not support that position. Pretty soon, facts become so muddled with speculation that reality isn't even an issue anymore.  People begin to believe what they want to believe, and what it's comfortable to believe.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

All right, just to be clear.

 

I know damn well that it's a conspiracy theory. I'm just arguing a point that would be made IF IT WERE TRUE. I know it most likely isn't. I'm not declaring it as fact, nor am I advocating belief in it. It's just fun to debate for the sake of debating some times.

 

And, perhaps I'm too sensitive, but I detect a veritable tidal wave of condescension in your entire post...don't know if it's directed at me personally, or at everyone who does what you think I did.

 

Ah.  My point exactly.  The A-bomb was not dropped as a show of power, although I know that's a popular theory. No one who ascribes to this theory has ever, to my knowledge, offered a shred of evidence to support that.  To the contrary, the evidence, as in documents and transcripts of the day, show that the A-bomb was dropped to avoid an invasion of Japan which estimates indicated would have cost over 1 million lives.  Whether Truman should have made that decision or not, in hindsight, is debateable.  However, your understanding of the surrender negotiations is at best... lacking.  It's not my job to educate you, but I strongly suggest if you are interested that you Google up both sides of the issue.  You may also want to Google up the Dresden thing, since you are determined to ignore the fact that it was Germany that started carpet bombing of London and other UK cities... and that the entire Dresden operation was Churchill's baby, not the USA's.  But golly gee, once a face has been picked for fashionable demonization, so much easier to stick with it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

My teacher, a brilliant man by the way (Keep him away from candles though...burned his room down last time. :D ), said the same thing that Kirottu's did. He's never Sugar-coated anything, and time and time again, I've researched what he's said and found truth behind it. To my knowledge, the Japansese didn't necessarily want their emperor to retain military power. It was more of a public position than anything else. A figurehead of their culture. Why not allow them to keep that?

 

And in the end, after the bombs were dropped...not one, but two (Can you say "Overkill"?) we still let them keep their emperor anyway. This is pretty black and white, no purple to be found here. The Japanese weren't the United State's primary concern, or reason for dropping the bombs. We would not have lost a million soldiers. Peace talks were already well under way and going quite well, or so the Japanese thought.

 

Have any justification for Nagasaki? Or was that just to assure ourselves that, yes, the bombs really did erradicate entire cities?

 

America is no more the "Paladin of Truth and Valor" than are the Japanese and Nazis. (No, I'm not comparing America to those two, but we're not the beacon of goodwill and justice that we're taught in school.)

 

At this point I'm not sure what you were taught in school. America is no different than any other country, in that it has done good things and bad things in its history. Some people attempt to declare the USA as different for various reasons, not the least of which is to validate a global double standard. I am NOT justifying the USA's current-day operations, btw. However, hating what the USA is currently involved in does not justify rewriting history by mistatement of fact. If you feel the USA is the bad guy today, and many do, fine. That doesn't mean that history should be revised to make the USA out to be the bad guy then, too. I'm not WW2 expert and am the first to admit that. But it really is depressing to see the reality of history... the good, the bad, and the ugly... distorted with half-facts, no facts, and blatant conspiratorial speculation until reality dissolves into a half-baked caricature of the bad, the vile, and the really evil.

 

I initially made a sarcastic comment to avoid boring y'all with the bloated and boring trestise above. Obviously brevity is simply beyond my ability. Or maybe the devil made me do it. My apologies. :D

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Ok, to be frank, I don't understand how you're not completely bow-legged 24/7. (Note: If I'm wrong, and the high and mighty sense I'm getting from your post is also incorrect, then please, disregard my childish sarcastic comment.)

 

More often than not, in American schools from highschool on down, the U.S. is put in the position of "The world's savior and purveyor of justice". Only in the later highschool years and college are actual facts that put a strain on our sense of ethics and patriotism expounded. And even then, there's a coat of honey applied to each spoonful of information.

 

To reiterate; I'm not saying that the conspiracy over FDR has any true merit to it. I don't know either way, and neither do you, unless you had intimate personal contact with him throughout that time period. It's just fun to speculate.

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

My teacher, a brilliant man by the way (Keep him away from candles though...burned his room down last time.  :D ), said the same thing that Kirottu's did. He's never Sugar-coated anything, and time and time again, I've researched what he's said and found truth behind it. To my knowledge, the Japansese didn't necessarily want their emperor to retain military power. It was more of a public position than anything else. A figurehead of their culture. Why not allow them to keep that?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Because that becomes a rallying point.

[LoneWolf16]

...we still let them keep their emperor anyway...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

In much the same way as we got our king back after the civil war.

[Lucius]

You're still missing my point Di, the Germans got tried for a lot of that horrible crap they did. Yet the allies got off clean, as if they were somehow the innocent angels who did nothing wrong. (you even try to make it sound like Dresden, Berlin the nuking of Japan... whichever, was 'okay' as opposed to what the Germans did)

 

As for China, well I honestly don't know the first thing about what took place there. Never heard about it. But if what you write is true, then I honestly don't get why they weren't tried. Perhaps the Allies cared as little about what went on in China as the Danish school system.

[~Di]

And, perhaps I'm too sensitive, but I detect a veritable tidal wave of condescension in your entire post...don't know if it's directed at me personally, or at everyone who does what you think I did.

 

Civility is not condescention. I was discussing issues, not personalties. Then again, I haven't broad brushed the entire populace of this country as "not the brightest stars in the sky", as you did in another topic, so I tend to deal with everyone in a fairly straightforward, and I hope adult, manner!

 

My teacher, a brilliant man by the way (Keep him away from candles though...burned his room down last time.  :D ), said the same thing that Kirottu's did. He's never Sugar-coated anything, and time and time again, I've researched what he's said and found truth behind it. To my knowledge, the Japansese didn't necessarily want their emperor to retain military power. It was more of a public position than anything else. A figurehead of their culture. Why not allow them to keep that?

 

And in the end, after the bombs were dropped...not one, but two (Can you say "Overkill"?) we still let them keep their emperor anyway. This is pretty black and white, no purple to be found here. The Japanese weren't the United State's primary concern, or reason for dropping the bombs. We would not have lost a million soldiers. Peace talks were already well under way and going quite well, or so the Japanese thought.

 

Have any justification for Nagasaki? Or was that just to assure ourselves that, yes, the bombs really did erradicate entire cities?

 

Lots of brilliant men would disagree with your teacher's position. And there are lots of opposing thoughts on the matter. It's one thing to support one's own position; it's quite another to pretend that it's the only truth out there. I've given you several links that would answer your questions and offer alternative perspectives. Here's another link. It shows the timeline of negotiations between Japan and the USA prior to the decision to drop the atomic bomb. It shows the indecisiveness of a weak Emperor unable to control the fighting factions of pacism and militarism, which promised to never give up the struggle no matter what.

 

The Allies had agreed early on to insist on Unconditional Surrender. Period. Unconditional. That's what was expected of Germany; that's what was expected with Japan. It wasn't keeping the Emperor that was the problem, as I've repeatedly explained (but maybe you'll believe this website... or not. ). It was that Japan refused to accept Unconditional surrender, and wanted to keep its military in tact. The allies did not allow that of Germany; it would not allow that of Japan. If you are interested in the timeline and the details, this site will give it to you. It answers your questions about why two bombs were dropped, why the surrender had to be unconditional, what the USA knew and didn't know when basic decisions were made, all kinds of information that, when taken in context of the times, may help you understand what took place.

 

Ok, to be frank, I don't understand how you're not completely bow-legged 24/7.    (Note: If I'm wrong, and the high and mighty sense I'm getting from your post is also incorrect, then please, disregard my childish sarcastic comment.)

 

No, I don't think I'll disregard it because it was rude and uncalled for. I've not ridiculed or belittled you. I've debated with you on a civil, adult level. I expect the same in return.

 

More often than not, in American schools from highschool on down, the U.S. is put in the position of "The world's savior and purveyor of justice". Only in the later highschool years and college are actual facts that put a strain on our sense of ethics and patriotism expounded. And even then, there's a coat of honey applied to each spoonful of information.

 

You are no doubt correct in regards to some schools not only in this country but around the world. However, you are once again broad-brushing 290 million folks without considering that your experiences in your schools may not mirror the experiences of others in their schools.

 

To reiterate; I'm not saying that the conspiracy over FDR has any true merit to it. I don't know either way, and neither do you, unless you had intimate personal contact with him throughout that time period. It's just fun to speculate.

 

And I'm simply asking that you, since you are obviously an intelligent and articulate person, take a look at evidence which may not fully support the position you now take before you glue yourself irrevocably to something which may not be entirely as you had perceived it to be. It certainly couldn't hurt to read somebody else's version of what happened and why, now could it? Especially when that version is basically the official records... which you may or may not believe to be accurate for a variety of reasons. Still, you really should know what they say. Doesn't mean you have to agree with the decisions made, only that you should at least have a good understanding of why they were made and the circumstances under which they were made.

 

I hope that made sense to you.

 

Edit: aha! Fixed the quotes.

Edited May 6, 2006 by ~Di