Junto Boys

WWII - WORTH IT?

Pat Buchanan is taking heat for remarking in a speech that World War II was "not worth it."

When one considers the losses suffered by Britain and France – hundreds of thousands dead, destitution, bankruptcy, the end of the empires – was World War II worth it, considering that Poland and all the other nations east of the Elbe were lost anyway?

If the objective of the West was the destruction of Nazi Germany, it was a "smashing" success. But why destroy Hitler? If to liberate Germans, it was not worth it. After all, the Germans voted Hitler in.

If it was to keep Hitler out of Western Europe, why declare war on him and draw him into Western Europe? If it was to keep Hitler out of Central and Eastern Europe, then, inevitably, Stalin would inherit Central and Eastern Europe.

Was that worth fighting a world war – with 50 million dead?

The war Britain and France declared to defend Polish freedom ended up making Poland and all of Eastern and Central Europe safe for Stalinism. And at the festivities in Moscow, Americans and Russians were front and center, smiling – not British and French. Understandably.

For Buchanan, it comes down to how tight your definition of "national interest" is. He would probably characterize the Revolutionary War and the Spanish-American War as "in the national interest," the World Wars, Vietnam, Korea, the Gulf War, and Iraq as outside it. He has a viable and important argument, an argument he has been consistently voicing for years, an argument that repeatedly fails to be heard and debated because the cries of anti-Semitism prevent anyone from discussing the logic of it.

The question of what is in our national interest is at the root of major foreign policy decisions. Buchanan makes a reasonable argument that messing around in other nation's sovereign business is what drains superpowers of their economic and military might, that the essence of power is maintaining it by not wasting it here, there, and everywhere. Nations that fight, wear down and eventually get beat.

His argument is that 50 million dead soldiers and 6 million dead Jews is not better than 6 million dead Jews. That is not a crazy argument. It might not be right, and it might not be politically correct, but it's not crazy. I guess his crime is that he's not nuanced enough. And not socialist.