Washblog

Yet who has stepped forward to presumptuously take credit and suggest that we were the star and the other allies were supporting actors?

Who really paid the most in buying that victory? Russia.

The USA for years has lorded it over, for example, France, who was invaded and taken over by the Nazis and paid one hell of a price for opposing Hitler.

How many times have we heard American rhetorical cowboys put France in its place by reminding them of how America saved their bacon?

Bacevich is right.

No matter American heroics and well-deserved credit for the invasion and march to Berlin from the West, it was Soviet Russia from the East who - in the process of suffering 65% of total casualties in WWII compared to USA's 2% - bled the Germans down, destroying the bulk of their military ground power as they tried to defend themselves from the Russians who were moving toward Berlin.

The Russians lost 20 million citizens during WWlI. Our total losses were closer to a million or less.

True, we set off the biggest firecracker that caused Japan's citizen loss to multiply obscenely in two single flashing moments.

Well .... rah rah for American technology and ability to kill hundreds of thousands with remarkable self-justification that muddies the waters of necessity with the dirt of pre-cold war message-sending.

Then to argue that it was better that hundreds of thousands of Japanese men, women and children die rather than the potential American military losses involved in continuing operations against the Japanese military including an invasion.

That same logic seems to compare to the justification for how we operate in Iraq where it hasn't mattered how many civilian lives and families are destroyed so long as American self-interested policy triumphs.

The Russians lost 20 million citizens during WWlI. Our total losses were closer to a million or less.

In reality, during WWII the Russians cleaned the Nazi house while in comparison we emptied the ash trays.