"One last interesting property of war: one thing that nobody in a war knows until after the fact (other than the people who started the war, but sometimes not even they know), is if we are fighting on the side of the right and the good, or if we are fighting for criminals and evil."
This is a surprisingly relativistic take from you. In World War II, it was pretty clear who the evil criminals were - they were the ones harassing and driving entire races from their borders, lobbing missiles into other cities, and conquering other nations without their consent. Even if the Allies lost the war to Germany, there was a clear right side and a clear wrong side to that conflict.
Now, you might say that's because the Allies were victorious and wrote the histories, not the Nazi and Japanese regimes. So, let's take Ukraine - an active war where the outcome is far from assured and the history hasn't been written yet. I have ZERO doubt that Ukraine is fighting on the side of the right and good, and the Russian invaders are the evil criminals (see Bucha). If Ukraine loses that fight and is absorbed into a new Russian empire, that doesn't change the fact that the bad guys won that fight.
There are factors OTHER than victory and who writes the histories that we can look at to decide if we're on the side of the right and good, or whether we are unwitting pawns for evil. The Nazis weren't evil because they lost - they were evil because they consigned "undesirables" to concentration camps, invaded their neighbors, and committed a long list of other sins and crimes.
This is why I pointed out the actions of the Israeli sniper murdering Palestinians yesterday. Maybe this fellow is just one "bad apple" that the IDF will deal with, or it's evidence that the Israelies are no longer fighting on the side of the right and good, and have tipped over into evil.
This is why I decry the actions of Trump's ICE goon squads - I see echoes of Hitler's Germany: concentration camps, thugs rounding up people that they (not the law or courts) decide are undesirable, and holding themselves up as unaccountable to the communities that they presumably are serving.
You can argue that ICE is justified acting within the bounds of the law. Germany's Enabling Act of 1933 was the legal umbrella under which much evil was carried out. Germany's concentration camps were erected under the theory that only the executive had the power to decide who was due legal protection and due process, and who were exempt from the laws that protect and bind. Sound familiar?
Deciding whether you're on the right (and good) side of history isn't an exercise that you do once the dust has settled and a victor has been declared. It's a question that has to be asked and answered continuously, as these moral positions are not static and can change, and they say - the road to hell is paved with good intentions. History may rhyme more than it repeats, and we better damn sure be listening.
Selection bias on the viewer. From the German standpoint, many (most) didn’t realize they were fighting on the side of evil until they saw through the lies. Same with Japanese. Sure, we won and we’re good. It is relative, because we make these observations in hindsight. We need to decide in foresight for ourselves.
I'd like to give the everyday German a bit more credit and hope that when they saw their Jewish neighbors being forced to wear yellow Stars of David, watching as their neighbors' homes and businesses were confiscated, and eventually stopped seeing them altogether, that would have been a clue that they weren't living up to the standards embodied in their beautiful Gothic cathedrals. Maybe their patriotic commitment to the Fatherland outweighed those concerns, but a lesser of two evils is still an evil, and those "lesser" evils still ended up congealing into a monster.
Let me pose a question to you plainly right now - given that the historical parallels are so stark - do you view what this administration and ICE is doing at this moment to our neighbors as something that can be called out as plainly evil right now - without needing the benefit of hindsight - or will its ultimate moral weight be determined only once we have a hindsight?
I ask, because waiting for hindsight may not be a luxury that our neighbors can afford.
Thanks again for the link. Just finished listening to it after some long overdue data entry. Some thoughts:
1. I think that this video makes my point for me in that these men were victims of years worth of indoctrination and propaganda from the Nazi regime. We're NOT at that point in the America, YET, but we're slipping. We have a Supreme Court that's willing to act as a 21st century Taney Court enacting a modern Dred Scott decision, signing off on using racial profiling to harass and detain citizens and legal residents on the off chance that they might find someone here illegally.
We *know* that this is evil and anti-American, yet, too many of us shrug our shoulders at this. I'm not saying that 1939 Germans should have known better, but that the 1935 ones should have when the Nuremberg Race Laws were passed, and served as a stepping stone for all the evil that came afterwards. Are Americans so willfully ignorant that this country is going to destroy what made it great by replaying Germany's mistakes?[1]
2. I think it speaks highly of our nation that we treated the German POWs humanely and sympathetically. Where is that sympathy and humanity on display in Alligator Alcatraz (and its clones)? Why are we trying to run up a score on how many, how quickly, and how far away we can deport people? Why are those keeping score treating cruelty as bonus points? Why do we have people here openly cheering dumping Latinos into African countries that they have nothing to do with, instead of working to get their status here straightened out and getting them back to supporting their families, paying taxes, and living the American Dream?
3. One of the big points in the video is that Americans didn't propagandize the German POWs, they just put them to work in American jobs and let their eyes do the rest. Seeing is believing and all that. These days, it seems like there are a good number of Americans being similarly propagandized by grifters and could benefit from seeing the parts of America that they hold strong opinions about, but never stepped a foot near. I'm not going to promise that everything will be peaches and cream, but those willing to actually see will know right away that the "solutions" being offered by those in power don't do a damn thing to address the issues that ARE there.
4. I didn't see how this video supported your view on relativity. What flew over my head, or what was the takeaway that led you to sharing it in the first place? That people can be deceived? That people can believe that they are doing good under the umbrella of a lie (such as the Germans who thought that they would be civilizing the Americans)? What did I miss?
I will make a better attempt to answer in detail when I have time. But in short, yes, we are sliding into lies and poor decisions supported by more lies. And I wasn’t necessarily meaning just Americans talking about war. Russians, and other nations are also susceptible.
Fascinating. I knew there were POW camps, but I never knew how many. The only one I ever saw up close was in Brunswick, Georgia. I always suspected the BOQs I lived in at Fort Gordon and Fort Bragg were once POW camp barracks. Both were WWII construction and fire hazards. The buildings (might not have been barracks) saw in Brunswick were much nicer than those BOQs and had masonry exteriors.
I also read that there were a few Nazi rabble rousers in the camps. They were resented by most of the POWs. At least one was murdered by POWs.
In April/May 1945 Churchill instructed the British Chiefs of Staff Committee to plan an attack on Russia to "impose the will of the USA and the British Empire upon Russia."
The "Project Unthinkable" was to start July 1945 and included divisions from Poland and 10 divisions of remobilized German troops relieved of their prisoner-of-war status.
Franklin D. put his foot down and the plan was scrapped.
It was all top secret until 1998 when everybody learned that the wonderful Western allies planned to stab the country in the back that killed 80% of the Nazis and lost 30 million people in that fight.
And to use the Nazis against them one more time.
But we are the good guys........and Russia lusts for war!
Umm. We didn’t attack the USSR. And Churchill wasn’t the only one in favor of it. Gen. Patton favored the idea using former Nazi soldiers. It was never going to happen. And you know, the argument for toppling Stalin wasn’t morally bankrupt. He enslaved tens of millions of Russians, Ukrainians and others in the USSR’s orbit and led to 70 years of tyranny, a legacy that continues to this day. So Russian war lust, yes, absolutely.
Britain caused the deaths of 100 million Indians from 1821 - 1920. That is a larger number than the combined number of deaths that occurred during all famines in the Soviet Union, Maoist China, North Korea, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and Mengistu’s Ethiopia. So following your reasoning the British should have been wiped from this earth long ago. Stalin was horrible, yes - but no match for the British.
The raj, though terrible, was not a war. “Caused the death” is arguable, but it wasn’t a 100 year war. If it was, India should have risen up as a much larger nation and destroyed England. But what they’ve done is better: they’ve culturally integrated into England. The best and most popular English food is now Indian. Some of the most successful and smartest Brits are now Indians. India is independent.
If every colonial government is considered war, that changes all arguments definitionally. England certainly didn’t think it was at war with India. The raj was something they managed with as little force as possible (it was about money).
War is humanity’s oldest impulse, born from scarcity, sustained by power, and too often glorified in hindsight. From tribal hunts to nuclear standoffs, the tools have evolved, but the instinct remains: protect, dominate, survive. Patriotism fuels it; nationalism distorts it. In today’s world of drones, deepfakes, and cyberwarfare, truth itself becomes collateral. And the most haunting truth? No one in the middle of war truly knows if they’re on the right side, only that the winners will decide what the story was.
"One last interesting property of war: one thing that nobody in a war knows until after the fact (other than the people who started the war, but sometimes not even they know), is if we are fighting on the side of the right and the good, or if we are fighting for criminals and evil."
This is a surprisingly relativistic take from you. In World War II, it was pretty clear who the evil criminals were - they were the ones harassing and driving entire races from their borders, lobbing missiles into other cities, and conquering other nations without their consent. Even if the Allies lost the war to Germany, there was a clear right side and a clear wrong side to that conflict.
Now, you might say that's because the Allies were victorious and wrote the histories, not the Nazi and Japanese regimes. So, let's take Ukraine - an active war where the outcome is far from assured and the history hasn't been written yet. I have ZERO doubt that Ukraine is fighting on the side of the right and good, and the Russian invaders are the evil criminals (see Bucha). If Ukraine loses that fight and is absorbed into a new Russian empire, that doesn't change the fact that the bad guys won that fight.
There are factors OTHER than victory and who writes the histories that we can look at to decide if we're on the side of the right and good, or whether we are unwitting pawns for evil. The Nazis weren't evil because they lost - they were evil because they consigned "undesirables" to concentration camps, invaded their neighbors, and committed a long list of other sins and crimes.
This is why I pointed out the actions of the Israeli sniper murdering Palestinians yesterday. Maybe this fellow is just one "bad apple" that the IDF will deal with, or it's evidence that the Israelies are no longer fighting on the side of the right and good, and have tipped over into evil.
This is why I decry the actions of Trump's ICE goon squads - I see echoes of Hitler's Germany: concentration camps, thugs rounding up people that they (not the law or courts) decide are undesirable, and holding themselves up as unaccountable to the communities that they presumably are serving.
You can argue that ICE is justified acting within the bounds of the law. Germany's Enabling Act of 1933 was the legal umbrella under which much evil was carried out. Germany's concentration camps were erected under the theory that only the executive had the power to decide who was due legal protection and due process, and who were exempt from the laws that protect and bind. Sound familiar?
Deciding whether you're on the right (and good) side of history isn't an exercise that you do once the dust has settled and a victor has been declared. It's a question that has to be asked and answered continuously, as these moral positions are not static and can change, and they say - the road to hell is paved with good intentions. History may rhyme more than it repeats, and we better damn sure be listening.
Selection bias on the viewer. From the German standpoint, many (most) didn’t realize they were fighting on the side of evil until they saw through the lies. Same with Japanese. Sure, we won and we’re good. It is relative, because we make these observations in hindsight. We need to decide in foresight for ourselves.
I'd like to give the everyday German a bit more credit and hope that when they saw their Jewish neighbors being forced to wear yellow Stars of David, watching as their neighbors' homes and businesses were confiscated, and eventually stopped seeing them altogether, that would have been a clue that they weren't living up to the standards embodied in their beautiful Gothic cathedrals. Maybe their patriotic commitment to the Fatherland outweighed those concerns, but a lesser of two evils is still an evil, and those "lesser" evils still ended up congealing into a monster.
Let me pose a question to you plainly right now - given that the historical parallels are so stark - do you view what this administration and ICE is doing at this moment to our neighbors as something that can be called out as plainly evil right now - without needing the benefit of hindsight - or will its ultimate moral weight be determined only once we have a hindsight?
I ask, because waiting for hindsight may not be a luxury that our neighbors can afford.
I will share some of the documentation I have regarding the deception.
https://youtu.be/gykVp3JJNdI?si=ED5OJMCKQYbA4kR8
Thanks again for the link. Just finished listening to it after some long overdue data entry. Some thoughts:
1. I think that this video makes my point for me in that these men were victims of years worth of indoctrination and propaganda from the Nazi regime. We're NOT at that point in the America, YET, but we're slipping. We have a Supreme Court that's willing to act as a 21st century Taney Court enacting a modern Dred Scott decision, signing off on using racial profiling to harass and detain citizens and legal residents on the off chance that they might find someone here illegally.
We *know* that this is evil and anti-American, yet, too many of us shrug our shoulders at this. I'm not saying that 1939 Germans should have known better, but that the 1935 ones should have when the Nuremberg Race Laws were passed, and served as a stepping stone for all the evil that came afterwards. Are Americans so willfully ignorant that this country is going to destroy what made it great by replaying Germany's mistakes?[1]
2. I think it speaks highly of our nation that we treated the German POWs humanely and sympathetically. Where is that sympathy and humanity on display in Alligator Alcatraz (and its clones)? Why are we trying to run up a score on how many, how quickly, and how far away we can deport people? Why are those keeping score treating cruelty as bonus points? Why do we have people here openly cheering dumping Latinos into African countries that they have nothing to do with, instead of working to get their status here straightened out and getting them back to supporting their families, paying taxes, and living the American Dream?
3. One of the big points in the video is that Americans didn't propagandize the German POWs, they just put them to work in American jobs and let their eyes do the rest. Seeing is believing and all that. These days, it seems like there are a good number of Americans being similarly propagandized by grifters and could benefit from seeing the parts of America that they hold strong opinions about, but never stepped a foot near. I'm not going to promise that everything will be peaches and cream, but those willing to actually see will know right away that the "solutions" being offered by those in power don't do a damn thing to address the issues that ARE there.
4. I didn't see how this video supported your view on relativity. What flew over my head, or what was the takeaway that led you to sharing it in the first place? That people can be deceived? That people can believe that they are doing good under the umbrella of a lie (such as the Germans who thought that they would be civilizing the Americans)? What did I miss?
[1] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/09/eric-schmitt-white-nationalism-national-conservatism-conference.html
I will make a better attempt to answer in detail when I have time. But in short, yes, we are sliding into lies and poor decisions supported by more lies. And I wasn’t necessarily meaning just Americans talking about war. Russians, and other nations are also susceptible.
Fascinating. I knew there were POW camps, but I never knew how many. The only one I ever saw up close was in Brunswick, Georgia. I always suspected the BOQs I lived in at Fort Gordon and Fort Bragg were once POW camp barracks. Both were WWII construction and fire hazards. The buildings (might not have been barracks) saw in Brunswick were much nicer than those BOQs and had masonry exteriors.
I also read that there were a few Nazi rabble rousers in the camps. They were resented by most of the POWs. At least one was murdered by POWs.
Thanks - I'll give it a look later today.
(Been spending a lot of time in the WWII rabbit hole lately, so this link couldn't come at a more timely time.)
In April/May 1945 Churchill instructed the British Chiefs of Staff Committee to plan an attack on Russia to "impose the will of the USA and the British Empire upon Russia."
The "Project Unthinkable" was to start July 1945 and included divisions from Poland and 10 divisions of remobilized German troops relieved of their prisoner-of-war status.
Franklin D. put his foot down and the plan was scrapped.
It was all top secret until 1998 when everybody learned that the wonderful Western allies planned to stab the country in the back that killed 80% of the Nazis and lost 30 million people in that fight.
And to use the Nazis against them one more time.
But we are the good guys........and Russia lusts for war!
You are delusional.
Umm. We didn’t attack the USSR. And Churchill wasn’t the only one in favor of it. Gen. Patton favored the idea using former Nazi soldiers. It was never going to happen. And you know, the argument for toppling Stalin wasn’t morally bankrupt. He enslaved tens of millions of Russians, Ukrainians and others in the USSR’s orbit and led to 70 years of tyranny, a legacy that continues to this day. So Russian war lust, yes, absolutely.
Britain caused the deaths of 100 million Indians from 1821 - 1920. That is a larger number than the combined number of deaths that occurred during all famines in the Soviet Union, Maoist China, North Korea, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and Mengistu’s Ethiopia. So following your reasoning the British should have been wiped from this earth long ago. Stalin was horrible, yes - but no match for the British.
The raj, though terrible, was not a war. “Caused the death” is arguable, but it wasn’t a 100 year war. If it was, India should have risen up as a much larger nation and destroyed England. But what they’ve done is better: they’ve culturally integrated into England. The best and most popular English food is now Indian. Some of the most successful and smartest Brits are now Indians. India is independent.
If every colonial government is considered war, that changes all arguments definitionally. England certainly didn’t think it was at war with India. The raj was something they managed with as little force as possible (it was about money).
War is humanity’s oldest impulse, born from scarcity, sustained by power, and too often glorified in hindsight. From tribal hunts to nuclear standoffs, the tools have evolved, but the instinct remains: protect, dominate, survive. Patriotism fuels it; nationalism distorts it. In today’s world of drones, deepfakes, and cyberwarfare, truth itself becomes collateral. And the most haunting truth? No one in the middle of war truly knows if they’re on the right side, only that the winners will decide what the story was.
Still so eager for this war you seem to be hyper focused on? With the death here today you may just need to look out your window.
Can't wait for you to inform us on who deserves to be able to slaughter who in this conflict.
Eager? No. Warning? Yes.