Should the U.S. invade Colombia after the War on Drugs?

If not for WAR WAR WAR, how would they know how manly they are?

Seriously -- killing and maiming (of others) is the only thing that makes them feel "good" about themselves.

No, wait. We've got Blackwater for the Colombia operation.

It's outsourced, so it will be more efficient and cost less than the Department of Defense. If it's like Ollie North's wars it may be funded with secret arms sales to the Sunnis and stay off the books.

Because invading the Soviet Union is a cakewalk.

I guess they must have temporarily run out of current wars to promote.

Yeah, but I think they've got a nice new baby coming up here...

This is a serious question.

Are they retarded?

Authoritarians want to defeat everyone. They perceive all competition and non-obedience as a threat to the nation’s existence. They are so fearful, so bloodthirsty, and so unable to entertain anything that looks like compromise or outside independence that they will destroy the nation they were trying to save, just like Adolf Hitler. Their glory-lust cripples the nation in perpetual war. This is why they should never be in power. This is why there should always be checks on the ability of the executive to make war.

discussing whether we should have continued WWII by turning around and mounting a massive assault on the Soviet Union, a topic most of us thought was put to rest about 60 years ago.

Aren't there good reasons we should have continued? After achieving victory against the Nazis and their allies, the American people would've been buoyed by the feeling of victory. The American people would've easily accepted attacking the Soviet Union after seeing how we defeated the Nazis. Furthermore, seeing how we were the only nation to have nukes at that time a nuclear attack on them would've been unbeatable.
It is easy for us who were living in free and democratic states to ignore the plight of those who were living under the forces of tyranny, but I think we should see it from the point of view of those who were oppressed also. Ultimately, I think Truman made a mistake, but I am welcome to arguments to the contrary.

We did defeat the Soviets. It was called the Cold War. Ever heard of it? We won it, but W-is-for-Worthless has his black little heart set on a hat-trick, so he is doing his damned level best to reverse that outcome.

I tire of this Greatest Generation crap. It was commonly admitted by Allied officers that the Germans always won anything like a fair fight with Anglo/American troops. We had to have an enormous preponderance of numbers and manpower to have any chance of winning an engagement.

If this same group, which had so much trouble with a dramatically degraded and undermanned Wehrmacht, had taken on Zhukov's Red Army, there wouldn't have been much of the "Greatest Generation" to come home.

*Land war in Asia, eh? Next thing you know, they'll be going up against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

*Why, exactly, would we have beaten the Russians? They outlasted the Wehrmacht, for God's sake. I don't think they were afraid of anybody.

*Stalin was a bastard, but he also provided a united front against Hitler. When all of Europe will need to be rebuilt, turning our back on one of our allies seems a bad plan.

*Perhaps they are suggesting that we should have nuked the Russians. Because of course the best way to save people from Stalin would have been to incinerate them.

Morons.

Funny thing about those guys. Bet they haven't kept up with recent studies, based on opening the secret Soviet archives, that support the view that it was really the Soviets who won WWII, not us. They took the brunt of the Nazi attack, faced most the German army, and beat them. Stalingrad makes D-Day look like a picnic, and the war in the East makes the war in the West look like a day at the beach. As for me, I'm just as glad I'm more mature than those 10-year-olds at the Corner, and recognize risks, say the risk of losing all Western Europe, when I see them.

If the Soviet Union had been able to prevent the US from becoming the superior military force in the world after WW II, very many Vietnamese, Nicaraguans, Afghans, Iraqis and countless other people might not have been murdered. On the other hand, had the US invaded the Soviet Union and deposed Stalin, all of the Russians killed by Stalin after the war would have been killed by Americans instead, which is probably why the American machismo ideologues resent its not being done.

Tomorrow's topic: Should Britain have invaded Argentina after regaining the Falklands?

No no no no no.

Conservatives regret one and only one defeat: Mammal v. Dinosaur.

Furthermore, seeing how we were the only nation to have nukes at that time a nuclear attack on them would've been unbeatable.

Imitation Al is hinting in his cryptic way at the fact that we did NOT, in fact, have plural nukes. We had 2 nukes already scheduled for Japan. After that: 0. Making more nukes in that day took a long time.

I assume what they're really debating is the seven countries in five years article we heard about last week from Wes Clark in Salon....

In some ways the competition of the cold war and the space race helped us by spurring our efforts. if you take that incentive away, hmmm, would we have stagnated in the 50s and 60's?

And what about a unified Germany? Would Germany be more of a world leader today if they avoided the split and reunion and all that cost them?

Maybe after WWII we could have seized the moment and conquered the USSR and then China! Sure we would have been stretched thin but if we would have concentrated our armies at the borders and rolled a couple double sixes and turned in our cards we could have RULED THE WORLD. Mwhahahahahahahaha.

"This is a serious question.

Are they retarded?"

Seriously, I think the current remnants of the Republican Party are that segment of the population we used to house in mental institutions.

If if weren't for the kickbacks, "contracts," and other perks many are getting from the Bush mis-administration, these people would be sleeping in refrigerator boxes and drooling in their soup.

We urgently need a campaign to get them on medication and provide counseling.

h

Making more nukes in that day took a long time.

No, not really. There were zero nukes finished, but many in the pipe. Don't remember the exact number, but we were scheduled to nuke several more cities within the next few months if Japan didn't surrender.

OTOH, it didn't take Russia very long at all to explode their own nuke.

These people have a schoolboy’s sense of history, much more bloodthirsty, but childish nevertheless. It is hard to even know where to begin to suggest a land war in Russia would be a bad idea in 1812, in 1941 and in 1945, or there about. One thing these speculations do reveal is how little the authoritarians are encumbered by real military objectives. They just want to ‘win’- to have a nice victory. Their is absolutely no thought about the human cost to Americans or Russians or, if the US used nuclear weapons, everyone else. No thought about what a defeated Russia would mean in real terms and what would be done about civil order or occupation of the country.

We see all the consequences of blind victory-lust on display in Iraq.

We would have been welcomed as liberators! Flowers and chocolates for everyone!

It comes as no surprise that those folks are as delusional and uninformed about WWII as they are about Iraq.

The crazy assumption inherent in all this is that if we had gone on to "mop up" the Soviets in a massive war, it would have gone well and we would have won. In their mind, all wars go as planned and have an optimal policy outcome for the U.S., and all that's lacking is the will to fight them.

What? Fight Uncle Joe? Our ally? After we'd beaten Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo, and could finally get back to peacetime? Anyone who'd proposed it then would have been tarred and feathered. Now, it's quite safe to propose it.

I have one: should we have continued on to Britain after we won the Revolutionary War? Perhaps we could have prevented the War of 1812. Fight them over there, so to speak? Perhaps we should take this on now.

Um...shouldn't someone tell them the Soviet Union disbanded in 1991?

After achieving victory against the Nazis and their allies, the American people would've been buoyed by the feeling of victory.

Ah, the conservatives' number 1 fixation, seldom mentioned allowed, that ranks ahead even of fundie social issues- the feeling of loss at the thought that we never got to fight WWIII against the Soviets.

seldom mentioned allowed,

oops, 'seldom mentioned aloud,'

WTF?

Given that the Army was largely made up of conscripts who were eager to return home, some of whom rioted at the slow pace of demobilization after the war ended, an attack on the Soviet Union would have probably triggered mass mutinies.

Brojo:

Stalin killed many more people before World War II than after.

Other than the fact that the SU would quickly have settled our hash, I see no reason why not.

If not for WAR WAR WAR, how would they know how manly they are?

Couldn't they just play Halo 3 instead?

Can we just tell these idiots we feel real bad about their tiny little members and hope they feel placated? And if that doesn't work, can we forcably administer valium to them and mellow them the fuck out?

If the allies had chosen to continue fighting in 1945 then the obvious target and the only one that was even halfway considered was the last of the Fascist dictators, General Franco, in Spain. He would have been relatively easy to topple, but no-one was even slightly interested in doing so.

I guess, in post-GWB America, neocons have decided that you don't really need a decisive, unambiguous reason to declare war on another country. It's sufficient for the leader of that country to be an evil bastard.

I guess the writers either watched Pattonagain this weekend or found out they can relive post WWII tank battles in Iraq. The only armored division the "new" Iraqi Army has runs T-74s donated by Hungary. The US blew up all the "old ' ones during and after the invasion (target practice).

The Allies would have gone up against the T-34 with the Sherman, or as it was known, the Ronson.

As an aside, had the German General Staff succeeded in convincing Hitler to isolate and bypass Stalingrad, Iraq would be spelled Irak and the Germans could be worrying about it. If you're going to engage in rank speculation, why not go back a few more years and try again.

I we had finished the Mexican-American war by annexing all of Mexico, maybe we wouldn't have nearly the illegal immigrant problem we face today. Of course, if we had offered to give them back Texas maybe we wouldn't have the Shrub for a president.

War can be continued indefinitely when it's someone else doing the fighting and dying.

Jim--

I recall reading long ago that we had a modus vivendi with Franco. He stayed out of hostilities during WWII and we didn't mess with him then or afterwards. I doubt, moreover, that either FDR or Truman was particularly interested in launching hostilities against a fascist who had overthrown a left regime; can you think of an example in which we have?

Don't you guys ever play Risk?

Everyone knows that with a large number of our forces massed in Alaska, it'd be easy to take Siberia and Kamchatka. With a few lucky dice rolls, we'd have wiped out the Russians.

Stupid Defeatocrats.

The Soviet Union disbanded in 1991? Who knew?

Weren't the Russians responsible for about 85% of the tank kills in the European theatre? What a wise move it would have been for the US and Canada (realistically, in 1945, those were the only two countries capable of mounting much more of a war effort) to take that war machine on.

Did I ever tell you about the time I destroyed France's economy single-handedly? A good boycott by my fans can destroy any country's economy.

Conservatives regret one and only one defeat: Mammal v. Dinosaur.

Thanks to advances in genetics (Professor Calvin and his lab assistant Hobbes, I believe deserve the credit), conservatives will soon be able to hatch their offspring again.

"This is a serious question.

Are they retarded?"

Yes.

Couldn't they just play Halo 3 instead?

No.

Franco is still dead, BTW.

Yes, by golly, we could have advanced into the USSR in May 1945, just in time to be bogged down in the Russian winter outside Moscow by December.

Eh, they're just upset by Putin's spine and his treatment of Rice. He made Rice wait for 45 min for their first scheduled meeting at their recent tete a tete and drew a few red lines in the sand about missile defense, Iran, etc. This is the sort of offense that makes the wingers start dreaming of war.

Alla y'all except egbert and al are partisan, pantywaist wussies who wouldn't know one end of a howitzer from the other. Think how much better off we'd be if the United States had finished up the Mexican war by taking the entire hemisphere - would we be threatened by little brown job-stealers today? I don't think so. And look at the disastrous outcome of the Korean War, which could have been completely avoided by nuking Manchuria and replacing the Chinese population with the Hispanics we moved out of Our Hemisphere. Y'all just don't get the big picture.

***

This is the most ridiculous thing I have heard in years. Napolean and Hitler had early success in Russia (Soviet Ubion) because Russia was unprepared for both. The Red Army of 1945 was ruthless, skilled and had..yes Virginia..better ground equipment than the US. Their tanks were the best.

I hesitate to even think of the level of US casualties and the futility of the effort. There were no more nukes.

Considering the invasion of the Soviet Union now fits nicely into the usual hobby o fthe right, sitting in their armchairs getting all righteous about killing someone they hate, then having a beer to cool off after all the effort.

Invading the Soviet Union would have been a disaster and may have led to the loss all of Europe to communism.

To America’s credit, we were not a nation of war mongers. Truth be told, the American public and its conscript military were sick of the war in 1945. This would have made an aggressive war against the Soviet Union a tough sell.

The Wing Nuts did propose a strategy after WWII (while we still had a monopoly on the A-bomb) that we threaten to nuke a Soviet city a week unless they liberalized their government. Through a series of such threats we would eventually force them to drop Communism and become a democracy. The plan failed miserably when war gamed, the people playing the role of the Russians replied to nuclear threats by saying “go ahead and nuke a city; we are not going to give in to your Imperialists threats.” It does show how fundamentally the myth of American exceptionalism (we will fight to the death against foreign threats, but the Iranians will back down if we drop a few bombs”) permeates conservative thought.

First, Reagan and his policies didn't cause the end of the Soviet Union. It collapsed under its own weight and economic mismanagement. It was inevitable, given the SU's circumstances and inability to make significant internal changes, however you wingers like to fetishize Ronnie. Face it, Reagan was a senile old geezer by his second term - at the latest.

Second, the backhanded way of calling American liberals, commies, by insinuating that we're all big ol' Stalin/Soviet Union lovers is hackneyed. Get a new shtick.

mhr,
why can't tell the difference between an apple and a hammer let alone an apple and an orange or an american liberal and a maxists.
Smear and Fear. It's all you've ever offered America. As for standing with the USSR, Bush and his supporters stand much closer to that tyranny than any liberal living in American by supporting gulag inspired torture methods and KGB like spying regimes.

Hey, wingers, the United States was a peaceful nation back then. We only agreed to support the war against Germany after Roosevelt promised the congress he would destroy the European empires empire along the way.

Which he did, gawd bless him. Ran them out of cash and bankrupted them with debt. Just like we're doing to ourselves right now. Bankruptcy is always the surest cure for imperialism.

In any event, Roosevelt barely got us into the war with Germany even after their ally, the Japanese, bombed Pearl Harbor. Starting a war with the Soviets would have gotten Truman lynched. Not to mention that (a) we could have easily lost the opening campaing and been driven to the Rhine, and (b) my Dad would have been killed, since he was with the Third Army near Prague at the time. Lots of us have a retro-active personal stake in end of that war.

…Liberal Democrats will never forgive Reagan for what he accomplished. ..meatheadrepublican at 12:43 PM

Wars as very attractive to those who only know them as video games.

What they are really fantasizing about is the US having teamed up with Hitler against Stalin. That's their most deeply loved wet dream.

Here's another war they wished we continued:

After the victory at Yorktown, should George Washington have invaded the British Isles and deposed George III because he was an imminent threat to our security?

>"Accomplishments of Raygun: biggest recession since the Great Depression...."

Hey, don't forget funding and organizing the Islamic Jihadists.

Thanks for sending me over to The Corner. Remember in the old days of elementary, when being sent to The Corner was a punishment? It still is. For the short time I spent there I felt isolated, surrounded by dunces, and panicky.

Berlin??

When did we take Berlin?

The Soviet Army took 100% of Berlin.

Ah, Kevin.

I wouldn't expect anything less. Of course you didn't want the US and its allies to invade The Soveit Union after WWII. They were, of course, your communist utolpia.

I'll bet if Russia invated the US after WWII, you wouldn't have complained then. Would you? WOULD YOU!?!

My favorite Hitler clip reminds me of neoconservative thought. Bill Kristol has a little of the ol' Führer in him, I think.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=4AnE9k3Z5lk

I really regret that we didn't invade England after the Revolutionary War [/wingnut]

Egbert

If you're going to be a fool, at least you can come up with a foolish arguement (sure, we could have beaten the Ruskies) instead of just name calling. Try a little harder, won't you?

Someone upthread mentioned that with the recently published soviet archives that we are now understanding the Soviets beat the Germans. I agree with the premise, but not the timing. People were arguing in the 60's that the Soviets won the war.

Kevin: "Tomorrow's topic: Should Britain have invaded Argentina after regaining the Falklands?"

Seen from the perspective of a quarter century's hindsight, one could argue that the short but vicious Falkland Islands War proved a catalyst for tremendous political change throughout Latin America.

Argentina's humiliating defeat at the hands of the British thoroughly discredited that country's ruling military junta in the eyes of its own people. That junta's swift fall from power, and the subsequent revelations of its horrific human rights abuses during the so-called "Dirty War" (1976-82), unleashed a tide of democratic reforms that transformed the nature of Argentine politics, and also spawned a nascent regional movement that eventually swept aside most if not all of Latin America's authoritarian regimes, most of which were succeeded by democratically-elected governments.

Reagan (or whoever was pulling his strings) and Bush I should get some praise for one thing, though. When the USSR did collapse under its own weight, they avoided any displays of unseemly gloating or public arrogance. I suspect that this went a long way toward defusing a potentially explosive situation.

Another Bush promised a "humble" foreign policy free of arrogance, and delivered just the opposite. Result? New tensions with Russia. Heckuva job.

egbert: I'll bet if Russia invated the US after WWII, you wouldn't have complained then.
If I'm not mistaken, Mr. Drum hadn't been born yet, so no, he would likely not have complained.

New tensions with Russia.
BTW, Blue Girl has an excellent post on the topic.
http://bluegirlredmissouri.blogspot.com/2007/10/losing-cold-war-after-fact.html

By the 1970’s it was becoming clear to many that the Soviet Union was deteriorating. Emmanuel Todd in his The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere (1979) argued that the reign of the proletariat had been succeed by the reign of the so-called New Class, an elite class of conservatives within the Soviet Union whose interest became the mere exploitation of the workers and peasantry. The domination of this class was not only part of totalitarian system but was the means by which the Soviet Union maintained control of its various satellite states. He interprets the increase in oppression, alcoholism, hooliganism and suicide as indications of a decaying economy and political order. He pointed out that the command economy allowed the New Class to direct resources to a military buildup. This was at once intended to help keep the satellite regimes in line, keep Moscow relevant and to keep the New Class on top. Back in 1978 he concluded that this was ruinous to the state and only delayed the final collapse. Of course much of what Todd outlined became very obvious by the end of the 1980’s, just in time for Reagan and his neoliberal fans to claim credit. It is hard to find a more prophetic work.

It should be a lesson that in 1979 hardliners in US were still painting the Soviet Union as an expansionistic totalitarian empire, not a broken and corrupt conservative regime which, given enough time, would end up undoing itself.

This kind of chest-thumping nonsense reminds my of an old Molly Ivins column (in her first or second books of collected columns, if I recall), which mocked similarly jingoistic conservatives as being the people who wanted us to unleash Chiang-Kai-Shek (she followed that up with a comment, something like 'psst - he's still dead').

That said, it's nice that for once the'yre being free with the lives of hypothetical people sixty years ago, instead of with the lives of actual real people today.

damn. even people my age know you "never get involved in a land war in asia". what's not to get about russian winters?

Only a chicken hawk thinks we could have invaded the Soviet Union in 1946 and come out ahead. Hitler learned the hard way what General Winter and General Mud could do to what was then a more formidable military machine than we had in Europe. Had we tried this stunt, it would have failed after the loss of millions of lives. But then the crew over at the National Review does not understand the reality of war. Which is why they are so damn eager to advocate war.

Argentina's humiliating defeat..., and the subsequent revelations of its horrific human rights abuses..., unleashed a tide of democratic reforms that transformed the nature of Argentine politics

I would hope America's defeated occupation of Iraq and the revelation of American horrific human rights abuses would transform American warrior politics. But this is America, where even the liberals think America's dominating military power should be enhanced instead of dismantled.

It was commonly admitted by Allied officers that the Germans always won anything like a fair fight with Anglo/American troops. We had to have an enormous preponderance of numbers and manpower to have any chance of winning an engagement.

That's actually true, though not something you're likely to hear much of in the US. When German forces met Anglo-American troops on anywhere around a one:one ration of equal men and equipment, the Germans won. It was American factories, not fighting men, that really turned the tide.

Weren't the Russians responsible for about 85% of the tank kills in the European theatre?

Yes, and the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS suffered 80% of their casualties on the Eastern Front. By comparison with that front, US efforts were a sideshow.

Alas!

Over at The Corner, they are — seriously — discussing whether we should have continued WWII by turning around after we took Berlin....

What do you mean "we", comrade? It was Marshal Zhukov's Red Army that took Berlin.

At least you all can talk about 'settling Soviet hash' which makes you feel powerful, like you're 'settling' something, just like a broker might, instead of Monday morning quarterbacking, which is what it really is.

Ah, to settle some hash!

"It was commonly admitted by Allied officers that the Germans always won anything like a fair fight with Anglo/American troops. We had to have an enormous preponderance of numbers and manpower to have any chance of winning an engagement."

Although in fairness it should be said that the Germans had been a war machine since the mid-1930's and our guys were mainly a bunch of inexperienced kids.

No way. I remember. I was there: USA in wartime, Germany in occupation. As we used to say, "Nevah hoppen, G.I."

Next thing they'll be pissing and moaning about how we didn't really have the will to back up 54-40-or-Fight, 'cause if we did we'd've taken Canada, too, bigad!

By the way, weren't the Spanish wussies for not invading Britain after the War of Jenkin's Ear?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Operation Unthinkable was a plan ordered by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and developed by the British Armed Forces at the end of World War II. The primary goal of the operation was declared as follows: "to impose upon Russia the will of the United States and the British Empire." [1] The word "Russia" is used heavily throughout the document, although at the time the name Russia had been replaced by the "Soviet Union".

The majority of the operation would have consisted of American and British forces, but would also would have entailed the use of up to 100,000 surrendered German soldiers. The plan was rejected by the British Chiefs of Staff Committee as militarily unfeasible and was never carried out. Churchill stated within the briefing documents for Unthinkable that it was a "precautionary study" of what he hoped was a "purely hypothetical contigency".[1] The Chiefs of Staff were concerned that given the enormous size of Soviet forces deployed in Europe at the end of the war, and the perception that the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was unreliable, there existed a Soviet threat to Western Europe. The plan was rejected as militarily unfeasible.

Only a chicken hawk thinks we could have invaded the Soviet Union in 1946 and come out ahead. Hitler learned the hard way what General Winter and General Mud could do to what was then a more formidable military machine than we had in Europe. Had we tried this stunt, it would have failed after the loss of millions of lives. But then the crew over at the National Review does not understand the reality of war. Which is why they are so damn eager to advocate war.

Oh, it's worse than that. Jonah assumes we could've easily run the Soviets out, for the sake of his "intellectual" exercise. To which I reply, so what if we could? What would the result have been? The occupation of a large, hostile and disorganized political entity, which might result in our eventual withdrawal and the installment of a regime that might still be hostile to us to this day? Wow...doesn't that sound a lot like something that is right now happening in Iraq? And isn't it amazing that Jonah somehow fails to make that connection? All you have to do is change the names of the countries, and apparently for Jonah that prompts a "reset" in this historical revisionism switch in his brain.

If "Soviet Hash" involves beets, or turnips, count me out.

The U.S. won in Western Europe because of a preponderance of air support and artillery. Max Hastings points out that the Navy and Army Air Force tended to get the best recruits. Within the Army the regular infantry tended to be at the bottom of the priority list. Elite units such as the airborne units fought well, but regular infantry units were treated rather badly (no leave after D-Day till the end of the war, poorly trained replacements supplied peace meal) and as a consequence often did not fight well. The German Generals considered the tendency of the American Army to use overwhelming artillery as unimaginative and unsporting, but as they say, “If you have a big gun . . .”

That said taking on the Soviet Union would have been a whole step up from fighting the Nazi’s. While the U.S. possessed a preponderance of air power, the Soviets had a major edge in Amour and in both the numbers and toughness of their troops. It’s hard to believe American troops would have been as motivated in fighting a war of aggression as the Soviet troops would have been in defending the Motherland.

That's next on the neocons' agenda--invading Russia. They do have WMDs after all...

It was commonly admitted by Allied officers that the Germans always won anything like a fair fight with Anglo/American troops. We had to have an enormous preponderance of numbers and manpower to have any chance of winning an engagement . . . That's actually true, though not something you're likely to hear much of in the US. When German forces met Anglo-American troops on anywhere around a one:one ration of equal men and equipment, the Germans won.

Exaggerating, here, but not by much. The Americans could take the Germans one on one on the defense and did, many, many times, with or without artillery. By 1944, the Germans could still stop an American attack, at great cost, but by the fall of '44 they could only hang on and die. British infantry could hold the Germans if they weren't completely surrounded after the Germans shredded their armor, which sadly, never did figure out how to beat anyone but Italians. The Free French and Free Polish forces could handle their weight in Germans quite nicely. In fact, the most successful allied offensive in the Italian campaign was won by Algierians (Moslem Berbers) with French officers. They were the ones who opened the way to Rome.

Never the less, the best quote on the topic I've found is by British General William Penny just before the tragic American defeat at Cisterna: "The Germans don't let mistakes go unpunished and don't give second chances."

Note that the German tanks were far better than American tanks in 1945, Soviet tanks were actually better than that, they had about ten times as many, and they were supported by about a 2 to 1 advantage in infantry. Which is to say, Jonah Goldberg is both ignorant AND foolish.

"I wouldn't expect anything less. Of course you didn't want the US and its allies to invade The Soveit [Soviet] Union after WWII. They were, of course, your communist utolpia [utopia].
I'll bet if Russia invated [invaded] the US after WWII, you wouldn't have complained then. Would you? WOULD YOU!?!:
Posted by: egbert

What is it with these ignorant little trolls and their crappy spelling? Do they feel a need to prove how stupid they are?

"turning around after we took Berlin"...

Errr, who are the "we"? In this universe, the Soviets took Berlin. Good thing they've turned around, 'cause who knows where they might have ended up otherwise

Kind of mean to a bunch that helped us beat the Nazis, but it would have saved lots of cold war cold cash.

Speaking of Reagan's "accomplishments" per mhr, let's also remember, now that we're discussing the USSR: Reagan didn't lift a finger to punish the Soviets for shooting down KAL 007.

Should America have invaded Great Britain after Yorktown? Real neo-cons say YES!

As stated by several comments above, the Russians were vastly superior to the U.S. and Western Allies on the ground at the end of the war. Their tanks were superior and they had more of them and their troops were more battle hardened and disciplined in the field.

The only way the Soviets could possibly have been defeated at that time would have been utilizing U.S. air and munitions superiority [or nukes] in a campaign of mass civilian slaughter at least a magnitude greater than that of the Nazis in Eastern Europe.

(However, we tried that in Vietnam and Cambodia and it didn't work there.)

Don't assume that the US would have had air superiority, either. Granted the West had the P-51, the best operational piston-engined combat aircraft in the war (confession time; my dad flew one). But the Soviets had the La-9 and the Yak-9 which were both better than almost anything the Germans or Japs fielded, and they had the Stormovik which was hell on tanks.

No, it wouldn't have happened. Plus the only man in the US Army who really wanted to fight the Russians was George S Patton. You'd have had mass mutinies in the ranks if you'd attacked the USSR. Meanwhile Stalin could simply have said "See, comrades? I told you about those filthy capitalists! They're attacking us again! Just like the Nazis! Go gettem!"

They'd have been ringing the church-bells in St Basil's in a couple of weeks.

It was commonly admitted by Allied officers that the Germans always won anything like a fair fight with Anglo/American troops

Except the Battle of Britain, of course.

Alan Brooke had the joint planning staff do a study of "Unthinkable" in order to put Winston off it; the study group reported back that we might get almost as far as the Germans did; and then what?

With regard to Alex's comment above, I believe one of the key British advantages was that there were people around Churchill who understood their job was to talk him out of really, really dumbshit ideas.

Therefore, while some marginally dumbshit ideas came through (ie Greece), most of them were quietly strangled in committee.

Except the Battle of Britain, of course.

We're discussing ground combat involving infantry. In the air, the Allies certainly had the edge.

Except the Battle of Britain, of course.

It was a much closer issue than generally known. The Germans started by attacking, very effectively, the radar stations and fighter bases in eastern England. The British lost over 90% of their effective forces but, in a decision much like the one later in Russia, Hitler and Goebbels responded to an air raid on Berlin by pulling the attack away from the radar and fighter installations.
The bombing of London was what gave the British a chance to repair the radars and have fighters near London with which to conduct the Battle of Britain.

The British were hampered throughout the war by being second best at just about everything. That doesn't make them bad--for that, you look at the Italian army and the senior (as in senile) French generals. Their aircraft, electronics, and signals intelligence were first rate and it was the Germans who had to rely on a production advantage to match them. Once American and Soviet production took away that advantage, the Luftwaffe was slowly attritted away. An American-Soviet air war would have been incredibly bloody.

The reason American conservatives in 1945 weren't as eager as the staff of National Review today to immediately follow the bloodiest war in history with another war probably has something to do with the fact that, unlike the Cornerites, almost all American conservatives in 1945 had actually fought in a war.

Not all of them, of course; Ronald Reagan, for example, slept every night of the entire war in a soft bed in Hollywood, California.

Which is not to say that Reagan didn't suffer too! While my father was in a trench in Normandy, blithely enjoying unearned big-government handouts such as free M-1 bullets and K-rations, meanwhile on the home front poor victimized Ronnie was being unjustly mulcted of the greatest part of his kingly Hollywood salary by the real enemies of freedom, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. He was still furious about it decades later, too.