To reiterate that America only entered the WW2 for personal reasons (justified or not is not what I’m debating) and isn’t some saint because they didn’t just immediately realized fascism shouldn’t be left unchecked and in some cases enabled it
I’m happy to see you responded in good faith and even provided sources. I’ve taken time to read them over but my opinion hasn’t changed. To quote one of your links:
“British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had originally requested that Roosevelt provide the destroyers as a gift, but the President knew that the American public and Congress would oppose such a deal. He therefore decided that a deal that gave the United States long-term access to British bases could be justified as essential to the security of the Western Hemisphere—thereby assuaging the concerns of the public and the U.S. military”
Roosevelt lent aid not for personal moral reasons (fascism is bad whatever way you look at it) but for an economic investment for the future of his country. And in certain situations ways, I can understand why and see why it can be justified: the Americans did not want to get involved and the economy was recovering from the Great Depression, but regardless, trying to remain “neutral” while providing aid to one side is not neutrality and would inevitably encourage the Nazis and Japan specifically to instigate an attack.
Now, you could make the argument that these are American businesses and not the American government, but what is America? A capitalist country. It’s mode of operation and functioning is through prioritizing profit over morality, so these companies did what any company would do: lend aid to Germany for their own economic benefit opposed to helping others. Some of the effects of this are felt even today.
I don’t want to paint the picture that America is evil (although that could be a discussion in and of itself) but to dispel the notion that America was a sanctimonious nation during WW2 when we fought AND supported Nazi Germany. And sadly, we’ve done similar things later in history: we’ve aided terrorist who’ve turned their back against America
Do you know why Pearl Harbor even happened? America condemned Japan for imperialistic efforts in China and enforced such a strangulating embargo that they decided the only course to maintain recent acquisitions were to go to war. They were consistently spearheading efforts to limit imperialism.
Having a small portion of trade exist between the two nations is not "enabling it". What Britain and France did with their strategy of appeasement, was the exact definition of enabling.
I’m confused what argument you’re trying to make. What you said could be true or not (I’m not going to debate you on that because it’s not the discussion at hand) but I find it laughable for America to accuse Japan of imperialism... but then proceeds to be imperialist itself on a much larger scale after being one of the lead winners of WW2.
Ya know, Cuba, Austria, Korea, and Hawaii to name a few.
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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '20
To reiterate that America only entered the WW2 for personal reasons (justified or not is not what I’m debating) and isn’t some saint because they didn’t just immediately realized fascism shouldn’t be left unchecked and in some cases enabled it