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While I would agree that the Soviets, Nazi Germany, even Imperial Japan, were bad guys, I question the goodness of the USA.
The USA was an enabler of the USSR that literally helped build it up under FDR. And an ally. How can the USA be the good guys if the Soviets are bad guys? Surely, if the Soviets are bad, then USA which has been an enablers and under FDR goverment very infested with communists had a genuine agenda of twin world hegemony for USA and USSR, certainly affects their pure good guy credentials. A good book that goes in much better detail with the receipt on these issues that I would never be able to summarize all outrageous things about how pro soviet the USA was, is going to be Stalin's war.
Not to mention, American own warcrimes which weren't negligible and even if one could argue comparatively less, that still stain the good guy picture. But some of them relate to being too complicit and supportive of Soviet ones, like returning a huge amount of people who left USSR during the war back to the USSR to be murdered.
Importantly, before ww2, the Soviet Union was much more mass murderous including towards ethnic groups than the nazis (and while the Nazis were definitely bad guys quite willing to be brutal conquerors, the fog of war propaganda still remains controversial today). In other episodes like the Spanish civil war, you had nazi germany in the side of Franco and USA sympathetic with the communist side to an extend but not intervening directly.
Doubly importantly, the idea that USA are the good guys because of WW2 has been used to justify a lot of immoral and destructive regime change and warmongering. The latest relevance is the fall of Assad regime and now the replacement of Jihadists who have started massacring minorities. While I do think things are more gray, and many millions have died in the supposed good war, where the priority of the USA was definetly not how to avoid the blodoshed (nor does it make sense to pin it mostly on the USA of course, and in fact I consider in Europe Nazi Germany and USSR to be much more blameworthy for death of millions), it is still the case that America comes off better in WW2 than Japan, Nazis, or Soviets.
But you can't forget how WW2 is milked to justify behavior where USA comes off worse and ends up leaving things worse than they started. Like in Syria. Does this affect USA's supposed good guy behavior in WW2? It should affect at least how one sees the narrative of ww2 and to justify bringing up how it has been used in this manner. Although even regarding WW2, very simplistic moral narratives don't understand how American foreign policy is made which is made by more ruthless people and of a more ruthless amoral nature and ends.
Even if one accepts possible scenarios where USA oppose regimes even more ruthless than it, that is just historical happenstance and one should not expect USA to behave as good guys in any given conflict.
Examining American foreign policy on ww2 in defiance of hagiography myths that make USA to be like a good guy in a simplistic fairy tale is a good thing, but I would object in those trying to create opposite hagiographies of say the Nazi regime. Revising the simplistic fanatical propaganda is good, but shouldn't fall to the opposite type of simplistic propaganda. This isn't to say that there isn't an issue that allows for examination to what extend aspects of Nazi Germany's behavior have been war propaganda since war propaganda is a fact of history and this war propaganda is continually promoted, but again, I think we should strive to be accurate and despite the fog of war there is still enough evidence to point Nazi Germany as nasty conquerors.
Obviously reducing the hysteria towards people who dissent from simplistic narratives, especially by people who indulge themselves in propaganda, is necessary to end up with better understanding of historical events. Which people oppose because they want to use simple narratives of the past to make opposition to their present (and more recent past) and future policy misadventures, quite controversial. But there are negative consequences today to such narratives that are used to justify disastrous for the people in the region warmongering and regime change.
I think this is about right. In most things, the option taken by the USA and NATO have been the ones good for themselves. Amazing that China can build concentration camps in their country and depopulate large swathes of Muslim majority and we can’t seem to muster the energy for a strongly worded statement. Of course, they do most of our manufacturing, so economic sanctions are bad for business.
I think the honest truth about war politics like all other political issues is that it’s Machiavellian — the point is to empower yourself and your allies , while perhaps weakening your enemies. The rest, as far as im concerned is propaganda for the democratic masses so they keep voting for the wars you want to fight. Being the good guys helps you to get the masses to support military adventures abroad. Especially when you’re telling them, again, that the regime needing change is doing the bad guy things.
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