Over at Winds of Change is discussion of the implications for today of a necessary war that never happened
It began when Hitler, the German dictator now little remembered in history, marched 20,000 troops into the Rhineland demilitarized zone, in violation of articles 42 and 43 of the Treaty of Versailles. France pulled itself out of a political crisis and united behind this threat from its old enemy. It used the treaty violation as a pretext to declare war. France’s stauch allies in Czechoslovakia joined them, secure in the fastness of the Sudeten mountains, thus tying down Nazi troops in central Germany.
(….)
Why is this war “necessary?” Because it prevents World War II in Europe, the Holocaust, and the deaths of tens of millions of people, from the North Sea to the Russian steepe.
But, then the author asks:
would it stand up to the modern anti-Iraq-War activist’s definitions of justified?
The discussion is pretty interesting, and the parallels the author attempts to draw between Germany in 1936 and Iraq in 2003 are, at the very least interesting. The point is that we don’t know what history would have been like if we had not gone to war in Iraq. Some might argue that the world would be a better place, but there is substantial evidence to support the conclusion that, despite the fact that the war is admittedly not going as planned, the world is better off now because Saddam Hussein is out of power and the war has forced the enemy from one of its biggest hiding places.
Hat Tip: Combs Spouts Off
