Are we still pretending the good guys won both world wars?

The bankers won both WWs and every other war

And the options were?

If you really don't think the United States is the good guys then you're more than welcome to find a better nation.

I won't split hairs on that. Now if you want to argue the ills of international banks/corporations/alliances that created the conditions that led up to war then let's discuss. I agree that international actors place their own interests ahead of the nation state to the detriment of all nation states. Maybe we should be going back to an isolationist policy and Sherman Act the banks and abolish the Fed while beefing up the tarriffs. After all ot worked for us for 150 years.

If the Treaty of Versailles had been a little less harsh on Germany, I wonder if WWII would have taken longer to happen? I still think it would have eventually happened, but likely decades later.

Keith

One option was to not ally with the murderous Soviets who took a huge chunk of Europe after the war and lead to a nuclear arms race. Could of also not allied with China who is currently our main adversary and nearest peer militarily.

This 100 year old veteran on the news crying saying "it wasn't worth it" should probably find a new country also eh?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YTayqvw9TE

Again the options are what?

We would have still been at war with Japan and Germany, period. Are you saying we go in uncoordinated with the guys also fighting Japan and Germany? What then when we we inevitably come up at cross purposes or meet up on the battlefield, a free for all?

Or follow Patton and Churchill into an attack of the Soviet Union immediately after fighting the bloodiest war in history? Immediately rearm the Nazis to help us do it? Nuke Moscow after they just proved that several million dead and the relocation of all manufacturing out of reach was a thing for them without quitting? Napoleon just entered the chat. How about China, a land of millions that had never been a nation. Fallen empire, yes, but never a unified people. Even today they are not a uniform demographic. What to do with them? Impose American hedgemony, like the British tried to do. Sure we could feed them opium as well. As it was we picked the team most like us, free market and corrupt, and hoped for the best.

The what ifs of hindsight will just make you miserable and second guessing rather than dealing with the here and now while hoping not to repeat the mistakes of the past is about the best we can do.

Now for the lessons of the past let's get ourselves out of the foreign entanglements that got us in the mess in the first place.

Obviously the U.S should of rearmed the Germans and pushed the Soviets back out. What was the point in fighting a war against Germany while simultaneously helping the Soviets do everything the Germans wanted to in the first place?

Maybe we can at least stop acting like the U.S uses its military for a Force of good around the world and everyone needs to thank us. Maybe we can quit pretending we need to take Greenland for defensive purposes and just admit we want it's natural resources.

At the end of WWII, President Truman and General Eisenhower bluffed the Soviets into believing they would bomb 9 Russian cities, including Moscow, if the Soviets continued expanding West. We only had 1 ready nuclear bomb. In 1946, we had 6 nukes ready to go. If we bombed the Soviets then, it would be a very different world. The commies and socialists likely would not of gotten control of much of our education system, without Soviet sponsorship.

Keith

President Trump has been very c!ear we want Greenland for both it's defensive position and resources.

Keith

What advantages does it offer defensively if we own it that it cannot provide though a lease or treaty?

While I agree the Soviets should have never been allowed to hold what they took I'm also a realist that when looking at history will try to put myself into the minds of the people making the decisions in the moment with the information that they had to hand at the time.

America had just been through years of war and lost many sons and daughters, we had a new untested president, for years we had been allies with the Soviet Union. Turning on an ally isn't exactly an American trait plus to be asked to sacrifice possible the same or more in sons and daughters immediately on the heels of having just supposedly won would be not just a nonstarter but political suicide. And in America unlike most of Europe politics is everything. Great Britian was bankrupt, France crippled and at war with itself, Germany leveled and starving, China in civil war. We also knew soviet infiltration had occurred but not to what extent. We had the bomb but not enough and hoped we were the only ones.

All in all a crapshoot that could go either way. I don't fault Truman for his call. We credit his decision to drop the bomb as being a hard call but don't consider Potsdam and what he had to live with.

We wouldn't have to get approval from Denmark or Greenland for every little thing. We wouldn't have to pay a lease fee. We wouldn't have all the oversight for everything we do there. The facilities would be more secure from spying. We would have it forever. We wouldn't have to worry about the Greenlanders or Danes switching allegiance at some time in the future.

Keith

And don't forget Truman was saddled with the legacy of FDR who had appeased the Soviets while giving Truman the mushroom treatment prior to his death. The same FDR that was in the process of being canonized in US history.

Only Churchill among world leaders was realist enough to see what needed to be done but he couldn't go it alone, and the british people would see him out in short order.

Keith, you're to smart to pretend that Denmark or Greenland is going to force us to get approval to defend Greenland, you and I both know they would sign an extremely broad defense agreement for free if offered.

The U.S still has a base in Cuba, even if they wanted to switch alliances we could deal with that in a long term lease.

The U.S is going BROKE, both parties spend money like Cowboys in a red light district, If we cant collapse Russia to raid their resources I guess we have to take another artic nation for theirs.

Greenland and Denmark would still want oversight of what we do there. A large, important part of what our military does has to remain secret.

Right now, they won't even let us have nuclear missiles in Greenland.

Keith

Not sure where I stand on this......what's their wimmin look like?

Pretty pale I'm guessing?

Need it for the "Golden Dome"

Probably big girls, Hippie. Gotta stay warm!

Inuit is what they look like. My understanding is that very few actual Danes wanted to be colonists.

They are mostly Eskimos or Eskimo like from all the videos I've seen of them. Most have a small amount of Danish DNA from more recent times. The original Norse settler population died out along time ago. There might be a a little genetic admixture from captured original settlers, that the Eskimos took when they invaded.

It went less well for the whites in Greenland, when the Native Americans arrived, then it did for the Native Americans, when the whites arrived here.

Keith