Trading Places

We need a good Bosniakian store in this town.

A new nail salon--phew! I was afraid we were running low on those.

And worse, NOW I have to go across town to buy my Irish figurines!

As long as I know where the Irish store is, I'm good...The Luck of the Irish to ye'.

What would a Bosniakian store look like? Would the Serbian-made goods be kept apart from the Croatian wares?

"We need a good Bosniakian store in this town."

I would love to add to my collection of Bosniakian knick knacks..

"Would the Serbian-made goods be kept apart from the Croatian wares?"

It's "Croatiner" Mrs. Martta.

"Two doors down from Piazza della Sole, we hear they're getting new neighbors where the antique shops used to be: a Christian Science reading room and a new spa/nail salon."

What great news about a Christian Science reading room coming to Upper Montclair. It is about time. The experts say that unless our national science scores improve, our next generation will continue to be ill-prepared to compete in the global marketplace. Same goes for math.

This is the second move for those peripatetic Celts. It does not take long for these Irish to wear out their welcome.
I believe that a figurine store, featuring representatives from all nations, would do quite well in diverse Baristaville. Along with the red-bearded little folk (wee folk, good folk, trooping all together!), the store could feature some inscrutable card-playing Chinese figurines, some gangsterish Italians, some blacks from the hood (but only descendants of slaves, not recent African immigrants), some Jewish banker or media tycoon figurines, and of course Bangladeshi convenience store owner figurines.
If the store is successful, as I believe it will be, we could then branch out and start selling lawn gnomes. I'm thinking that our own laseramadan could serve as the model for our initial line.
If the store is not successful, it might make me ill. But not to worry -- I'll have my $5000 health care credit from McCain-Palin!

ROC, you might want to check out the web site for Kongres Bosnjaka Sjeveerne Amerike , or Congress of North American Bosniaks.
Seems that the folks from Bosnia call themselves Bosniaks. Who knew?
Well OK, Biden did. But who else?

Very true croiag. I think it's also mentioned in Article I of the Constitution

You betcha it is, doggone it!

Wink.

Irish & More is a terrific store, a successful small business in Montclair for more than 25 years. I heard they were hit with a huge rent increase for the Watchung Plaza store. Good for them to land on Chruch Street, a premium location with more foot traffic. May "the wind be at their back..."

Theeeere ya go agin' croaiggiie, pointin' baaaackwerds ta some funny lookin internets. Ya know, Jane Winecooler and the Hooters Daaads don't wanna looks at things writtin' in those crazy Frenchie werds. They wanna know that a cupple a mavrecks are gonna lead em some place better, where the governemant gits rid of the greed and curription on Waaaal Street and just gits outta everyones waaay.

Is the rent less on Church Street than at Watchung Plaza?

"Is the rent less on Church Street than at Watchung Plaza?"

No but I think the neighborhood is Irishier.

That's Irishiner.

Ahm nat taalkin' to ya', Spicoli. You voted nat ta fund da troops!

And whaat kinda' name is "Spicoli", anywaaay? Sounds Russian or sumthin'.

Christian Science Chem Test #2

Please select the correct answer:

a)(NH4)2CO3 ---> NH3 + CO2 + H2O

b)(NH4)2CO3 ---> NH3 + CO + 2H2O

c)The temple girls needed to clean the floors and through a miracle Jesus created ammonia.

it's official. I can get each nail -- and toe nail -- done in a separate location without having to backtrack on any one of them. At least I know how I'll be spending Saturdays now. is it me or was everyone able to see the real Ireland from here this morning?

is it me or was everyone able to see the real Ireland from here this morning?
--------------------
Well, I saw the beautiful Dingle Peninsula in a painting on my bedroom wall. Does that count?

"is it me or was everyone able to see the real Ireland from here this morning?"

I saw it too. And thank Heaven there's no Hezbollah there in need of "kicking out" by the US and France. (not sure we could achieve that twice!)

counts? it makes you the AMBASSADOR! Congrats!!

The Christian Science Reading Room has been at 8 Hillside Avenue in Montclair for a long while.

Ellie's Closet closed? That's very sad.

I for one am very grateful that the US and France WOULD come to Ireland to kick out Hezbollah IF they ever gained a toehold on the island.
I know that both the American and the French troops would be welcomed as liberators.
Fortunately, the Shiaa and the Sunni factions in Ireland are at peace at present, due in large measure to the concerted efforts of American (and French) diplomacy.
I know this because that noted peace activist Gerry Adams told me so at the White House dinner he and I attended, seated with the president. And as I recall, NO PRECONDITIONS had to met for that meeting!

"NO PRECONDITIONS had to met for that meeting!"

Well I, for one, was happy when Biden cleared up that "no precondition" thing. I'm much relieved that Obama would sit down un-conditionally with the Ayatollah rather than Ahmadinejad.

When do you suppose Biden meant when we "kicked out" Hezbollah from Lebanon?

I'm also pleased. Of course, it cannot match my joy when I saw Dr. Rice hanging with Qaddafi. And I still have my embossed photo of Don Rumsfeld pressing the flesh with Saddam Hussein.
But of course diplomatic isolation works. We know that from the great success we've seen in Cuba and North Korea.

"We know that from the great success we've seen in Cuba and North Korea."

Yes, what a sham, eh? You can't very much expect to be blackmailed if you won't sit down to discuss the terms.

I'm sure that statement means something to you, ROC.
But to me, it is about as clear as Governor Palin's explanation of her health plan.

Well, embellishment for things yet to happen might be a mite more allowable than factual inaccuracies of the past.

No one has ever come even close to "kicking Hezbollah" from Lebanon. (ask the Israeli's)

So what does it mean to me? Hallucination.

Quite right. As a matter of fact, I believe that it was Hezbollah who kicked The US and France out of Lebanon, not the other way around. And I believe that happened during the tenure of Mr. Reagan, who is often touted by those on the right as the very antithesis of the "cut and run" Dems.

"anyone interested in their Plaza location should contact Schweppe Realtors"

It's Burgdorff Schweppe - owned by ERA....has been for a good few years now. There is no more "Schweppe Realtors".

As best I know, croiagusanam, nations such as Spain, Canada and Venezuela all have diplomatic relations with Cuba (maybe not with North Korea, but with those wacky Canadians and Venezuelans, who knows from day to day?). None are what we might call world powers, one plays a form of football with only three downs and a longer field and imports most of its TV and music from the US, one was absolutely craven in the face of terrorism and another is ruled now by its own pocket dictator (in sudden league with a few stray Kennedys to bring heating oil to the ostensibly poor).

With good friends like these, I doubt very much that Cuba and North Korea can be exactly said to be "thriving." There is something to be said for diplomatic isolation from the United States, in other words.

Didn't France once come to Ireland once before, to try and help kick out the Anglicans? 1798, was it? Well, we all know how well that bit of foreign aid worked out. That a Chief of Staff of the IRA visited the White House, through the front door, no less, and right past the lace curtains, is to no one's credit in that particular incident, I still believe.

As best I recall, too, croiagusanam, France was "kicked out" of The Lebanon (as in the Human League song of that name) sometime in the late 40's. Ever since, French influence in Lebanon and Syria alike has been minimal.

To a point where I'd imagine even Levantine Catholicism is a good deal more devout than what passes for piety in France. It's certainly much more dangerous to be a Papist in Lebanon or Syria than in France.

I did not suggest that either North Korea or Cuba is thriving, cathar. I did suggest that the American decision to isolate them has had no effect on their objectionable behaviour, and as always it is the poor bastards in the street who suffer. Kim and Fidel and Raul eat quite well.
France did indeed come in 1798. To kick out the Brits, mind you. The prods in Ireland are not often Anglicans, or C of I if you will. Unless they're well off, of course. Or part of the horsey set. Most Prods in the North are Presbyterians or Methodists or Baptists, etc. And of course the French had little use for the Irish save for an opportunity to backdoor the Brits. They suffered few losses, inflicted even fewer, and were by and large repatriated to la belle France while the Irish rebels went to the gallows. If they were lucky.
Ah, but they were welcomed as liberators! And who knows. Perhaps some distant relative of McCain's (before they took the soup, of course) was in that throng, cheering and welcoming the smartly dressed Armee as they marched down the boreen.
And you are right to be offended by Adams' visit, though I maintain that a smart leader meets his or her enemies as well as his or her friends if there is some greater purpose to be served. To refuse to do so is, in my view, foolish.

"And you are right to be offended by Adams' visit, though I maintain that a smart leader meets his or her enemies as well as his or her friends if there is some greater purpose to be served."

Wow. Sounds like a pre-condition to me.

In fact, croiag, that's pretty much Bush's position. He'll sit down with them when they verifiably suspend enrichment. Personally, I'd consider that "some greater purpose".

Neville Chamberlin met with Hitler. We see how well that worked out.

There is pretty much always a greater purpose to be served in meeting with other governments, ROC. If nothing else, it lends credence to the notion that one is willing to talk. It shows a willingness to listen, and it offers opportunities to deliver one's own viewpoint. To stubbornly refuse to meet with a government until that government agrees to follow a particular course of action is foolish.
And if you need the cover of the "greater purpose", then you simply announce that you're meeting in order to achieve a "greater purpose".
MM, Chamberlain DID meet with Hitler, and no that did not work out. However, Churchill (and Roosevelt) met with Stalin, and I'd say THAT worked out quite well.

The House just passed the bill.

The Bailout's passed the House. Congratulations everyone. We've ruined our financial system for a generation to come. Now that economic malfeasance has been rewarded (and hamsomely) we can only expect more of the same.

"..it lends credence to the notion that one is willing to talk"

Precisely. And when somethng is not negotiable, and you talk, you make it "negotiable".

Bush's position is that a nuclear armed Iran is non-negotiable.

For other's it is (apparently) less so.

What would we say to them to get them to stop? Nothing. But negotiation would enhance their position.

These guys say it better:

"Second, the new President will need to determine whether to maintain the policy of the Bush Administration and the EU-3 against negotiating with Tehran over the nuclear issue unless the Islamic Republic suspends its enrichment-related activities, or drop this precondition to negotiations. Any formal dialogue with Iran absent suspension of enrichment could backfire: Not only would the United States implicitly void all UN Security Council resolutions demanding a cessation of Iranian uranium enrichment, but Iranian authorities are likely to interpret U.S. flexibility as acquiescence to the Iranian position that it must be permitted to enrich?all the more reason to increase multilateral sanctions as any new incentives are contemplated. "

Now, these guys are "experts" so (as walleroo so aptly proved the other day) their conclusions cannot be questioned.

Nonsense. Enhance their position with .....?
Radical Islamist factions already support them. If anything, their prestige would be LESSENED were they to meet with the Great Satan. As for the rest of the world, they are already seen as a rogue state and a dangerous one.
You and I both know (well, I do anyway) that the Iranians will get nuclear power. And they have a right to develop nuclear power. The US and the rest of the world is quite right in demanding that they not develop weaponry. But if you honestly think that isolting them will prevent that, you are fooling yourself. They have accomplished what they have to date in the face of American non-recognition. And if you think that American and Iranian officials are NOT meeting even as we speak, though neither side will publicize that fact, than you are REALLY naive.

Quite a panel of experts, by the way. A bunch of retired military man and the managing director of Lehman Brothers!

Couldn't you find a report authored by Elliot Spitzer?

I think Biden intended to say that France and the US worked together to remove Syrian influences from Lebanon and there were calls to establish a UN presence.

To what degree we were successful can certainly be questioned. The point he was making was that he favored taking action and was concerned about the increasing presence and influence of Hezbollah that occurred.

And if you honestly think letting them develop nuclear power will not mean they will have nuclear weapons then you are fooling yourself. That's the point.

I doubt their interest in nuclear power is environmental or related to conservation.

All of this attention on the VP truly amazing.In the past the VP was merely a fund raiser for the party and a substitute for the president at funerals of b-list heads of state,and as Al Gore did, dance like a white guy.It is assumed by many that Palin isn't up to the task and that is wrong. She has a chance of being quite competent. As for Biden,we need not assume anything. His record illustrates,in graphic relief,twenty- odd years of abject mediocrity. That he is not on record once warning us of this financial meltdown(he is a sitting senator who was absolutely aware of what was happening) is reason to dismiss him from consideration. He is little more than a stooge with a good job.

p.s.

and Iran's "right" to develop nuclear power will result in precisely the same outcome as Germany's "right" to rearm.

"Enhance their position with .....?"

Their standing in the world on the subject.

There are a great many countries in the world with nuclear power who do not have nuclear weapons. Most, in fact. And it is odd that you and others promote nuclear power as a viable and clean alternative energy source for the US, but apparently want to limit it to the US. Who grants countries the right to develop nuclear power? You? You decide that France may have it, Japan may have it, Sweden, Canada and Brazil may have it, but others may not?
Your suggestion that Iranian "standing in the world" would be enhanced by talks with the US is preposterous.

I for one am ecstatic it passed, especially with these new earmarks they included on the bill. Finally, this do-nothing Congress is addressing the needs of archery enthusiasts like myself. Granted, 2 million dollars earmarked to help promote the continued use of wooden arrows in youth outdoor archery is just a drop in the bucket when you look at the big picture (if you happened to catch any of the U.S. archery team's action at this past summer's olympics you know exactly what I'm talking about--what a disappointment, ideed). Still, it is a start. My only regert is that this this congress could not have been around when I was a teenager. Perhaps then, the wooden tennis racquet would have not gone the way of the passenger pigeon.

"There are a great many countries in the world with nuclear power who do not have nuclear weapons."

And Iran is one of those? You're deluded and lacking in common sense.

I do not think, croiagusanam, that Churchill and Roosevelt's meeting with Stalin at Yalta worked out very well for the world. (Pat Buchanan and I are in rare agreement on that one.) It definitely did not work out well for the citizens of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Albania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. (Even if it did lead to the Warsaw Pact.) Nor even for those left in the Ukraine, or for the wandering millions who as part of "Operation Keelhaul" and a few other similar efforts were forcibly and shamefully repatriated back to the USSR and thus to either the gulags or starvation.

Out near the rifle range at Fort Dix, you can still stumble across the graves of at least five ethnic "Ukies" who chose suicide rather than reshipment to Stalin. The graves are seen to by local descendants of Cossacks, who still socialize together at Rova Farms in Jackson Township.

I also don't for one second think Iran has any "right" whatsoever to nuclear power. With such a right, after all, come great responsibilities, and the last thing Iran has demonstrated since the fall of the Shah is a genuine sense of responsibility with regard to other nations.

Deluded? OK. I'm deluded.
Cathar, I believe you know quite well that I meant that the meeting worked out quite well for the British and the Americans war objectives. The point is that they were willing to meet with a monster in order to accomplish a greater goal. And they did. We all know what happended in eastern Europe. so you tell me what would have been worse, since I am quite ceratin that a negotiated peace with Hitler is the best they could have done had he conquered Russia, or had Russia sat out.
The US does not own nuclear technology, and does not have the right to decide which countries develop peaceful nuclear programs. It can, and should, insist that dangerous and unstable states do not develop nuclear weapons. One does not have to follow on the other, as even a cursory look at the number of states with reactors will indicate.

But the meeting did not work out well for American and British war objectives, croiagusanam. Partly because said objectives were so illy defined in the first place, but still....

What would have been "worse?" Well, we know the Nazis, unlike the Russians, were no damn good at governance. They could hang with the best of them, but when it came to installing effecive puppet regimes, nah, Russia tooks the crown.

Nor could Russia have ever "sat out" WWII. Its steppes were intrinsic to lebensraum and to the concept of Aryan expansion. Russia declared its own hegemonic intentions in 1939 by grabbing the half of Poland that Germany didn't. (A fact so many forget, after all. The Katyn Forest massacres, which didn't at all bother people like the Rosenbergs and their ilk, were not a German operation, and they were consciously designed to remove altogether a major segment of Polish society, the bettet to seize power.)

Hitler came so very close to winning on both fronts before the US entered the war and forcefully applied its industrial dominance to the matter at hand. I've never read anything that suggested a negotiated peace was therefore even half-possible for the Allies if Russia had been taken successfully by German forces. What could have mollified a victorious-in-the-East Fuhrer? (Even most of the July 20 plotters had in mind the vague idea that the Western Allies would join with a Hitler-less Germany in hot pursuit of the "real" enemy, Russia, a boon for which they'd gladly swap occupation of France, Italy, Belgium, Greece and the Netherlands.)

The outrage is that the victorious Western allies post-victory gave up so much to Stalin and correspondingly achieved so little. We gave a few European countries the Marshall Plan and let Stalin seize everything else west of Bavaria. (Oh, and France grabbed a few million captive workers to help rebuild its own economy.) We even threw in Manchuria because of a mere 30 days of armed involvement by Russia in the war against Japan.

You may shy from the idea of the US serving as "cops of the world." I don't, especially where nuclear power is concerned. Especially re a country which has made its basic intentions towards Israel quite clear.

" It can, and should, insist that dangerous and unstable states do not develop nuclear weapons."

By way of UN resolutions, and tea parties with dictators, I suppose.

You live in a very nice, tidy and unrealistic world.

Iran should be prevented from obtaining nuclear power (and thus weapons) by force if necessary.

Every good cop knows when to write a ticket and when to pull out a gun. and when the gun comes out, it best be used.
Israel is quite capable of taking care of itself militarily. The Iranians would, I'd wager, rather face America in battle than Israel. I think the US, or anyone else for that matter, has a perfect right to keep this regime from gaining nuclear weapons. Of course, had our friend the Shah been on the stick 30 years ago the Persians would have them, wouldn't they? Becuase they were our friends 30 years ago, weren't they?
Absolutely a negotiated peace would have been the outcome, in my view, had Hitler not blundered into Barbarossa. Britain was hanging by a thread and The US was fighting on 2 fronts. How it would have worked out -- well, that's a choice of cancer or polio, as Mick and Keith said.

You must be looking in my windows ROC, to know how tidy I am. Stop that, or I'll let the dogs at you.

I agree wholeheartedly that force can and should be used to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. But not nuclear power. Again, Mexico, Sweden, Bosnia (home of Bosniaks) and dozens of other states have one and not the other.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to tea with Qaddaffi and Dr. Rice. Followed by dinner with Putin and drinks with King Abdullah (non-alcoholic, of course, for His Majesty).

"I agree wholeheartedly that force can and should be used to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. But not nuclear power."

I am sure that will work as long as the mullas cross their hearts and promise. (or maybe make a crescent shape over their hearts anyway).

They said exactly the same thing about German rearming. "Let them, as long as they don't invade anyone."

The US was not fighting on two fronts, croiagusanam, when Barbarossa was launched. It wasn't even fighting on one. Barbaross was launched in the summer of 1941, and German troops reached the outskirts of Moscow somewhere around late October of that year. Still well before we entered WII, however. (And war was declared on us by Germany as part of its obligations to the Axis, it wasn't the other way around even as we did declare war on imperial Japan the week beginning December 7, 1941.)

By that time, too, "Operation Sea Lion" had been discarded for almost a year. In everything I've ever read about WWII, there is virtually nothing about the prospect, or the consideration, by the allies of a negotiated peace with Nazi Germany. To their eternal credit, neither Churchill nor Roosevelt seems ever to have entertained such an idea.

At best, as I noted above, such an idea seems to have been a wish-dream of the in-house conspirators against Hitler. Yet even Himmler's representatives were forcefully rebuffed when they timidly broached the idea of a Hitler-less Germany to their Allied counterparts in Switzerland in late 43-early 44.

Yeah you're right ROC. Germany in the 30's and Iran today is EXACTLY the same thing! You're good! You're really, really good (but not very tidy)!
When Israel was concerned about the Iraqi move towards nuclear weapons, they "handled" it, didn't they? Are you suggesting that the US lacks the wherewithal to do the same. If so, then why put up the pretense now by refusing to talk or, as you say, "enhance" their standing? After all, its too late -- the genie's out of the bottle, right?

I also doubt very much that the US would have allowed our old pal the Shah nuclear weapons 30 years ago. To maintain otherwise is, I suggest, to ignore the tortured essence of US-Iranian relations back in those days. So here you're just indulging in very idle speculation, croiagusanam, of a kind that owes more to your understandable suspicions re US policies now than to the actual historical record.

If you'll excuse me back, I'm off to Tolstoy Farm up in Rockland County for real tea, out of a samovar, with Russian emigres with "contacts" among the remnants of the Romanov dynasty. (Though ever since the Czar and his family were canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church, the family has just been impossible to deal with, they always only want their jewels and their palaces back.)

cathar, I believe you are being obtuse by design. I know that the US was not fighting on 2 fronts when Barbarossa was launched. But it was fighting on 2 fronts BECAUSE Barbarossa was launched.
Many British historians believe that the government, sans Churchill, would have been willing to leave Hitler in place pre- Belgium (in other words, with Austria and the Sudentland) in return for a withdrawal from France, etc. Many in the German military would have been fine with that. We'll never know. But the original point was that Americans and British leaders did business with Stalin, a monster of epic proportions. To think that Americans could not sit with an Iranian tinpot is absurd.

What are the rents in Watchung Plaza? Anyone?

No, croiagusanam, I am not being "obtuse by design." Nor did the US fight on two fronts BECAUSE OF Barbarossa, as you seem to stubbornly maintain. (Where do you get that one fron?)

I've read enough self-serving, slippery memoirs by WWII German generals in my day to know that they didn't at all like the idea of fighting America. But they also didn't expect to have to fight America. Once they conquered Russia, they imagined, at worst, a negotiated, somewhat shaky peace. (Plus, Operation Sea Lion, the invasion of the UK, had been abandoned because of the Luftwaffe's failure to secure the skies over England, even as the Germans kept dropping spies into Ireland just in case.)

But again, they declared war ON US first, it wasn't the other way around. And they did so as part of their pact with their Japanese allies, I think any diplomatic history of WWII establishes this. Then, after blowing it in Africa in what in terms of men involved was a sort of skirmish as opposed to the battles in Russia, they fundamentally sat on their hands in Western Europe for 3 more years while they wasted so many more men and resources on the "Ostfront." So either they believed the myth that the Americans were never really coming or they were simply way overconfident about the defenses of Festung Europa.

In either case, the end result proved happy in the main for Western Europe, not so good for the next 40+ years for most of central and eastern Europe, including even Greece for a time.

But as even a cursory read of those generals' memoirs makes clear, none of them save a very few were in the grip of a murderous religious fervor. Unlike the Iranians. I have in fact read two speeches by Ahmadinejad in which he makes clear just how ready he truly is for the prophesied return of the Mahdi and the conquests which will accompany this event. In contrast to this sort of belief system and its paired desire for jihad, the Germans, while anti-Semitic to the core and fond of taking any opportunity at hand for what we now consider war crimes, pale very noticeably.

But they do have one thing in common with the Iranians, I'm sure: a willingness to use nuclear weapons in furtherance of political and military aims alike. Actually, if you believe one guy's book, they'd even tested a workable A-weapon in Norway near war's end.

Whether or not that's true, their efforts to ice the issue were ruined by the sort of people celebrated in the movie "The Heroes Of Telemark." But in the sort of America I fear is coming to pass with the accession of Obama, such heroes will be few and far between in terms of action in Iran. Which is much closer, thanks to stolen technology and records, to developing a workable arsenal of nuclear weapons than Germany was in 1945. (Those pesky daylight bombing raids by the 8th Air Force played such havoc with their plans.)

I really don't think I'm an alarmist, either. Nor do I have as much faith as you do in the abilities of the IDF to handle the matter by themselves, given all their other duties.

The issue of Mahdism is the scariest bit, however. Just the last such fakir, in the Sudan during the late 1890's, wreaked an awful lot of mischief. What Islamic fundamentalists might do in the name of he who is prophesied is terrible even to idly contemplate, and Iran remains the center of Mahdist "thought" in the Islamic world. Yes, Ahmadinejad is a cute little fellow, with an impish smile. But impishness can turn quickly to pure devilry given a nuclear arsenal.

So much for trading places >sigh

cathar, I maintain that the German attack on Russia set in motion the events that made America's entry into the war possible. Without that attack, Germany would have continued to pound the Brits until a negotiated settlement with the Brits, allowing them to keep their precious Empire (of course, they didn't bargain on the Japanese). Europe would have been totally overrun with no one to turn that aside. America was in no position to go into Europe in 1941, and there was no will to do so. So America would have had to face only the Japanese, after they made their move in December of 1941. It is for that reason that I say that Barbarossa caused the US to fight a two front war. I am aware that there are different views on this, but this is the one I accept and it has its adherents, particularly in Britain. You may, of course, differ. At the end of the day, we really don't know.
I don't think you're an alarmist, but I do think that you have overstated the ability of Iran to take on the Israelis. they want no part of the IDF, for I believe that the Israelis will put aside their admirable restraint in this case and go whole hog (pardon the Kosher affront) after the Persians. And while the Israelis would suffer, the Persians would get the worst of it. By the way, talking to sworn enemies is what the Israelis did with the Egyptians and the Jordanians, and it has paid dividends.
I think that this all boils down to a different perspective -- you see WWII in an American light, and I see it in a European one. Both have their faults, and their pluses.
I have been to Iran, and I've worked with Iranians who despise their government and hate the mullahs. They hated the Shah as well. They are longing for the day when the mullahs will move off the scene, and I believe that that day is coming. I think it would better serve American interests to engage these types of Iranians, as is happening on informal levels and on covert levels by CIA for example, in preparation for that day when American influence is welcomed. Did you believe, for example, that American officials -- one who was soon to be a presidential candidate -- would go to Hanoi?

I personally would never set foot in either Hanoi or any part of Vietnam, croiagusanam. It is where an important part of my youth is buried, after all, and where friends left genuine pieces of themselves. As well as where we sold out some pretty nice, decent people. That politicians from either party go there, alongside tourists yet, is to me gruesomely appalling. It is not at all analogous to the post-war healing process which began in the South in April, 1865.

To state that we differ on that aspect of WWII is putting it mildly. But Europe, anyway continental Europe, WAS totally overrun. John Lukacs even titled his work on the events leading up to 1941 "The Last European War," maintaining that Hitler won it.

I also think that the Japanese expected, even needed a German declaration of war for their own plans to proceed. Hence said declaration, which I think came out of the blue (in American eyes) on December 10, 1941. Whether Germany seriously looked to engage US forces, however, by anything other than submarine warfare, is very debatable indeed. US landings in North Africa definitely surprised the German war machine, which imagined itself "safe" in its Tunisian fastnesses in late '42, and even after defeating the Americans at Kasserine Pass seemed to believe US forces posed little real threat to them.

The wonder of American power and determination (and national leadership), of course, is that we were in fact able to fight a two theater war so successfully and so, basically, brilliantly (with no thanks to Field Marshal Montgomery, either). And in the buildup to the retaking of mainland Europe, also develop a mighty air arm which could pound the enemy daily via 1000-plane daylight raids. (The Luftwaffe's failure to develop a genuine 4-engine bomber for long-range runs is often cited as a prime reason it lost the Battle of Britain, whereas we had the doughty B-17 even before war was declared.)

I very much doubt we have anything approaching such commitment today. Especially going by the posted comments on this site, so few of which seem to be from veterans and even fewer by people who've ever even heard the term "Remembrance Day."

One final note: as an adviser for a time to the 2nd ARVN Rangers, I learned fairly quickly not to put too much faith in claims of CIA "contacts" on any sort of covert level with alleged dissidents. Those guys drank, and made wild-eyed claims after drinking, but seemed to accomplish very little in reality.

we'll have to agree to disagree, then. The Americans were, I believe, thrust into the European theatre totally unprepared, and they were bloodied initially due to a combination of unpreparedness and overconfidence. I am reminded of the scene in PATTON wherein one of the German officers, surveying the wreckage at Kesserine, remarks that the carnage was due to the "worst possible combination" -- American troops and British officers.
But they righted themselves quickly, and certainly saved the day.
There is every reason to believe that Hitler could have strangled Britain had America not gotten into the fight. Hitler's vision of an invasion was, even then, old school -- a ring around the island would have involved a slugfest with the RN, but enough tonnage could have been sunk to bring Britain to the table. Churchill knew this, and it is one reason why he pushed so hard for American involvement.
I agree that the Japanese needed Germany to move, but I believe that after Pearl Harbor they too expected a negotiated settlement. With Britain cut off and the French and Dutch out of the picture, the way was clear for them. No one believed that America could pick itself up and throw the power that it did eastwards.

I'd also urge a distinction be made between the sorts of in-country CIA paras you reference, versus the diplomatic cover and even academic and buisness NOC officers who make the real contacts and gather the real info. They are true professionals, and work under extremely dangerous conditions. And by and large, we in the US are safe due to their efforts.