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Comment by Volpe | Hacker News Reader

> freeing Western Europe from Nazism

Here I was thinking it was "World War II" not "America saves the world II".

> freeing Asia from Imperial Japan

Yeah Russia had NOTHING to do with that one (except for pushing them out of china, and being as pivotal as the US bombing of Japan in it's ultimate surrender).

> freeing Eastern Europe from communism

Because communist are evil and all that other crap US propaganda teaches us.

> It played a huge role in reconstructing Europe after WWII and I guess the same is true of Japan.

Well yeah, it played a huge role in destroying them as well...

Any more cherry picking you'd like to ad to that list? Invented freedom perhaps?

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> Yeah Russia had NOTHING to do with that one (except for pushing them out of china, and being as pivotal as the US bombing of Japan in it's ultimate surrender).

The USSR defeated the Kwantung Army in Khalkin Gol in like 1939 and then sat on their ass with regard to Japan until August 1945.

Certainly the declaration of war came as a shock to Japan, but Japan would have been much better prepared for war with the USSR had the U.S. not been pushing the Empire back to the Home Islands for the 3.5 years preceding that!

What you're saying here is like saying that Italy had anything to do with defeating France just because they managed to declare war and get some troops across the mountains into France before France finally capitulated to Germany.

As much as I think it's futile to respond to details when it's the big picture that is far more relevant ...

> Here I was thinking it was "World War II" not "America saves the world II".

America had a huge role in this, not as significant as Americans like to think, but huge nonetheless.

> Yeah Russia had NOTHING to do with that one

Russia declared war on Japan one week before the war was over.

> Because communist are evil and all that other crap US propaganda teaches us.

No need to build a strawman. Just ask yourself whether you would have preferred to live in Western Europe or a Soviet satellite.

> Well yeah, it played a huge role in destroying them as well...

Err .. what?

The USSR/Warsaw Pact was evil. I don't think you can even debate that, unless you want to claim Hitler and Pol Pot were misunderstood as well.

I've got some bad news for you about the US and Britain. I assume you know about Churchill's prefered method for dealing with 'uncivilized tribes', poison gas?

I don't understand the line of argumentation that, because one entity is (partly) very bad it can't be much better than another entity.

I’ll just leave this here. "The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan... Stalin Did" http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/29/the_bomb_di...

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