War: Perspectives on WWII, Dutch and Indonesians, McNamara on Nukes

Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com, May 9 '05: Commemorating a World War

Robert S. McNamara, foreignpolicy.com, May/June '05: Apocalypse Soon

At the risk of appearing simplistic and provocative, I would characterize current U.S. nuclear weapons policy as immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary, and dreadfully dangerous...

Today, the United States has deployed approximately 4,500 strategic, offensive nuclear warheads. Russia has roughly 3,800. The strategic forces of Britain, France, and China are considerably smaller...

On any given day, as we go about our business, the president is prepared to make a decision within 20 minutes that could launch one of the most devastating weapons in the world...

Keeping such large numbers of weapons, and maintaining them on hair-trigger alert, are potent signs that the United States is not seriously working toward the elimination of its arsenal and raises troubling questions as to why any other state should restrain its nuclear ambitions...

Article also discusses:

• The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and civilian deaths.

• U.S. Nuclear Posture Review.

Eric Margolis, May '05: Wartime Propaganda Still Lingers - Remember Russia's Bravery, But Also Its Crimes

Britain lost 340,000 men, Canada 43,000, and the U.S. about 150,000 in the European Theater....

So it's right to honour Russia's valiant soldiers. But it's also wrong to keep on ignoring the Soviet Union's monstrous crimes or the Allies' alliance with the tyrant who committed them...

The failure by Britain and the U.S. to support anti-Nazi Germans in the late 1930s and again in 1944 proved a tragic mistake.

The author mentions that after the Canadians liberated Holland (the Dutch), then Dutch and British colonial forces suppressed Indonesians from 1945 to 1949:

On October 28, 1945, major violence erupted in Surabaya in East Java, as occupying British troops clashed with pemuda and other armed groups. Following a major military disaster for the British in which their commander, A.W.S. Mallaby, and hundreds of troops were killed, the British launched a tough counterattack. The Battle of Surabaya (November 10-24) cost thousands of lives and was the bloodiest single engagement of the struggle for independence...

On July 21, 1947, the Dutch, claiming violations of the Linggajati Agreement, launched what was euphemistically called a "police action" against the republic.

There are differing figures for the number of Indonesian deaths, e.g. 5000. See #18 on this page.