To what extent and in what way was WW2 an imperialist war say, as was the Great War (before it became WW1)?
Not all wars that imperialist nations engage in are necessarily imperialist wars. That might be the only basis on which one would support a war by an imperialist nation. That is what DP, et al base themselves on in supporting the war (on terrorism), as opposed to the one on Iraq and Saddam -- unless some have decided that they are persuaded by Hitchens.
>But such support must come on a realistic basis. That is you have to
>support intervention of the sort a real imperialist nation will
>commit with all the side effects and consequences.
Further re the character of WW2 and in ref to side effects and consequences. Dresden and other German cities were arguably a direct effect of the war and its viciousness. Arguably Hiroshima and Nagasaki had more to do with imperialism, the world order to be established after the war, or -- if one prefers -- inter-imperialist contention between the US and the former SU.
I think the real side effect and consequence of WW2 was the so-called 'golden age' -- the rise of the welfare state and the rise in the living standards of EuroAmerican labour. May not be everyone's cup of tea, but I recall Raymond Williams, who was in a tank division, maybe commanding one, giving some sense of the sentiment of the ordinary people who fought that war and put their lives on the line that they weren't about to be going back to the old dispensation, no bloody way.
Now if one uses consequences as one way of gauging a war, then the current one looks really bad indeed -- unless of course one would attribute the setbacks to 'globalisation' to it, but I think that would be stretching it.
In any case, by no stretch of the imagination can it be argued that however objectionable and repressive Islamism of the alQ sort may be, that it represents the real possibility of another world order incomparably worse than the present one -- unlike, say, the Nazis, or -- horrors -- Stalinist communism.
kj khoo