Frank:

I'd be highly interested to see how "we" set Hitler up as a defense against Communism. There was very little national concern about communism before 1939, as a major political issue. As far as I recall history, it was the advances the USSR made during and after the war -- for example, into then-Persia--plus their intransigence on the issue of atomic capabilities -- that began to raise the spectre of a Communist threat. While it is true that Time magazine named Hitler as Man of the Year, they had reasonable grounds for doing so. And it was after he was already in power.

Dayliah, you might want to discriminate between the times that the US fought in order to oppose oppression of various kinds, and the times it fought for less worthy purposes. The willingness to fight is not of itself wrong. We clearly demonstrated a lack of willingness to fight in 1938 and 1939, and the result was thousands of British and French and Polish and Jewish deaths during the ruthless expansion of the mighty Reich -- remember? By the time the US finally committed itself, concentration camps were a fact of life.

There is no question that there have been American psychos, and instances of American force being used badly. When the chips are down, and people accustomed to freedom are facing the prospect of being overwhelmed by force and violence, the ability to stand up and say "no" backed by sticks of the correct proportion suddenly becomes very valuable. While I appreciate that violence of any kind is to be shunned, as long as possible, the lesson of your swan also makes clear that we aren't on a planet where passivity alone can prosper. Not yet, anyway. We're obviously working on it!

A