[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Ramen

This is a bit of pet theme/hate, so please bear with me.

Sure.

There's three things at work here.

• Opperssion and humiliation (reparations + Ruhrgebiet)
• Racism and anti-semitism
• Military tech

A WWI Marshall Plan may have prevented point 1 (see Germany and Japan - two very militaristic countries) but point two was bound to blow up at some point. It wasn't just Germany, all of Europe hated the Jews. Why are we so aware racism today? Because of the holocaust. Slavery was already known but we didn't seem to mind much.

Hitler made the Jews the villain of the piece. By while anti-semitism was a pervasive problem, I don't think it alone would have been a causative factor. It might have blown up, but would the blow up have taken the form of a world war? A Germany assisted in becoming a democratic state, and allowed to become prosperous instead of having a burden of reparations intended to keep it poverty stricken would have had far less reason to demonize the Jews and attempt a genocidal solution to the perceived problem.

But the most important thing is weapons tech. Sometimes I think WWII was our last chance to try it out without blowing up the entire world. Nobody envisioned the carnage that ensued and it has "educated" Europe quite thoroughly. If you look at the US that hasn't had a war on it's soil for such a long time, you can clearly see who tries to avoid war and who doesn't care (no general conscription, disproportionate social represenation in the armed forces, etc). Europe is just about in it's most peaceful era ever and this is a direct result of WWII.

War always causes development of weapons technology, and nobody ever foresees the effects. (I'm not sure you can, even if you are motivated to try.) Germany's superior military technology was an early help and a later hindrance. The problem with high tech weaponry is that you need trained personnel and spare parts to maintain it. As the war went on, both were in shorter supply for Germany.

US lack of general conscription and disproportionate social representation in the military is actually a symptom of misplaced anti-war sentiments. Abolition of the draft was an outgrowth of the US involvement in Vietnam.

And the military has always been a place offering possibilities for advancement when other avenues were closed, and not just in the US. This can have benefits as well as costs. Racial barriers in the US started unraveling in a major way in WWII. It's easy to hold stereotypes about other ethnic groups when you're here, they're over there, and you don't mix. It's harder to hold preconceived stereotypes about "them" when you are at war, and "they" are serving alongside you, and one of "them" might just be the guy who saved your butt in combat...

Actually, the situation is very similar. Both cases have an evil enemy that has struck at their very core. The opposition failed miserably in both cases. The population supported the leader in both cases. The leader was charismatic/suited the mood in both cases (for Bush this means strong leader and moral). The population wanted revenge/satisfaction/whatever. The population was fed what they wanted to hear and set for war.

There's a fundamental difference you overlook. Germany was a homogeneous society. For practical purposes, they were all Germans, sharing a common identity as Germans.

America is far more multicultural and diverse. We have substantial black, Hispanic, and Asian minorities, and far less agreement on just what it means to be an American and how the US should respond to threats.

That disagreement, particularly in regards to actions taken post 9/11, has been prolonged and vociferous.

• warrant-less wiretapping with retro-active legitimation (un-constitutional)
• guantanamo bay
• national biometric DB
• misusing international bank correspondance
• mixing of police, military and secret services
• generally more police powers, etc

Sure, the US is not a police-state at the moment but the population simply doesn't care and the checks were all circumvented via un-patriotic and opponent of a safe America.

America won't become a police state, because the underlying conditions that would support and sustain one are absent. It would require general support of the population, and that doesn't exist here.

Please note that Bush is leaving office at the end of his term, to be replaced by a new democratically elected administration. If we were as close to a police state as you envision, he would have already taken steps to abrogate the Constitution, suspend the elections, and install himself as dictator.

And I frankly doubt he could have gotten away with it if he tried. Imposing that sort of rule by force requires the cooperation of the military. US military personnel take an oath to support and defend the Constitution, not the particular guy in the Oval Office. They would be legally and morally bound to refuse to obey the sort of orders setting up a police state would require. I think most of them would.
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Dennis