A concrete and totally appropriate exchange. There was nothing wrong with us taking any treasure.

Any suggestion our self-interest diminishes what we've done for Europe is ludicrous.

That's not the elitist Euro claptrap. Romney was an idiot, but is there anyone here ready to defend him?

It's the idea that England "surrendered" "its" empire, and that it did so to placate America. He goes even further by suggesting a bunch of the French colonies were part of the bargain.

If America takes credit for getting rid of the British empire, then America gets credit for removing a blight from the world. But I think Gandi and Co.

New board motto?
 

New board motto?
 

Hank, think your wife can make an avatar out of the middle guy?

Without which blight 1/4 of the world would not have any infrastructure or government. It was a blight, but colonization did have its benefits.

Good coolaid?

Ever get a look at before and after pictures of Delhi, c. 1857?

New board motto?
 

i would keep my wife away from someone that good looking:(

That deal pre-dated Lend-Lease. And Lend-Lease undercuts your argument, since neither Great Britain nor the Soviet Union ever came even close to paying us for the material we "lent" them.

The idea that we made Britain "sacrifice" their Empire to pay for the war is absurd (as an aside, "Imperial Preference" was a nice way of saying "No Goods From The US").

We made the Brits give up India, the French give up Indochina (really?), and the Dutch give up Indonesia? Please. And when did the European left start thinking that colonialism was a good thing?

I guess we did end up with Okinawa, now that I think about it. And the Mariannas, which allowed Jack Abrahamof to take Tom DeLay golfing, so I guess that he may have a point.

I didn't say that there was something wrong with it. I was just pointing out -- as Massie did -- that there was a quid for the quo, and that our leaders quite consciously went after Britain's empire before, during, and after our involvement in the war. We did a lot for Europe, but it wasn't always selfless.

My referring to the destroyers-for-bases agreement as "lend-lease" was a mistake. The former was before we got into the war; the latter was after. And my argument was not that we extracted equal value for whatever we did.

Cite, please.

If you're talking about India, that was anti-colonialism, and attacks on Imperial Preference were based upon free-trade principles.

eta: Of course we acted in self-interest, but the idea that we had economic motives behind entering the war or the way we fought the war is absurd.

Robert Skidelsky, "Imbalance of Power," Foreign Policy (March, 2002).

I'm not, per se.

I don't understand this. I'm not saying our motives were purely venal, but nor were they entirely selfless, as Mitt Romney suggested. Don't we always have economic motives? How could you deny that our policy towards Japan in 1941 (for example) had no economic motive?

Lend-Lease actually became law in March 1941, several months before we were attacked at Pearl Harbor (66 years ago today -- wow).

I don't know what your argument was, then. I thought that the guy you quoted said that we used our position to take economic advantage of the UK. Citing Lend-Lease as an example doesn't seem to support that argument.

Maybe so. I was citing the destroyers-for-bases agreement, and was mislabelling it as lend-lease.

Fair enough, though I agree with Sebby that it was a fair trade.

How about considering Lend-Lease as a counterexample then? If we really wanted to bleed John Bull dry, then why did we loan them the garden hose?

And there were people who wanted to bleed them dry, and continue the "cash and carry" policy until the crown jewels were hocked and moved to Chicago, but FDR wasn't one of them.

And our postwar conduct was even more selfless. Marshall Plan? (I know -- it was just to make the Commies look bad, and to preserve our market for Lucky Strikes and Coca Cola.)