[pdonis]

> they were the aggressor

Only because the US froze all trade with Japan and intentionally refused all Japanese attempts at diplomacy to negotiate some kind of arrangement. The US did that knowing that the Japanese government would go to war, since the US had broken the Japanese codes and was reading all Japanese diplomatic traffic. In other words, the US intentionally provoked Japan into going to war.

[FredPret]

Yes, they froze Japanese trade. But only to stop outrages being committed all over the area, including annexing Manchuria and invading China. The Japanese were doing all of this with imported US oil. Stopping the oil exports hardly places responsibility for Pearl Harbor on the US.

[pdonis]

If those things the Japanese did were "outrages", so were the things the US, Britain, and other European countries did to build their empires. The Japanese viewed their actions as simply taking their rightful place as an imperial power alongside those other countries. Yes, by today's standards, or at least today's Western standards, such things are Not Done, but if we are going to judge WW II Japan by those standards, we should judge the WW II Allies by those standards too.

[FredPret]

Point me to the rapes of Nanking the allies did. Or maybe just stop spreading Soviet propaganda.

[pdonis]

> Point me to the rapes of Nanking the allies did.

The Soviets were allies. Look up what they did in Germany at the end of WW II. And that's not even looking at all the other atrocities they had perpetrated before the war started, many of them on their own people.

Also, the empire building I referred to on the part of the US, Britain, and other European countries took place well before WW II. That doesn't mean it can just be ignored.

> Or maybe just stop spreading Soviet propaganda.

It seems to me that you are the one spreading Soviet propaganda since you are not even acknowledging the moral implications of having the Soviets as allies in WW II.

[FredPret]

My point is that stopping all Axis aggression in WW2 was good for everyone. The West may have been imperfect but was orders of magnitude better.

You don’t have to convince me that the Soviets were evil. They were part of the Allies purely because Hitler put them there.

They then immediately started propagandizing the world to undermine the genuine contributions and general legitimacy of the West.

[pdonis]

> stopping all Axis aggression in WW2 was good for everyone

Stopping Axis aggression against the US, Britain, France, and other Western countries was good for everyone.

Stopping Axis aggression against the USSR? I'm not so sure. Particularly not since the price of doing that was condemning Eastern Europe, China, and a good chunk of Southeast Asia to tyranny.

[Aeolun]

Uh, 2000 years of European history not enough? Just because it happened a few hundred years earlier doesn’t make it better.

[FredPret]

Yes it does. Moral progress is a real thing. Standards rise over time. Alexander the Great would be a war criminal today, and yet he was considered a relatively easygoing ruler at the time.