Where do you think Hitler started?
Weren't we guilty of idly standing back until it was nearly too late?
10s of 1000s of people gave their lives, including Americans, we also bombed and killed the oppressors and no doubt killed lots of innocent people, giving you the freedom you have now to say what you like,
If we went by your school of thought we would be under German rule now
The united troops are out there trying to give oppressed people their freedom now, I for one am fully behind our troops.
Interesting comparison Andy, but here is the rub, Hitler was a direct threat to 'us' and required military and political action to defeat him and his evil regmes, the latter point being Churchill's efforts to bring the USA into the Hitler war on the side of the British, which he was unsuccessful in and required the Japanese military action to bring it about 2 years after the start of the war in Europe.
Sorry I digress, the point was Hitler and his allies, a number from within the UK too, was defeated by engaging directly against him, in order to defeat him. In all of the recent military engagements in muslim countries, there has been little or no support for the so called liberating western forces. Most have been happy to have the lunatics running their asylum, and most shied away from taking any action, let alone military action against the evil jihadists or whatever. Look at the glorious Iraqi army, trained and armed at great expense largely by the west, first sign of trouble peeled off their uniform, left their modern weapons behind and ran. Those that the west believed would stand and fight - with the honorable exception of the Kurds - after having taken the money, from corruption and otherwise, simply melted away, and, in many cases, have sought and gained political asylum in the west!! It's like Vietnam all over again ...
Unlike the Brits (and their allies) in '39, those that the west might hope are prepared to fight, are not ..... and so any comparison to the ww2, with this crowd in the middle east, afghanistan, pakistan or wherever is very wide of the mark. Just to finish off on this point, my old man served in the army in Iraq (and across North Africa and rest of middle east) and he always maintained before Iraq 1 and since that the place was, in his words, 'a fly-blown ****hole' where no one could be trusted, and the place was not worth a drop of British blood, and the more things have gone on, the more I think he is was absoloutely right.
BTW this is a very well argued piece on the west policy on military intervention
http://www.monbiot.com/2014/09/30/bomb-everyone/