At the risk of provoking another long spin-off argument I already had in TNZ with another poster about this months ago (because this thread won't die) that I really don't want to rehash again, neither of those statements are remotely accurate. And my comments have nothing to do with the existence or lack thereof of a "special relationship", before that gets brought up.
You can criticize our response to WWII, but there certainly wasn't nothing being done nor were we happy to watch Hitler's advance, and your own government went through the same debate about intervention that we did, just on a shorter time frame due to proximity and other factors. No one wanted to get involved in another global war again.
As far as the Falklands, I'll repost my comments from the TNZ thread:
The US was a signatory of the Rio Treaty (a Western Hemisphere mutual defense pact also including Argentina) in 1947, two years before the creation of NATO. Directly militarily supporting either party would involve breaking treaty with the other. That being said, we did provide lots of logistical and intelligence support... to Britain.
NATO's Article 5 clause specifically doesn't apply to attacks on NATO member territories below the Tropic of Cancer, because it was not intended to support colonial operations, so the UK could not have invoked that and called for our involvement anyway.
Nevertheless, we actually provided a lot of support:
- We retasked a spy satellite from watching the USSR to watching the Falklands, causing its premature loss due to the fuel burn to change its orbit. The satellite gave up-to-the minute reports about Argentinian troop size (larger than thought) and position.
- The CIA provided extensive intelligence on the Argentinian forces.
- When the tanks at Ascension Island were empty of AvGas for the planes and diesel fuel for the ships, we diverted and filled a fuel tanker to immediately head down there to fill up the tanks.
- We repaired the airfield at Ascension for use in the Vulcan bomber Black Buck raids.
- We prevented imports of weapons to Argentina during the war, so much so that they had to try and smuggle weapons in overland from Peru.
- We provided naval and ground artillery rounds.
- We provided submarine detectors because of concerns over Argentina's two modern German diesel-electric subs (fortunately didn't materialize) and their older subs.
- We offered the use of the V/STOL carrier USS Iwo Jima and civilian contractors to operate it (former Navy personnel) if the UK lost either of its carriers, which fortunately never happened.
- We removed hundreds of Sidewinder air-to-air missiles from frontline American units in Europe to supply the Harriers with missiles.
- We provided Stinger man-portable anti-aircraft missiles for ground troop and shipboard air defense.
Before it gets turned around to say "Now the Americans are claiming they won the Falklands for us", no, I'm not. I'm just addressing the false claims that we didn't provide military support. We did, we just kept it kind of on the down low because there was a lot of concern about Argentina and other OAS members turning to the Soviets for assistance, which, while I know everyone dismisses it now with the luxury of three and a half decades of hindsight, was a very real concern in the region at the time. Which doesn't excuse us tolerating the actions of evil right wing regimes in the region ourselves as a counter to that, of course.
Our vote supporting the UN resolution condemning Argentina's actions, and our overt support for the British position caused us significant ire from the OAS member nations (with the exception of Colombia and Chile, who opposed Argentina), so we were hardly neutral in the conflict.
oh. And Ford....
