Are there any First World War veterans alive?

[Al B. Sure!]

maybe it's cool how people can pull together and make sacrifices for their country? i dont know... there are some positive aspects of war...

[Sava]

just expand ur definition of cool. I mean really? its a pretty versatile word for u to be pigeonholing just for the purpose of flaming me.

all very petty.

okay... I'll play your game... AIDS IS COOL... STARVATION IS COOL... RAPE AND MURDER IS COOL...

sorry it just doesn't have the same ring to it. how about you learn and speak the english language instead of making stupid assertions.

The fact that you think this is petty is disturbing... but not as disturbing as you thinking "War is cool"... Go to your local marine office, hold up pictures of dead US soldiers and tell them war is cool.

[yavoon]

Originally posted by Sava
okay... I'll play your game... AIDS IS COOL... STARVATION IS COOL... RAPE AND MURDER IS COOL...

sorry it just doesn't have the same ring to it. how about you learn and speak the english language instead of making stupid assertions.

The fact that you think this is petty is disturbing... but not as disturbing as you thinking "War is cool"... Go to your local marine office, hold up pictures of dead US soldiers and tell them war is cool.

I think fascinating things are cool. sorry u feel that is a bad word to use. frankly ur being insanely petty to quibble over the diction of a slang word. but thats kind of how u r isnt it?

firestarter.

[Sava]

It's not petty at all... saying the absolute most evil parts of humanity "is cool" is completely ****ing stupid. I'm trying to educate you so you don't get beat up by somebody for saying stupid things... oh well...

[yavoon]

Originally posted by Sava
It's not petty at all... saying the absolute most evil parts of humanity "is cool" is completely ****ing stupid. I'm trying to educate you so you don't get beat up by somebody for saying stupid things... oh well...

u r so comical in how worked up u get. now I get it. sorry I was not down w/ how u are. but I beginning to understand.

have a nice day sava.

[GePap]

Our(the US's) obcession with WW2 has nothing to do with "cool" (in Europe WW1 still matters, and in australia it remains very important).

The enemy in WW2 was much more clearly "the bad guy and evil" than in WW1. The US participated thorugh the bulk of the war and at one point 1/10 of all Americans were in uniform, and 50% of GDP devoted to it, so it was a huge national endevour. And finally, the end was not too ambigious (marred by the split amoung the victorious coolition) but more importantly, the war made the US the great global power, and unlike after WW1 there was no going back home afterwards. Afetr WW1 the army shrunk to igsignificance and stayed there until 1941-42. We demobalized after WW2, but only 2 years later, we changed policy and got a large standing army, unlike anything the US had ever done before. In short, WW2 is the defining moment of US power in the world in the 20th century and thus has a much greater impact in the US than the Great War.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Games based on wars are 'cool' though .

[Sava]

u r so comical in how worked up u get

Who's worked up? I'm sitting at a keyboard typing... not much effort.

The Thin Red Line was too long, and while the horribly mishapen landscapes of No Man's Land might have some surrealitcis beauty, I don' think his style would work too well once the plot or action had to come into place.

it sucked...

and TV has nothing to do with it.

I disagree. WW2 set an amazing historical precedent with the amount of cameramen on the front lines. The American people didn't, and still don't, know what real war is like. Seeing real footage of war played an important part in peaking America's interest in WW2.

[GePap]

Notice how few WW1 games there are? As a war, it is fine to simulate at the bigger strategic level (like a civ2 WW1 scenerio, or a civ3 one, if the damn diplomacy is every allowed to be edited) but never at the tactical.

[Sava]

Games based on wars are 'cool' though

[GePap]

Originally posted by Sava
I disagree. WW2 set an amazing historical precedent with the amount of cameramen on the front lines. The American people didn't, and still don't, know what real war is like. Seeing real footage of war played an important part in peaking America's interest in WW2.

And people saw that footage on Movie screens NOT tv. And during WW1 people made up footage about it. They had live footage from korea too, but people forget korea, and not vietnam. The reasons wars get rememebred or forgotten have much more to do with television. There was plenty of live footage from Panama as well, but how many people remember that operation?

[Imran Siddiqui]

WW2 was easily remembered because it was the one war where there was an EASY Good v. Evil dicotomy. It was almost comic bookish, and evil almost won... makes it stand out.

[yavoon]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
WW2 was easily remembered because it was the one war where there was an EASY Good v. Evil dicotomy. It was almost comic bookish, and evil almost won... makes it stand out.

WWII had lotsa characters. the inept french, the valiant british the industrial americans the cannon fawder russians the disciplined germans the fanatical japanese.

and its more like good vs evil vs russia. or something

[Sava]

And people saw that footage on Movie screens NOT tv. And during WW1 people made up footage about it. They had live footage from korea too, but people forget korea, and not vietnam. The reasons wars get rememebred or forgotten have much more to do with television. There was plenty of live footage from Panama as well, but how many people remember that operation?

Of course TV wasn't the only thing... that's not even what I said in the first place... you're the one who singled out TV...

and nobody cares about Panama because it was insignificant... you think TV isn't playing a huge part in people's interest of the two Gulf Wars?

[GePap]

Well, that is the US, UK take on it. Given that the Soviets were central to victory in Europe (more than half of all human beings killed in WW2 dies between the Elbe and the Volga, the Artic Ocean and the Mediterranean) and that for Japan China was were most of it's army fought, the notion of a simple victory of good v evil is a poor one, specially given how many loose ends were left to be dealt with decades later.