What Is The World Like If 'The Shot Heard Round The World' Is Never Fired?

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by GP


Yeah...but y'all all said that. I gotta go against the grain...

Hippie.

[Starchild]

We're all ignoring the blindingly obvious evidence that WWI was directly responsible for distracting Mongo, Lord of the Mole People, from his plans to invade the surface with his diamond lance bearing Mole Warriors.

[KrazyHorse]

You've been spending too much time on Yonge street, dearie.

[Shi Huangdi]

The interesting thing would be if there was another president in power in the USA before WWI had started. If that president was unwilling to go to war, things could have been different.

[orange]

Originally posted by Starchild
We're all ignoring the blindingly obvious evidence that WWI was directly responsible for distracting Mongo, Lord of the Mole People, from his plans to invade the surface with his diamond lance bearing Mole Warriors.

well now that's an odd way of describing the moroccan crisises

[orange]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
The interesting thing would be if there was another president in power in the USA before WWI had started. If that president was unwilling to go to war, things could have been different.

er....someone like Wilson?

[David Floyd]

Wilson, with the prodding of Col. House (a trusted aid) definitely wanted to help the Brits, and get in the war, by my (possibly flawed) understanding.

[KrazyHorse]

He was an anglophile, but by no means a hawk. There wasn't the same sort of anti-war sentiment in the US as pre-WWII, so it wasn't equivalent to Roosevelt having to climb a mountain to get into the action.

[David Floyd]

No, he was no hawk, but CERTAINLY not an isolationist - although as evidenced by his 1916 campaign ("I kept us out of the war"), much of America was.

[KrazyHorse]

The US got its toes trodden on by the Germans, David. The US of 1917 was willing to go to war over that.

[David Floyd]

Actually we started the trodding - it was Wilson's propaganda that riled up the US public, thus partially proving MY point

The German embassy, for example, tried to take out ads in US papers warning that the Lusitania was a valid war target, but the Wilson Administration suppressed this, making Wilson, not Germany, responsible for US deaths on that ship.

[orange]

Originally posted by David Floyd
No, he was no hawk, but CERTAINLY not an isolationist - although as evidenced by his 1916 campaign ("I kept us out of the war"), much of America was.

We were attacked multiple times, DF, not to mention the Zimmerman fiasco, so we were pushed into the war and Wilson had no choice, though it was not the choice he wanted to make. Wilson was indeed an isolationist, despite his feelings about helping Britain. He ran on the promise of keeping us out of the war - and that wasn't just about gaining votes. I'm surprised Wilson isn't one of your ideal presidents...then again, he's one of my favorites, and if a leftist like me likes him so much, you probably hate him.

[KrazyHorse]

Damn X-posts. This is addressed to the crazy Texan

Doesn't matter. You can try and blame every foreign war on the US president of the time, but some cases don't fit. Wilson would just have soon stayed out of things. U-Boats in the Atlantic and the Zimmerman telegraph were enough to piss off the entire country to the point where they thought it worthwhile to throw in with the British.

[David Floyd]

First off, we both know that the US was selling war material ti Britain.
We also both know that the Zimmerman Note was essentially defensive in nature.
Further, we both know that I hate Wilson, if nothing else, because of his internationalism.

[David Floyd]

KH- True, but again this was due to US government propaganda and a failure to adequately warn US civilians against traveling in British ships that just so happened to be carrying war material, or other valid targets.