Some People think all Veterans Are Evil

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

See? Kid agrees with you.

There is no surer sign that you haven't so much lost your grip on reality as blasted it clear beyond the Kuyper Belt.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Those two statements show a remarkable lack of knowledge of the geopolitical situation in the first half of the century...

Glass houses, stones?

There was no EVIL side in WWI, just two groups of states acting in their self-perceived best interests. I think unless you define 'good' as 'communist' or something equivalently silly like that, it is wrong to say they are both 'bad'. Perhaps neither side was inherently good, but I hardly think France can be called 'bad' for defending its territory against German invasion, for example.

France had been spoiling for war with Germany since 1871. They almost went to war over Morocco decade earlier. Given that France had declared its intention to back up Russia, the German attack doesn't automatically make it the aggressor. It was, after all, facing Russia and France, and the only hope it had of winning was striking first. France wanted the war as much as Germany did. If Germany hadn't attacked France, France would have attacked Germany.

And refusing to sign a treaty with Stalin in the 1930s had little to do with Russia's communist leanings, and more to do with the fact that it was JOSEF STALIN; and mostly, to do with the fact that it was RUSSIA, who nobody in the West had ever really gotten along with. Why sign a treaty with the nation that is most likely to be a problem in the future (and pre-1937, I would bet if you polled the British people, or even their nobility or whatnot, they'd have cited Russia/USSR as the #1 threat, over Germany, who everyone assumed was dead in the water). I hardly think it was a matter of being anti-communist. You could say they were anti-Russian Orthodox and probably have been just as accurate...

Stalin was not known to be the monster we know him as until 1956. A defensive alliance with Stalin would have been no more odious than the one they had with the dictatorship in Poland. What the West wanted was for Germany to go to war with the USSR to destroy each other. In any event, Stalin was looking for an alliance with the West up until 1939, when he finally gave up and signed a non-aggression pact with the Nazis.

[Unimatrix11]

Interesting hypothetical question: Which veteran is more to honor: The one who did believe in the war and fought it enthuastically, or the one who did not believe in the war, but fought it non-the-less, because of loyalty (say, he enlisted under Clinton and got sent to iraq under Bush or something) ?

Another one: If your brother dies in a war and for causes that you never believed in, should you honor the war and its causes along with your brother´s sacrifice or should you regard his death as some kind of stupid accident, he could have prevented ?

[Arrian]

Well said, Aeson.

Che's position, if you take out WWII, makes some sense. As usual, he's taken it to such an extreme that most of us reject it. Whaddya gonna do, it's Che. Roll with it.

-Arrian

[Unimatrix11]

Originally posted by Comrade Snuggles


Glass houses, stones?


France had been spoiling for war with Germany since 1871. They almost went to war over Morocco decade earlier. Given that France had declared its intention to back up Russia, the German attack doesn't automatically make it the aggressor. It was, after all, facing Russia and France, and the only hope it had of winning was striking first. France wanted the war as much as Germany did. If Germany hadn't attacked France, France would have attacked Germany.

Stalin was not known to be the monster we know him as until 1956. A defensive alliance with Stalin would have been no more odious than the one they had with the dictatorship in Poland. What the West wanted was for Germany to go to war with the USSR to destroy each other. In any event, Stalin was looking for an alliance with the West up until 1939, when he finally gave up and signed a non-aggression pact with the Nazis.

Shocking to most but pretty much the case - all of it...

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp
See? Kid agrees with you.

There is no surer sign that you haven't so much lost your grip on reality as blasted it clear beyond the Kuyper Belt.

The French has been exploiting the German speaking people for centuries and the English had exploited us. Seriously, don't you even think about this stuff?

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

I sure do. And then I think about the Holocaust and the Rape of Nanking, and think "Hey! Good job we fought and beat that."

[Unimatrix11]

Well bad thing: Your corps did a good deal to start it also - probably the same corps who funded FDRs campaigns...

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp
Well, you're bonkers.

No, the argument was reducto ad absurdem. Joining one empire or the other was going to hasten the end of the war.

Asher's argument is also factually incorrect, as the U.S. would have been unable to render any effective military assistance until it historically did.

[Lazerus]

Originally posted by Kidicious


The French has been exploiting the German speaking people for centuries and the English had exploited us. Seriously, don't you even think about this stuff?

I never claimed we had a perfect history, plenty of our previous actions I won't pay tribute to in much the same way current German citizens don't pay tribute to the holocaust. However in the WWII instance our intentions were hardly one of conquering and genocide.

[Unimatrix11]

Well, CS, in case of WWII, the end of the war that way wouldnt have meant that humans lives would have been saved, probably...

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp
I sure do. And then I think about the Holocaust and the Rape of Nanking, and think "Hey! Good job we fought and beat that."

Oh so you think we joined in to fight the war because of those two reasons? How cute you are.

It's dangerous for people to believe the way that you do. On the otherhand I would say that it's important to allow veterans to believe that they fought for things like that, despite it being far from the truth.

[Unimatrix11]

Originally posted by Lazerus


I never claimed we had a perfect history, plenty of our previous actions I won't pay tribute to in much the same way current German citizens don't pay tribute to the holocaust. However in the WWII instance our actions were hardly one of conquering and genocide.

Ähem - Hiroshima ? Not as bad as the Axis - but the allies werent to fuzzy about killing huge numbers of civilians either (and Hiroshima is but one, and not even the bloodiest example).

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Lazerus


I never claimed we had a perfect history, plenty of our previous actions I won't pay tribute to in much the same way current German citizens don't pay tribute to the holocaust. However in the WWII instance our intentions were hardly one of conquering and genocide.

For a good part of european history the French and even you guys kept the German people down. That's exactly what the war reparations were about. I can understand why the German people were easily convinced to go to war with you again.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp
I sure do. And then I think about the Holocaust and the Rape of Nanking, and think "Hey! Good job we fought and beat that."

Yeah, because that's so different from how the Allies acted in the colonial world. The Japanese were no different, and the only difference between the Nazis and the West is they did it to white people. Since the end of WWII, the United States has either directly, through its own military actions, or indirectly, through proxy actors (like UNITA and RENAMO, etc), killed over ten million people. How many people did the West kill in the Congo in the 1960s? How about Biafra? How many have died in Iraq as a result of the occupation?

The only thing "we" beat was rivals to our own monstrousness.