Roughly 20,000 British Troops...

[DZJ 0]

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Early 20th century thinking was pretty stupid. In WWI, the generals were criminally idiotic in sending wave after wave of soldiers into machine guns.

Sorry, but that's a severely outdated cliche.

[kelpdiver 2]

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Early 20th century thinking was pretty stupid. In WWI, the generals were criminally idiotic in sending wave after wave of soldiers into machine guns.

Sorry, but that's a severely outdated cliche.

It can't be outdated; it's about an event that happened 90 years ago.

You can try to argue it's inaccurate - be my guest. But cliche would also then be a poor choice of word on your part.

[NCclimber 0]

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But cliche would also then be a poor choice of word on your part.

Maybe it's overused in England.

Maybe for a Brit it's just as tired as all those West Virginia, Oklahoma, South Carolina... your sister, your daddy, your family tree jokes.

Maybe.

[jakee 1,611]

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Comparing the Iraq War to WWI (or WWII) is right up there with Bush - Hitler comparisons. Both are lousy comparisons with seem to overlook the huge, glaring differences.

WWI was a "backs against the wall" situation. The Battle of Somme (much like the Battle of Normandy) was a pivotal event, in a truly international war.

The present day sentiment about the war in Iraq made be effected by our being a kinder, gentler society, as well as our 24/7 in-your-face- coverage, but the overwhelming difference in then and now has to do with the implications of fighting versus not fighting.

Absolutely right.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[jakee 1,611]

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We are fodder for conquest by others who still have the guts and gumption that we have lost.

Yeah, I mean you only spend as much on defence as every other country put together - you're, like, totally vulnerable!!

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[JohnRich 4]

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Thank you for making me see the light and to realize that those soldiers are nothing more than a tool and that I should no longer care because, well... it's a war and people die.

You're half-correct. They are "tools", but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't care.

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
- Thomas Jefferson.

Freedom has to be fought for in order to be preserved. That's a fact of life. You don't have to like the spilling of blood, but the truth is, in this cold hard world that we live in, that it is necessary from time to time. If you aren't willing to fight, then you will no longer remain free.

[billvon 3,132]

>Freedom has to be fought for in order to be preserved. That's a fact of life.

I think that's a load of crap that ranks right up there with "you're not a man if you never fight anyone" - and macho posturing like that has gotten us into too many wars.

We need a strong military to defend us from threats (and there are a lot of them out there, make no mistake.) That's it. We don't need to periodically kill tens of thousands to "refresh" our country any more than we need human sacrifice to validate our religions (although I am sure some people still feel that way.)

[masterblaster72 0]

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What will loose the war in Iraq is Americas weak will at home because the Americans having invaded the place have not got the stomach to see body bags and limbless soldiers coming home for the next thirty years.

I don't know what the deal is there in the UK, but here in the USA, government policy dictates that we do not televise body bags coming home, let alone any war footage. As far as limbless soldiers go, they're generally seen in photo ops with the president.

Be humble, ask questions, listen, learn, follow the golden rule, talk when necessary, and know when to shut the fuck up.

[freethefly 6]

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Freedom has to be fought for in order to be preserved. That's a fact of life. You don't have to like the spilling of blood, but the truth is, in this cold hard world that we live in, that it is necessary from time to time. If you aren't willing to fight, then you will no longer remain free.

OH my god (or muhamed had Saddam had won), John! You are so right! I mean Saddam nearly had us with what? His carriers parked off of our coast preparing wave after wave of attack? His ground troops marching across America slaughtering each and everyone of us who did not want an Iraqi style government? You are so right. Damn, glad you opened my eyes. I now realize exactly how close we all were to becoming muslims. Good thing that there are still those willing to kill those who didn't attack us. After all, the only way to preserve freedom is to spill the blood of innocent people.

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"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
- Thomas Jefferson.

I seriously doubt if Jefferson meant that America should start wars merely to claim that we are preserving freedom.
Will you kindly explain how invading Iraq is preserving American freedom?

"...And once you're gone, you can't come back
When you're out of the blue and into the black."
Neil Young

[kelpdiver 2]

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Freedom has to be fought for in order to be preserved. That's a fact of life. You don't have to like the spilling of blood, but the truth is, in this cold hard world that we live in, that it is necessary from time to time. If you aren't willing to fight, then you will no longer remain free.

OH my god (or muhamed had Saddam had won), John! You are so right! I mean Saddam nearly had us with what? His carriers parked off of our coast preparing wave after wave of attack? His ground troops marching across America slaughtering each and everyone of us who did not want an Iraqi style government? You are so right. Damn, glad you opened my eyes.

To both you and Bill:

Both statements can be true. Freedom isn't free.

But that doesn't mean that the war in Iraq is an illustration of that fact.

[billvon 3,132]

>Both statements can be true. Freedom isn't free.

I agree. The costs are significant; we have to be willing to pay (in money, time, sweat and on rare occasions blood) to defend our country from those who attack it, and to defend our freedoms from those who would take them away in the name of temporary safety.

However, the idea that unless you have regular wars freedom will disappear is unsupportable. It's a somewhat absurd notion used to justify unnecessary wars, and has often been trotted out to support both the Vietnam and Iraq wars.

Today, our freedoms are threatened far more by the current administration than by anything any terrorist has ever done. Indeed, by creating a tremendous amount of anti-US sentiment, this war is doing exactly the opposite of what John claims - it is giving the administration the ammunition to remove our freedoms in the name of protecting us from a menacing, shadowy foe.

Yes, sometimes you have to fight for your freedoms. Today that means fighting to end the war and restore the freedoms taken from us by those who would protect us from the 'perils' of freedom.

[Andrewwhyte 1]

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WWI was a "backs against the wall" situation. The Battle of Somme (much like the Battle of Normandy) was a pivotal event, in a truly international war.

Was it? Maybe for France and Belgium it was but not for UK and the US. European monarchs/dictators had been attacking and conquering each other for 1000 years. This was precisely why the sentiment in the US was to stay out of it (This doesn't mean the UK was wrong to be there).
The crazy thing about the battle of the Somme is that it wasn't even the main show; it was intended to relieve the pressure from the battle of Verdun which the French were being hammered. Think about that for one minute-- One of the bloodiest battles in human history (~300,000 dead) was set up to relieve the pressure from another colossal battle(~250,000 dead).

[Zep 0]

I left England a long time ago so I can't comment on their news coverage.
Here in Spain they hold nothing back, the whole gory carnage is thrown at you in glorious technicolour,
Nothing quite like sitting down to your evening meal an seeing swollen discoloured bodies missing limbs,
charred blackened remains after bomb strikes,

That you can get used to, because in in the end it just seems like a bad "B" movie.
What really hit home was when the film crews captured the the soldiers crying softly on their own,
not because they were scared an wanted to go home, but because they were normal men an boys that
have normal emotions.

Public opinion helped Spain withdraw her soldiers


Maybe if other countries showed the public the real images of war, just maybe.

Gone fishing

[NCclimber 0]

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WWI was a "backs against the wall" situation. The Battle of Somme (much like the Battle of Normandy) was a pivotal event, in a truly international war.

Was it? Maybe for France and Belgium it was but not for UK and the US.

How about for WWI? I'm guessing most historians would say YES.
The Battle of Stalingrad did not have a direct impact on the UK or the US, either. It was still a pivotal event, in an international war.

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European monarchs/dictators had been attacking and conquering each other for 1000 years.

So what? How is this relevant to whether or not it was a pivotal event?

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The crazy thing about the battle of the Somme is that it wasn't even the main show; it was intended to relieve the pressure from the battle of Verdun which the French were being hammered.

Again, what does this have to do with whether or not it was a pivotal event?

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Think about that for one minute-- One of the bloodiest battles in human history (~300,000 dead) was set up to relieve the pressure from another colossal battle(~250,000 dead).

So what?

[DZJ 0]

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Early 20th century thinking was pretty stupid. In WWI, the generals were criminally idiotic in sending wave after wave of soldiers into machine guns.

Sorry, but that's a severely outdated cliche.

It can't be outdated; it's about an event that happened 90 years ago.

You can try to argue it's inaccurate - be my guest. But cliche would also then be a poor choice of word on your part.

'Cliché' doesn't refer to the events, it refers to obsolete view of history that you repeated. It's simply wrong.

This isn't meant as a academic, intellectual point - quite the reverse. We dishonour the dead by (sometimes grossly) mischaracterising the war they fought. Their memory demands a nuanced approach.

[kelpdiver 2]

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'Cliché' doesn't refer to the events, it refers to obsolete view of history that you repeated. It's simply wrong.

your use of cliche is wrong (it doesn't mean inaccurate or obsolete), then, and you still haven't made an actual argument on how it is wrong. So make a fucking point already, not misuse English words left and right.

The machine gun changed warfare, too late. Chemical weapons use in WWI also lead to change in the form of a general ban on its use.

[juanesky 0]

In other words, when you water down what actually happened, is considered intellectual? Just curious.

"According to some of the conservatives here, it sounds like it's fine to beat your wide - as long as she had it coming." -Billvon

[juanesky 0]

FYI, the US was not involved until April 6th 1917. The battle of Somme was July 1st, 1916 ending later that year.

"According to some of the conservatives here, it sounds like it's fine to beat your wide - as long as she had it coming." -Billvon

[DZJ 0]

My apologies if my meaning has not been clear, but my use of 'cliche' is perfectly accurate. Three definitions from dictionary.com

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1. a trite, stereotyped expression; a sentence or phrase, usually expressing a popular or common thought or idea, that has lost originality, ingenuity, and impact by long overuse, as sadder but wiser, or strong as an ox.
2. (in art, literature, drama, etc.) a trite or hackneyed plot, character development, use of color, musical expression, etc.
3. anything that has become trite or commonplace through overuse.

(I prefer the OED, but it's definition is very similar)

I hoped it would be reasonably clear that I was referring to your characterisation of the First World War as a cliche, which it unquestionably is. Stories of idiotic generals and human waves are overused stereotypes and fit the definition of cliche perfectly.

This thread is about public attitudes to war and comparisons between then and now. We can do better than lazy, stereotyped history in the same way that discourse on Iraq is not helped by attempts to see the situation in black and white or as a struggle of good and evil. I hoped to dispel some of the myths that abound about the First World War and perhaps encourage a nuanced view.

If you want examples of how the First World War differed from your position, many senior officers were professional and intelligent and successfully integrated many spectacularly radical technologies and created a new way of waging war. By the end of the war tactics had developed far beyond any description of human waves thrown against machine guns.

And you know, there's really no need to be aggressive.

[jm951 0]

Think this one through. In the past, most wars were fought by nation states v nation states. It was fairly rare to see some small country taking a much larger, richer and technologically advanced country. Fast forward to the time of WW1 and technology had advanced to the point of making killing very efficient and easy but military thinking still lagged behind the capability of the technology, hence the huge casualties.

Move forward to Act III of WW1 (WW2), and the commanders had realized the killing capability of the new technology and adjusted somewhat. Even so, they realized that the concept of total war was the only way to bring about an end to the fighting. That meant that for the first time in recorded history, the entire populace, resources, and industry of the enemy country would now become a military target. Examples, the raids on London, Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, Nagasaki, and Hiroshima were designed to kill mass amounts of civilians and destroy industrial production. Did people of the time think differently than today? In a word, yes, death was not a stranger to many of the time and that colored the thinking of the value of the individual life. Polio, influenza, and other plagues killed thousands to hundreds of thousands and it wasn't uncommon to have known someone who died from those causes. Death in war was just another cause.

Move further forward to modern times. One of the lessons learned by those who survived the bloodletting, life can be preserved and valued by medicine and avoiding war as it was fought in the past. Survivors on both sides were horrified by the killing and began to raise another generation with the beliefs that war on that scale should be avoided. Note that since 1945, there have been no major wars on the scale of WW2. There were some small ones, but as technology advanced, small nations realized they could make war on the larger by covert action or by proxy.

Terrorism and war by proxy have become much more common than before. While both existed through history, it has become the method of choice for smaller nations to take on larger ones, and for large ones to fight each other without the damage incurred by total war.

So what does this all have to do with the current Iraq situation? Yes, the people of today think very differently about killing and will avoid killing civilians if at all possible. In the past, killing civilians was part of the cost of doing business. Next, the press was tightly controlled and agreeable to self censorship. Not so today, in fact, an adversarial relationship is more likely with little censorship. I recall during the Vietnam war when Danny Blather sent his reports from in front of the same burned out C130 night after night and wondered why he frequently used it as a backdrop.

Upshot of this, like W or not, agree with Iraq or not, what is going on is a war by proxy with those nations not strong enough to take on the Western nations directly. They will do so by funding Al Queda and similar orgs that have the mission of killing the infidels. War is no longer the simplistic thing people think it is, but people still die and things get broken. Our real enemies are those who fund the terrorists. Those who arm, shelter, feed, train and recruit them. And these people aren't always a nation state. These guys aren't dumb. They will do whatever they can to achieve their objectives and will use our press and mindset against us. The key is, do we still have the will to win? Can we do what is necessary to eliminate those who would fund the threats or will selfish political opportunism be the end of our society?

[kelpdiver 2]

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And you know, there's really no need to be aggressive.

like fuck there is. Don't pretend to play nice now. And do actually try to work with specific details? It's a lot easier to play this game when you don't, of course.

You're still wrong. Cliche in the form you want to use would mean 'overused,' not inaccurate or simplistic.

and "by the end of the war" is hardly comforting to the dead, now is it? Or take the depiction of the siege of Stalingrad where two soldiers with one gun went at the Nazis. The response to the machine gun was the tank.

Back to the original fucking topic, in which you seem to have little interest - soliders are worth a lot more now. They're valuable, and not irreplaceable. That's the difference between now and the 20th Century.

[juanesky 0]

Please don't break him.

"According to some of the conservatives here, it sounds like it's fine to beat your wide - as long as she had it coming." -Billvon

[Zenister 0]

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Keeping all personal opinion about the war aside, how long did people really expect to be in Iraq?

Some people expected to be there for a long time, which was one reason why they didn't support it.

The Whitehouse didn't think we'd be there for very long at all.

Ding Ding!!

____________________________________
Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.

[crwtom 0]

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If we're using those standards - why are people getting bent out of shape just because 3000 americans died on 9/11? .

perhaps because Americans are generally clueless about the
civilian death toll that any war inflicts and what they mean.

9/11 was the only attack on Americam mainland with significant
civilian casualties since 1865. In the world wars 3000 civilian
deaths per day was for most large countries a regular day at work.

Not knowing better, you'd say "What bliss, this ignorance", but this
ignorance also makes it so much more easy for this country to start
wars, drop bombs, and inflict destruction on civilian populations.

Cheers, T

*******************************************************************
Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

[DZJ 0]

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And you know, there's really no need to be aggressive.

like fuck there is. Don't pretend to play nice now. And do actually try to work with specific details? It's a lot easier to play this game when you don't, of course.

Sorry (and don't take this the wrong way) but I really don't follow you. What game are talking about? And what specific details would you like?

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You're still wrong. Cliche in the form you want to use would mean 'overused,' not inaccurate or simplistic.

I have made my meaning clear, and justified my use of words. I don't see any point arguing this one any further.

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and "by the end of the war" is hardly comforting to the dead, now is it? Or take the depiction of the siege of Stalingrad where two soldiers with one gun went at the Nazis. The response to the machine gun was the tank.

What would you suggest is comforting to the dead? Cliches and caricatured history? And at any rate, the changes I referred to can be seen long before the end of the war and merely reached full maturity by the final months. More to the point, those changes (new equipment, tactics, technology etc) were introduced with the aim of reducing losses and so saving lives

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Back to the original fucking topic, in which you seem to have little interest - soliders are worth a lot more now. They're valuable, and not irreplaceable. That's the difference between now and the 20th Century.

Soldiers, I would argue, were valuable then as well, but the nature of the war they were fighting inevitably led to high casualties - and the development of many different ways to reduce such casualties. The fact that societies and militaries tolerated such losses doesn't mean they weren't keenly felt.