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[Squaredy]

10 hours ago, peds said:

 

I’m not really sure you understand the reasons behind the First World War and who was fighting who.

 

We’ve had all sorts of conflicts in our country’s history, many of them completely justified, but WW1 does not rank among them. It was an entirely avoidable war which should never have started, and should the same circumstances present themselves again today, absolutely anyone with a few spare ounces of grey matter would count themselves as a conscientious objector.

 

Unlike, say, World War Two or the Falklands War, where despite a bit of undeniable bad behaviour from everyone involved, there were fairly clear-cut good guys and bad guys, in World War One there was no side with the moral high ground, and you cannot possibly take issue with the people not wanting any part of such nonsense as the aristocratic dick-measuring contests between a bunch of inbred royals.

 

I’d object the fuck out of WW1 if I were there, conscientiously and loudly.

You have got me curious I must read up more about World War One.  Any suggested good books?  

 

By the way I think the Falklands war was also very avoidable.  Thing is it appears Mrs Thatcher didn’t want to avoid it.

[westphalian]

I read a good book on ww1 wanting to know how it started. No real answer, everyone just drifted into it but basically it was the Kaiser

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

35 minutes ago, Squaredy said:

 

By the way I think the Falklands war was also very avoidable.  Thing is it appears Mrs Thatcher didn’t want to avoid it.

I'd certainly be interested in your rationale for that viewpoint.  

 

Whilst I can appreciate the reasons for ardent anti-Thatcher sentiment (most notably in those sections of the country which were (and remain) decimated by the closing down of the coal sector) I'd like to think there is something more substantial than the hatred of the individual to substantiate your premise about the Falkland conflict.   

[Khriss]

Definately came at the right time fr Thatcher, her ratings were on the floor. Didn't help that the Foreign office couldn't even  find it on a map. But it got her re-elected, k

[roboted]

12 hours ago, tree-fancier123 said:

 

Thats not good enough - the country needed them to be willing to be killed 

More to the point.

[Gary Prentice]

12 hours ago, peds said:

World War Two or the Falklands War, where despite a bit of undeniable bad behaviour from everyone involved, there were fairly clear-cut good guys and bad guys,

I'd have thought that both sides, in any conflict, believe that they're on the good guy side? The belief by the Germans in WW2 was that God was on their side (Gott mit uns) so they must have been good guys, everyone else was wrong! 

[Khriss]

Briefly there was a lot of doubt as to who and how the islands were 'invaded' but it was no doubt a clash of Arge v UK politic. Worst thing is more squaddies fromm that war died after from mental health problems than were killed on front line,  k

[peds]

2 minutes ago, Gary Prentice said:

I'd have thought that both sides, in any conflict, believe that they're on the good guy side? The belief by the Germans in WW2 was that God was on their side (Gott mit uns) so they must have been good guys, everyone else was wrong! 

Quite right, yes, but looking at any conflict through the privileged lens of history rather than the rose-tinted glasses worn by either side at the time often provides a clearer picture. Even taking into account the shitty things done by the Allies (fire bombing entire cities off the map, occasions of summary executions of prisoners of war, widespread incidents of rape and torture, the usual behaviour of every single army in every single war ever fought), and, if we can distance the western theatre of WW2 from the grisly landscape of the eastern front, where our trusted ally Russia was gleefully massacring millions of people with as much enthusiasm as Germany's Waffen-SS was, Hitler was simply miles ahead of the game in terms of being a truly evil human being.
Regardless of popular sentiment at the time, years after the fact sometimes it is as plain as day who has the moral high ground in any given conflict. Sometimes, however, it's as clear as mud, and there are only shitty people on both sides of a conflict.

[peds]

24 minutes ago, Khriss said:

Briefly there was a lot of doubt as to who and how the islands were 'invaded' but it was no doubt a clash of Arge v UK politic. Worst thing is more squaddies fromm that war died after from mental health problems than were killed on front line,  k

It's a bit more cut-and-dry than that, really... if the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands had gone unchecked, then the thousands of inhabitants of the islands of almost exclusively-British descent faced imprisonment, torture, and "disappearance", in just the same way that tens of thousands of people on the Argentinian mainland had already suffered. If that isn't a good enough reason to go to war, then I don't know what is.

 

For your second point... same story with every conflict these days, the death toll from bullets and bombs pales in insignifiance compared to the deaths by suicide years and decades after the fact. It's a shitty situation that's cropped up after ever war in the last hundred years, and one that every government chooses not to learn from.

 

A pretty great book about the Falklands War is Razor's Edge: The Unnofficial History of the Falklands War by Hugh Bicheno, an intelligence officer with British intelligence services who spent a lot of time in South America, including five years in Argentina in the run-up to the conflict.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Razors-Edge-Unofficial-History-Falklands/dp/0753821869

Edited October 11, 2018 by peds

[tree-fancier123]

12 hours ago, Yournamehere said:

And when the whole country is shouting, "KILL, KILL, I WANNA KILL, WOMEN AND BABIES AND GERMANS AN ANYONE ELSE WHO LOOKS A BIT DIFFERENT" it takes an incredibly brave person to stand up and say, "No. This is wrong."

 

in the last war we were being  bombed from the air  and came very close to being invaded, it needed our men to become a bit red in tooth and claw

 

'Sie fragen weiter wann wir kommen. WIR KOMMEN!'