August 22, 2004

• Brilliant!
• Truth of any of these claims aside, holding a grudge against modern people for stuff that other people did on their soil before they were done is like the sports fans who proclaim that the Boston Celtics are the best team because they won a bunch of championships many years ago. Irrelevant. Sitting on your hands when you hold great power while people are dying can be cowardly. Using your lopsidedly superior power to invade or attack poor countries with no military can be cowardly. Refusing to kill people who have not and are not harming or threatening anyone does not seem particularly cowardly.
• How come you web jerks never mention that? sweet. thanks h-dogg!
• jb, I posted something else on MeFi today, so if you still want to post this there, be my guest (or I can do it tomorrow.)
• For an impressive idea of just how bad Verdun was, check out the Douaumont Ossuary. Other than to point out that we Americans waited until 1918 to say "Lafayette, we are here," I will let this speak for itself.
• Gotta love the war nerd. He makes me cringe sometimes but there is a lot of truth in what he writes.
• Done homunculus - thanks again for this.
• So the French were either total cowards throughout their history, or have the most glorious military history in Europe? I suppose both could be true - that would be a slightly more interesting proposition, though still rather silly.
• An interesting snippet I picked up from Martin Allen's "The Hitler/Hess Deception": one reason the French forces got so trousered in WW II was because of the British Royal Family. Immediately prior to the war, the British wanted to check up on the readiness and disposition of their allies troops, so they arranged for the Duke of Windsor to do a royal tour of French defenses, with a brief to report back on whether the French were set up as they claimed. What they did not count on was the stregngth of Windsor's pro-Nazi, pro-German sympthies, because he gave all that information to well-placed Nazi friends of his, as well as the British. So in 1939, the Germans were granted a priviliged, detailed map of French forces and battle plans. Once again, proof that the Bolsheviks really did have the right idea re: treatment of royalty...
• I think it's important to note that the French "surrender monkeys" fought the Hundred Years War, after they spent the majority of a hundred years losing that war. They were losing for generations, and they still refused to surrender. Eventually the French won. The US Navy Seals has the second toughtest training in the free world. It's second to the training for the French Foreign Legion. The French spent about 10 years attacking North Korea, trying to force democracy and capitalism on them. They eventually gave up and went home, and the US stepped in, fighting the same war with the same people, calling the French "pussies" for losing that war. After about 10 years, we lost that war. Yet we still make fun of the French for surrendering that war.
• Mr. Knickerbocker, Don't you mean Indo China? 50s were with french, with less troops and destroying less of the country side, And I do beleave Ho-Chi-Min asked us to intervene with the french to get them out, then when we said no, when to Rusia and China for help, with the caveat that Ho-Chi_Min back a socialist agenda, (Ah Lost Oppertunities)
• ANd.. added note the french wanted their colony and plantations, not freedom for Vietnem.. If I'm wrong and you mean Korea then revise the length of our war with them, its going on 50 years now not 10......