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Bismarck was all about Germany and improving Germany only. Hitler was all about Germany too, but he wanted to expand the "empire."
I think you have hit on the difference here. Patriotism does not envision bettering your country at another nation's expense. I know that that does not necessarily aplly 100% to Bismarck, but at least he was only dealing with Germans. Perhaps you could apply Wilson's ideal of ethnic self-determination to what Bismarck was trying to do.
I think the Left would complain more about censoring Google. As far as planting pro-American videos, so what they complain? We have the right to do that.I remember the anti-war crowd complaining about us"planting" stories in Iraqi newspapers a while back.
I agree 100%, and I sure wish we were doing something like it, maybe we are just in the background.
Just to let everyone know. I have a copy of the 15th edition of Chicago as well as the latest edition of Turabian's style manual. i know that AMU history students are required to use the 15th edition. It is updated to cover most kinds of electronic sources. If anyone has questions that the other editions dont cover, i will be happy to look them up and answer them for you.Patrick
But there's nothing stopping us form flooding Google with pro-American "propaganda".
Can you imagine the medias reaction to that? I can hear the screams from the left now about how America is trying to propagandize the world.
I seem to recall watching a show on the history channel recently about this. They talked about how some of the buildings were planned to be so huge that they could not be built with 1940's era engineering. He planned an arena for party rally's that could hold something like 500,000 people if I remember right. Very interesting show that showcased the megalomania of the man.
The whole paragraph, but mainly the parts I underlined are making me go “Huh?” My immediate thought was, well if it wasn't for these “complicit” European and American Christians who fought and gave their lives fighting Germany, the Jews and everyone else the Germans thought as inferior, would be completely eradicated.What do you folks think?
I have to agree with you but some folks are so set in their agenda that they simply cannot see good in anyone. They cant see the forest for the trees, if you will. I also think that some folks just enjoy playing the victim, it would upset their worldview to acknowledge that evil is not genetic or societal but rather an individual trait.
I was not offended but it is no more than I expect out of the MSM. I just find the cover to be in extremely bad taste. It seems to me that it is mocking the sacrifices made on Iwo Jima.
I don't understand why they didn't simply dig the holes deeper and throw in some dirt or sawdust after they're done. Emptying a bucket seems like an unsanitary way of doing things, and I think that by mid mid Nineteen-teens sanitation was getting more attention. Perhaps the reason is simply that the amount of men in each trench was too many, and the size of the trenches was too small, to make a deeper pit/dirt-throw practical.
I wouldn't have dug the pits deeper. The front line on the Western front was lousy with bodies after the first year of war. It was common for bodies to be unearthed when new trenches were dug and they wera also unearthed and tossed about by shellfire. Even today farmers along the trace of the Western front unearth skeletons every year of soldiers killed in WWI. I will have to find them but i have seen pictures of soldiers in the trenches with an arm or leg of a dead soldier sticking out of the trench wall. Bodies were so common they went unremarked after a soldiers first few weeks on active service at the front.Also in many sections of the British held sector it was impossible to dig deeper because of the height of the water table. There were places in Flanders where there were no trenches the lines instead being built of sandbag walls built up from ground level. In most parts of Flanders and northwest France the water table is at most 2-4 feet below the ground. This accounts for the massive amounts of mud visible in many of the pictures of British troops taken during the war. Aslo do not forget that the Germans chose the best ground for themselves as they retreated after the First Battle of the Marne. Such as the Chalklands of the Somme, near Artois, and in Champagne.What is funny about the regulations on trench latrines is that they diplay absolutely no recognition of the reality of life in the trenches. If I had been fighting, i probably would have snuck into no-mans land too. It is not like human waste smells worse than the bodies rotting everywhere along the front.
I would have to look into Army doctrine, I am unfamiliar with it at the moment. I think the Air Force is near dead-on. Training wise is more difficult. With the wide range of missions required of everyone, it is hard to be proficient in everything. Yet we don't want to compartimentalize and have specific teams only capable of doing one sort of mission either. There is a balance there somewhere.BTW, did anyone see Future Dogfights on History channel the other day? A lot of stuff was right on. They made some educational guesses but I feel they were fairly accurate.
I suppose I could degenerate into some sort of Air Force deprecating jokes here but I will defer that for later. I honestly dont see a huge role for the Air Force in COIN ops. To me airstrikes are never surgical and always risk excessive casualties. Army aviation has this effect as well. See this for an example: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080522/wl_mideast_afp/iraqunrestus_080522131239;_ylt=AildX.mIvHDs49Dm2MSwFPGaOrgF The use of airpower is called for in certain circumstances but I generally think air strikes are like using a sledgehammer to kill ants. My own experience bears this out. One place where the Air Force has done yeoman's service and leveraged technology as a force multiplier is the use of UAV's. I cannot praise Predator operators enough. I got a couple of kills myself that were developed through Predator derived real-time surveillance. Air cargo is another area in which the Air Force excels although they are little recognized for this. People tend to conveniently forget the importance of logisitics, at least until they run our of toilet paper.I guess I have to backstep a little after thinking about it. The Air Force does have a vital role to play in COIN. What is missing in my opinion is jointness, despite it being the holy grail of military ops since the '86 Sarbanes/Oxley act. We dont do a very good job of leveraging our technology in the COIN fight or integrating the capabilities of the services. In my experience, we are still waging separate fights, but i have had a worm's eye view at the level of the Cavalry section, at the pointy end of the stick I have not seen much jointness. I stand by my assertion that we still lag in the development of effective COIN doctrine, we have made strides forward but still have leagues to go.
So does "Western Civilization" mean culturally or geographically? I think initially it was culturally but now as we have become global, it is more geographic.
Wouldnt it be the opposite. It was geographic but as the world becomes more global it is cultural?
I am not anti-technology. I just believe that we need to put more focus on doctrine and training and bring everything into balance. Balance is what is missing in American warfighting at present. And yes I too recognize that the conventional threat has not disappeared, merely receded for the time being. However, I can foresee a day in the not too distant future where we will have to relearn all the lessons of conventional warfare because of our focus on COIN.
I read Friedman's book last year. I thought he made some excellent and very valid points. Especially concerning the nature of the clash of cultures occurring in the world today.
Notice I said most, not all. I have worked in the acquisition field for the last three years doing operational testing of Infantry and dismounted weapons for the Army. I know for a fact that some of the crap he shows on there is just that, crap. I was involved in the MGS test last year and I saw the episode he did on it last month. Made me wonder if he saw the same vehicle I did.
I dont think both were nationalists. Hitler certainly was but not Bismarck, I would classify him as a German Patriot. Bismarck only sought the glorification and unification of Germany where hitler sought conquest and domination. the two are incomparable I think. It is apples to oranges.What we need is a stricter definition of Nationalism.
