Bill wrote :

> The only problem with having this in the digest is that when
> interesting
> threads come along you have to scroll and scroll and scroll.
> I'll just post
> my thoughts as I am scrolling.

That's the nice thing of being on the immediate list.

> Christian - when I was in the Army (1972-1974) I was stationed in the
> Saarland - in a town called Landstuhl. Believe it or not in
> the early 1970s,
> remnants of WW2 were still visible.

I easily believe it. I did my own military service also in Saarland, in
Trier to be precise, which I believe may be relatively close to Landstuhl.
That was in '83. At the time, no WWII remains were visible in the area,
except two giant cannons in a battery (hope the word is right) overlooking
the valley of the Mosel.

I had seen WWII remnants twice before. First time was in London, in the
summer of '72, where a very small part (perhaps one block, no more) was
still in ruins. Second time was in East Berlin in '73, where whole blocks
were still derelict ruins. The contrast between the vibrant West Berlin and
the quiet, almost dead, and still partly in ruins Esat Berlin was striking.
At that time, I was 12 years young, and I'll probably never forget the
sight.

[Stuff snipped]

> When I mentioned the disastrous politics of the 1930s with Britain &
> France's response to the rise of Hitler, much is forgotten
> about the true
> cost the 2 countries paid in blood in that war.

This is true, but it is also true to say that Britain and France (mostly
Britain. In fact, France's diplomacy in the 30s was de facto aligned with
Britain's, and history has remembered the name of Neville Chamberlain much
more than it has remembered Edouard Daladier's) wielded only a very small
stick, in response to Hitler's violations of the Treaty of Versailles. The
effect of losing such a high percentage of mostly male population is still
visible today on France's pyramid of ages. And no village but one (out of
36,000-odd cities, towns and villages in the whole country) did not lose a
few of its best and brightest at that time. WWI was, in terms of human loss,
a butchery.

> In 1 day, during the Battle of the Somme (1915?) I read that
> 50,000 soldiers
> died. Fifty thousand in 1 day.

In that respect, it compares with, say, Gettysburg ?

The Battle of the Somme is, btw, the place where my mom's dad was wounded
and earned his Legion of Honor.

> Denys, while I agree with much
> of what you
> said in re: the straw dog argument of oil et al, I don't
> believe Germany was
> kicking France's "derriere" in WW1. In fact, the reason for
> the horrible
> causalities was the stalemate.

Yes, true. WWI was a war of positions, with whole divisions, if not armies,
were willing to sacrifice tens of thousands of their best and brightest for
a few hundred yards. I visited the Fort of Douaumont near Verdun as a
teenager. What's striking is not so much the pictures (after all, all people
of my generation have seen many pics of WWI in the history books), but the
bones. Can you believe that ? The Fort of Douaumont included the "ossuaire"
(bone repository, if you like), which is basically the collection of human
remains that have been picked up on the battlefield after the battle, but
could not be attributed to a known dead body. In other words, they represent
the number of UNKNOWN soldiers.

Douaumont is a vibrant testimony to the absurdity of war. The fort was first
taken by the Germans at the onset of WWI. It was taken back by the French at
some step of the Battle of Verdun (an 8-month long stretch of strikes and
counterstrikes in 1916 for the city of Verdun, in the westernmost part of
Lorraine), then by the Germans again, then by the French again, and so
forth. After the battle, a General claimed the Fort had only a very minor
strategic importance, and could have been abandoned completely in favor of
more useful and relevant strategic initiatives. Tens of thousands of
soldiers of both countries (probably a few of my forefathers) died for that
absurdity.

And now Bush wants to coerce us into an equally absurd Middle East venture
that will end up sowing the seeds for thousands of little bin Ladens ?

> I have read that the balance
> was slightly in
> Germany's favor but nothing momentous. 1000s of men dying daily in the
> trenches due to artillery and machine gun fire. Men dying for 100s of
> meters.

Unfortunately, this is true. The last "poilu" (as the French soldiers who
fought in WWI used to be known died a few months ago, at age 100-something.
Like all others, he should be paid tribute because, in a very large part, if
we can enjoy the pleasure of freely discussing what happened in WWI, it's
because of the tremendous suffering endured by these men who actually fought
WWI.

So why were the soldiers called "poilus" (loose translation : hairy) ?
Simple. They were stationed in trenches, far away from the nearest military
barracks, exactly in the middle of nowhere, with no access to basic hygiene.
Forget about bathrooms and showers. In such conditions, they could not
possibly get a decent face shave, and their face hair grew. Hence their
nickname of "poilus".

> It was our entry - relatively late - in 1917 - that tipped
> the balance.

True. The US entered the war in late-1917, and is was over 14 months later.

> God only knows how Europe would have been different had we remained out.

We'll never know. We can only speculate.

> So while I may appear harsh in "judging" Britain and France
> during the 30s -
> given what they had suffered - it is certainly easier to see
> their aversion
> to more armed conflict.

You get the idea. Especially if the armed conflict, by some
terrorist-induced twisted side effect, extends onto our territory and
against our loved ones. Hey, I also happen to have friends and loved ones in
the States, and I don't want them to suffer either !

> Christian - I enjoy reading your views - and I must say a lot of
> misunderstandings between peoples is due to false
> perceptions. Now to many
> of us the French are - perplexing. The French to me seem like
> a beautiful
> woman you are intoxicated with - doing strange things - inexplicable
> irrational  things - but you love her nonetheless. Does that
> sound like a
> French viewpoint? ;-)

Since it borders on the salacious by explicitly referring to a woman, then I
guess it's perfectly acceptable to a Frenchman, yes ;-)


More seriously, now that the thread has been going on for a while, may
people have expressed their view, and everyone has now had a much better
chance at understanding others' point of view. And that is good.

> The French, for their part, seem to mistrust the motives of "The Anglo
> Saxons" as they call the British and us.

While I can't speak for every frenchman and -woman, I do not mistrust the
British or the Americans or anyone else, or their motives. However, (still
speaking for myself), I tend to mistrust all politicans, regardless of
citizenship, partisanship, gender, creed, race, skin color, religion,
whatever .... I am strongly biased against them all. The average politico's
record of cheating, lying, etc, would land any commoner like me in jail for
a couple of lifetimes. This is why I instinctively mistrust them all.
Whether they are French or American is totally irrelevant. Now that probably
helps undertsand why I don't believe Bush at face value, nor anyone else of
his Administration. Besides, Bush's gung-ho attitude is not well received in
this cozy European Continent. For us, George W. Bush is little more than
Chuck Norris' Walker Texas Ranger becoming President of the United States.

This echoes an earlier post from Wirt about just anyone becoming President.

> I read today that the French
> embassy here was deluged with 1000 phone calls yesterday.
> Many Americans are
> perplexed and angry for what they see as simply obstruction.

Please .... Call it sensitivity to ther people's plight, call it carefully
weighing all possible options, call it whatever ... but obstruction ? Why ?
Because we are trying to avert a massacre, if that is still possible ?

> Many veterans,
> who fought in France helping to liberate the country - see this latest
> political maneuvering as simply back stabbing.

The situations are not comparable. It is true to say that Western Europe was
liberated mostly by Americans, but ualso by the British, French, canadians,
and many other countries. I agree tha Americans led the effort and provided
a lot of the financial and industrial support. I am not willing to put that
in question.

In other words, we sent you Lafayette, you sent us Eisenhower and G.I. Joe.
We will never know what would have happened if the Americans had stayed on
their isolasionist track, as they were before Pearl Harbor. Perhaps we would
be laboring and suffering under a Nazi boot. Or under a Soviet boot. Or
under a dual boot (pun intended).

> Now I must say we certainly
> had as much reason to eliminate Hitler as you

This can be disputed. At the time American involvement in liberating
Nazi-occupied Wester Europe was decided, Hitler was not know to have any
technology capable of directly menacing the USA. At most, he could sink a
few cargo ships in the Atlantic (which is already an act of war, btw). And
the Holocaust was not widely known and documented and publicized as it would
be a few years later. In fact, the Holocaust played a very small part in
advocating for American action in Europe for that reason : though it was
already in progress, it was stealthy - below radar, and mostly outside
anyone's view. That changed later.

It remains that America does not like some dictators. It did not like Hitler
then, like it does not like Saddam now. Hmmm ... is it appropriate to bring
back into perspective America's highly questionable involvement in favor of
some Latin American dictators during the Cold War ? Fidel played in the
other camp, of course. But what about Pinochet ?

[Interesting stuff snipped. I need to get my hand on a Winston bio. Not
CSY's Winston, the other one]

> I think it is true to say that September 11, 2001 was a
> watershed event for
> the US. Just as December 7th, 1941.  Historians will note a
> change in the
> politics. I believe it is safe to say we wouldn't have
> considered invading
> Iraq on September 10th.

Safe bet. But Saddam is the wrong target. He is not known for any sort of
active role in the chain of causes that ended up in the tragic 9/11 attacks.
He is not known to have had at the time any relationship whatsoever with Al
Qaeda. That may have changed since then, of course. He's lately embarked on
a born-again fundamentalist muslim ideological/religious path that sounds a
bit frightening. The layman is turning zealously religious, and the
"zealously" scares the hell out of me much more than the "religious".

> Despite what many want to believe the
> issue isn't
> over oil.

Perhaps true, perhaps not. Time will tell.

> I would suspect that Iraqi oil will be used to rebuild their
> society.

If that's the case, it would be a blessing for this long-opressed and
long-starved population. I hope this pleasant outcome proves true. Howeve, I
fear that, with no democracy in sight, a possible oil wealth windfall would
be concentrated into the hands of a "happy few". Not necessarily Western oil
companies, btw. See what has happend everywhere in the Middle East.

> Saddam has squandered their wealth. If you want my
> opinion for our
> rationale on Iraq today (which I suspect is different from
> Wayne's ;-) ) -
> it is a fear of Saddams WMD and free lancing terrorists - giving Iraq
> plausible deniability.

The conjunction of the two is quite frightening : Saddams WMDs and
"free-lance" terrorists. I think the expression "free-lance" exactly
describew the reality. Considering how Al-Qaeda works, a local cell of
terrorists does not need much support, help, steering nor incentive from a
centralized command. Much like a CIA special-ops commando (oh my, do these
things REALLY exist ????) is largely autonomus once in the field, Al-Qaeda
cells need no centralized command. Which means that Al-Qaeda related cells
(several hundreds of them spread all over the world, no doubt about that)
would probably try to use one of Saddam's WMDs if they could get their hand
on it.

Now who read The Fifth Horseman, a brilliant work of fiction by authors
Dominique Larpierre and Larry Collins ? It describes an autonomus terrorist
group planting a nuclear device in Lower Manhattan and being intercepted
only at the last moment. What's frightening in the book is its precison in
details, all the preparation, etc. A very, very brilliant work.
Incidentally, it was written perhaps 25-30 years ago, at a time OBL should
have been in junior high or so.

> I can't over emphasize the change in thought - with our
> seeing the collapse
> of the twin towers, the absolute barbaric acts of the terrorists - and
> knowing that if they had a nuclear bomb, or serin and a good way of
> administering it - they'd be happy killing 100,000-500,000 Americans.

Here we are. See my comment above.

> Perhaps that day will yet come, as I believe this war - with a shadowy
> enemy, can easily last a decade.

from what I've read, I understand that the strategist are betting on a
short, intense war, with lost of air strikes, sorties, etc, and a ground
invasion after that. They think in weeks, perhaps months, but certainly not
a decade. The yeven tried to put a price tag on the war !!! See a recent
Time Magazine issue about that.

> The only way we can win this war is to either kill or imprison the
> terrorists. I suspect that if a few thousand innocent
> Frenchmen (and women)
> die  on the Champs E'lysees  - for no other reason other than they are
> considered Satan's Children by al Queda -  the attitude of
> the Chirac govt
> may change.

Well, that almost happened. A plane hijack was terminated on the airport of
Marseilles, south of France, around Christmas time, 1994. the plane was
hijacked between Algiers and Marseilles by a fundamentalist terrorist group.
It needed to stop in Marseilles for refuelling, but the ultimate intention
of the terrorists (this was publicized well after the hijack) was to fully
load the plane with fuel and crash it into one of the Defense towers (a
business district immediately west of Paris, with dozens of skyscrapers and
tens of thousands of workers). Now, I can tell you, when 9/11 happened and
we saw the Towers crumbling, these events had a crystal-clear resonance into
our collective psyche !!! It really beat the s*** out of our pants !

I'm not sure these events were well-publicized outside France. But they've
been shown on and on and on at dinner-time news here, with the special
troops storming the Airbus et al, and they still strike a lot, even today.

So I've got no reason to think that what happened then could not happen
again now. I can imagine many very valid reasons why Britain openly upgraded
the protection of its main airports yesterday.

I think Chirac's attitude against Saddam is that he advocates a carefully
thought-out big-stick attitude, with a readiness to use the big stick as a
very, very last resort, whereas George Bush is perceived as advocating a
"gung-ho" big-stick attitude, with a willingness to use the big stick any
time. This is more different in presentation than it is in principle.

> Just as it did in 1939.
>
> Now today I read that North Korea was given some nuclear expertise by
> Pakistani scientists. Like Neville Chamberlain, our previous
> administration
> felt that if they just gave the North Koreans what they
> wanted, everything
> would be fine. So it certainly isn't difficult to envision
> them selling a
> bomb to anyone with the cash.

Perhaps North Korea owes Pakistan money, and they pay back their debt with a
nuke or two. Now, Musharraf won't do anything against American interests.
But imagine if the nukes in question fall into the wrong hands, like
Al-Qaeda's, which is widely known to have many dirty hands in Pakistans,
including, possibly, OBL's ?

Back to a previous comment above ... Wouldn't they seriously consider
detonating the nuke against some American interests in the region, providing
they find an appropriate delivery system ?

My point is that we may perceive North Korea as just as dangerous a foe as
Irak, or more.

> I remember reading an article by a CIA analyst 20 years ago -
> and at the
> time he predicted that with the collapse of the USSR, fragmentation of
> countries - proliferation of nuclear weapons, we will yearn
> for the days of
> the Cold War.

Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan have all abandoned their nuclear programs.
But it's far from certain that all materials have been properly documented
and accounted for. So it may be yet another possible source of nuclear
material, if not complete nukes, that could be used against Western
interests. Whether a nuke has been captured by some rogue warlord and
smuggled thru the Caucasus in Irak remains to be proved, but at least let's
count the option as open.

> I'd say he was spot on. The difference between now and 20
> years ago while we
> were in a Cold War the Russians could count us us to be semi
> rational - and
> we could count on them. Now there's people that if they have
> the means will
> kill as many as they can. For no other reason than thinking
> God wants them
> to.

That's the difference between a rational state, like the Soviet Union was,
and a rogue state, or a rogue leader not even accountable of any of his/her
deeds to his/her local government. The risk nowadays is not of a rational
state nuking us (we're no longer in the 50s), but of a rugue warlord putting
his hands on a nuke or other WMD.

> So, in regards to Iraq, I believe the Bush Administration
> regards it as
> nearing critical mass - no pun intended. Fight a small war
> now, or a huge
> war later. Just like the 1930s.

History will judge. Most likely in a relatively short term (sigh).

> Gosh, I still have much to scroll - I'll have to keep this
> digest and reply
> more tomorrow. Haven't even gotten to the Kurds - or Schroder
> - or all the
> rest.

I'm impatiently waiting for next installment !!!!

> HP3000 is doing fine.

As usual. Mine in the basement are doing fine too. Did not check them in
weeks.

> Bill Brandt
> Sacramento, CA (with no duct tape or plastic)

Christian Lheureux

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