After the burst of aren't we glad Osama is dead stuff, I read this piece by a prize winning writer who has just finished a new book on WWI. What he writes puts things in perspective I think about our involvement in the present day assorted wars in Moslem countries and suggests to me how Osama's killing only amounts to a footnote in the conflicts that continue.
Skip down to the Where Have All the Graveyards Gone title.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175387/ ... edux/#more
"Where have all the graveyards gone?"
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DuncaninFrance
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Re: "Where have all the graveyards gone?"
Interesting but in some respects inaccurate in my opinion.
"As World War I reminds us, however understandable the motives of those who enter the fight, the definition of war is “unplanned consequences.” It’s hard to fault a young Frenchman who marched off to battle in August 1914. After all, Germany had just sent millions of troops to invade France and Belgium, where they rapidly proved to be quite brutal occupiers. Wasn’t that worth resisting? Yet by the time the Germans were finally forced to surrender and withdraw four and a half years later, half of all French men aged 20 to 32 in 1914 had been killed. There were similarly horrific casualties among the other combatant nations. The war also left 21 million wounded, many of them missing hands, arms, legs, eyes, genitals.
Was it worth it? Of course not. Germany’s near-starvation during the war, its humiliating defeat, and the misbegotten Treaty of Versailles virtually ensured the rise of the Nazis, along with a second, even more destructive world war, and a still more ruthless German occupation of France."
So, were the French and their Allies supposed to raise their hands and say to the Germans, " Welcome, come on in and occupy us, treat us as surfs, take our wealth and our land................."
The main reason that Hitler and his Nazis flourished is because the cowardly politicians of the age practiced appeasement instead of having the balls to stand up and say NO!
I have visited the battlefields and cemeteries of both wars in France, Belgium and Italy. I have been to Verdun, Vimy Ridge, Tyne Cot, Ypres, Thiepval and many more places associated with both world wars and all of them mark the sacrifice of the common soldier, sailor, airman, resistant and civilian - none of them glorify the politicians and staff officers who were responsible for the carnage.
In France there are many small memorials to those deported by the Germans and who never returned. There are many more memorials to those who resisted the invader and were murdered for doing so. If they had not then it is likely that German would be the mother tongue of many more than it is today.
"As World War I reminds us, however understandable the motives of those who enter the fight, the definition of war is “unplanned consequences.” It’s hard to fault a young Frenchman who marched off to battle in August 1914. After all, Germany had just sent millions of troops to invade France and Belgium, where they rapidly proved to be quite brutal occupiers. Wasn’t that worth resisting? Yet by the time the Germans were finally forced to surrender and withdraw four and a half years later, half of all French men aged 20 to 32 in 1914 had been killed. There were similarly horrific casualties among the other combatant nations. The war also left 21 million wounded, many of them missing hands, arms, legs, eyes, genitals.
Was it worth it? Of course not. Germany’s near-starvation during the war, its humiliating defeat, and the misbegotten Treaty of Versailles virtually ensured the rise of the Nazis, along with a second, even more destructive world war, and a still more ruthless German occupation of France."
So, were the French and their Allies supposed to raise their hands and say to the Germans, " Welcome, come on in and occupy us, treat us as surfs, take our wealth and our land................."
The main reason that Hitler and his Nazis flourished is because the cowardly politicians of the age practiced appeasement instead of having the balls to stand up and say NO!
I have visited the battlefields and cemeteries of both wars in France, Belgium and Italy. I have been to Verdun, Vimy Ridge, Tyne Cot, Ypres, Thiepval and many more places associated with both world wars and all of them mark the sacrifice of the common soldier, sailor, airman, resistant and civilian - none of them glorify the politicians and staff officers who were responsible for the carnage.
In France there are many small memorials to those deported by the Germans and who never returned. There are many more memorials to those who resisted the invader and were murdered for doing so. If they had not then it is likely that German would be the mother tongue of many more than it is today.
Duncan
What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch? -- W.C. Fields
"Many of those who enjoy freedom know little of its price."
You can't fix Stupid, but you can occasionally head it off before it hurts something.
What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch? -- W.C. Fields
"Many of those who enjoy freedom know little of its price."
You can't fix Stupid, but you can occasionally head it off before it hurts something.
Re: "Where have all the graveyards gone?"
The way I read it the "Was it worth it?" was a question meant for those who started it and those who welcomed it without realizing the great cost that had to be paid in the lives of ordinary citizens of all countries involved.....soldier and civilian. Politicians and the generals that are always ready for war and delighted to see them never learn the lesson that they can't predict what will happen after they start the killing.....nor who and how many will be casualties when it is over.
Read this the other day from a book of photographs by Arthur Rothstein with commentary by William Saroyan. It was published in 1967 and entitled Look at Us....etc.
A Rothstein photo of a great field of grave markers at a military cemetery in France had this as Saroyan's text:
Read this the other day from a book of photographs by Arthur Rothstein with commentary by William Saroyan. It was published in 1967 and entitled Look at Us....etc.
A Rothstein photo of a great field of grave markers at a military cemetery in France had this as Saroyan's text:
Not a face in the crowd.
A cross for the Christian, a star for the Jew, no mark at all for the man who believed only in God--that is himself.
One is supposed to be deeply moved by military cemeteries, especially when they are in foreign countries, such as France, far from home, but the sorrowful fact is that the picture is so unavoidably one of uniformity and waste that one is actually only depressed by it.
The long rows of sticks over men who were killed by their unknown brothers, many of them also dead, seem to say, "Plenty more where they came from."
These are the known soldiers.
They might just as well be unknown, for all the difference it makes.