Anyway I do not think its a conflict. Unlike the cold war there is no need to create a space race in order to improve military technology.
Yes and no. There's lots of cooperation already to be sure (especially on the scientific part, where competition doesn't buy you anything but duplicate work). But I have a sense that in other areas there most certainly is a lot of competition -- I'm thinking of commercial satellite launches and manned spaceflight here. The first is of course obvious and as for the second, well, let's say that the number of seats for non-Americans on the shuttle missions so far has been somewhat disappointing.
Most european countries just purchase American or Russian military vehicles and weapons anyway.
Depends on the country and the vehicle. With the smaller NATO members and aircraft you are right (the US insisted some years back on a standard aircraft for all NATO members -- and guess which one they pushed through?). But a lot of larger European nations also build their own aircraft and for instance the Netherlands builds its own tanks and of course ships (come on, the Netherlands, you don't think we would buy naval vehicles from anybody else do you?).
I completely fail to see where you would ever need to know if something is at most of some type unless you don't know how to use inheritance properly. Even if you did, you can always use reflection to see if.class is equal to what you are casting it to.
Not you -- the compiler would need to know. Like with all parametric polymorphism of this kind, it is all about moving type correctness checks from runtime to compile time.
What confuses me is that they are adding variable arguement lists. Why?
As far as I can tell, they aren't -- methinks/. made a booboo.
Why do we need generics?
So that we may employ static type checking instead of dynamic. I.e. compile-time type checking instead of dynamic checking at runtime. That way the compiler can catch error in the way a(n instance of a ) class is used instead of your program having to deal with errors all over the place or even coming to a crashing halt. Not needing the dynamic type check (I do believe the idea is that the compiler will leave it out in these cases) is a bonus in the running time area (I am loathe to call that an "efficiency" concern), but it is not the primary point.
Casting doesn't involve much of a penalty, but if you want to enforce a particular type of object, why not just implement a collection wrapper to force it?
First of all, it's not that simple -- what you are proposing is not overriding a method but overloading it. That means the original method which takes an Object remains accessible and callable through instances of your new class. So you have to remember to overload that method more or less like so:
public void add(Object o) { /* We already know !(o instanceof MyInterface), because that would have been sent to the wrapper method */
throw new <pick an exception>;
}
Which is a pain. Small one, but still. Not to mention, you'd have to do this every time you want to use a Collection type safely, for every type you want to put in your collection. And you still have to deal with runtime errors afterwards.
If you make.add(Object o) into.add(MyIntereface o), you can do everything you need, with only 20 lines of code I might add.
That's true, but it makes using Collections just that little more inconvenient. Generics provides more or less all the benefits you want, without all the extra hassle.
There is absolutely no arguement for generics. I don't consider having to cast from Object being a pain, an arguement.
I ignore the European revisionist, non-apologist history books, yes.
Then you have nothing to ignore.
The Zimmerman Notes are history.
The Zimmerman Notes are history. So is the fact that the United States did not react. Your guidelines for what sets the US off are somewhat unreliable, it seems.
Then surely you must equate American "resolve" against Iraq as honorable as well.
That is incorrect; I must merely acknowledge that it happened (which I do). What value-judgements I append to that fact are a different consideration.
Is that the policy that says you don't go to war when you have several billion in investments in the target country?
No, it is -- as stated -- the one that says that you don't start wars for no reason. If money entered into it, there are all sorts of things that we would have done differently.
Is that the policy that says international institutions and agreements are to be upheld, except when it differs with national interest (See French nuclear bombing in Pacific Islands)
You might want to reconsider playing that card -- the United States would not fare well in a comparison on that count (consider such aspects as the ICC, the treaty on banning landmines, small-arms reduction treaties with respect to Africa, child-labor treaties, etc.).
That aside, you are also making things up again. While not exactly the best thing they could have done to make France popular, at the time of the nuclear test series on Mururoa in 1995/96 France was not bound by any treaties banning nuclear tests.
Vietnam had everything to do with the failures of the French. They tried to rape Vietname for everything they could get but when the communist challenge represented itself, they were out of there before you could say 'cowards'.
Again, bullshit. The French fought for control of Indochina and lost -- that's something completely different than clearing out. Not to mention that that doesn't change the basic fact that if the United States had been consistent in its Asian foreign policy and had supported Ho Chi Minh as he had requested instead of backing French claims, Vietnam could have been completely avoided.
Of course not. The EU nations rejected that nonsense. They will never bow to a Frenchman. The thought of that is ludicrous.
The EU didn't reject it at all; there was nothing to reject. We all said that Chirac had a point somewhere in the distance but that he put it in the stupidest way possible and that was the end of it. There was no suggestion of bowing to anybody, nor will there ever be -- that is not how the EU works.
I wasn't awaRe that we sold European history books.
You don't -- it's just your own that derive from healthy doses of alcohol-drenched imagination.
Bush started a war to prevent destablization of the world
He failed. And that by necessity, since it was the wrong move.
The world doesn't want to see a destablized America.
No, an insane America, that's much better.
With the French, America already had enough dubious allies to support. Why add another ?
Could have ended the cold war before it even started.
They were only allowed a presence by the Americans as sort of a pity gesture. France had been embarassed by WW2 cowardice and America threw them a bone to help them regain their lost prestige. They failed at this as well.
You're not kidding. You're an idiot. Or you're on crack. Or both. France had everything to do with Germany after WWII -- Franco-German diplomatic and economic cooperation is what modern-day Europe is built on, for Pete's sake.
And we see how effective European thinking is on American action.
Oh, we all know that -- more's the pity, because the godawful aftereffects of American action are now also apparent.
After this I am going to stop replying in this thread, since it is clear that your only interest is in smearing and slandering countries which don't kowtow to Washington and rewqriting history to lend some sort of historical credence to America's newfound attitude of pushing everybody around -- in other words, this thread is rapidly becoming a waste of my time. You ay delude yourself all you like and reinvent the history of the world to you heart's desire without me as of now.
Re:I'll care when native compilers become the norm
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Preview of Java 1.5
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You have to remember where the "faster than" comes from (and understand why it's sometimes): it's based on runtime optimisations to the program that a VM (any VM, not just Java) can do and a pur sang compiled system cannot (i.e. using the advantage of being able to rewrite code on the fly to optimise for the specific situation).
How often this occurs is anybodies guess. Whether it would be of any use in the JVM itself, I don't know. That trying to write a JVM in Java is inviting the chicken and the egg problem however, is obvious.
Re:I'll care when native compilers become the norm
on
Preview of Java 1.5
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· Score: 1
Ehrm. I have to tell you, I for one am not very happy with that paper. It is a comparison in certain aspects (by some metrics which you may or may not believe are the right ones) of several languages which are not all really geared to the same purposes. As a clear example of this, you might consider the start of the book "Learning Python" from the O'Reilly series where Python's place in the spectrum is indicated. This includes the question "how does it compare to Java" and the answer is flatly "It doesn't; Java and Python are meant for different things and complement eachother rather than compete". You can also see this in the abbreviated "problem statement" in that paper:
On the other hand, the problem should be much easier to do in a scripting language compared to Java/C/C++, so you can expect much less effort than indicated above.
That's on page 8 -- and indicates that the "ease of use" metric will always be skewed since the problem is geared towards scripting languages more than system-level languages.
All that aside, it seems to me you are on very thin ice at best by referring to this paper for leads on what is "better" or "faster". The paper is some 3.5 years old -- that is a very long time with a lot of changes in between.
and you're more than a little threatened by Python
Don't see why he would be. They aren't aimed at the same problems. Hell, they are in such a level of non-competition that there is even a Python for the JVM (JPython) with integration into Java.
Python is faster for most things
For whatever that means. When it comes to perceptual speed, it happens often enough that I cannot tell the difference anymore. Like I said, times change.
I think he either means avoiding variable argument arity in favor of increasing the number of overloads of a method name, or thinks that varargs means having something like a union-type argument where the same argument can either be of type A or of type B and wants to replace the whole mess with a common supertype C.
Of course, you don't need variable arity methods in Java (and they haven't been proposed, don't know where that came from); once you have a (raw) collection type, you have an infinite (well....) number of arguments right there.
They lacked the moral courage to do so, however. Most of the blame goes to the French because as you have stated, the French were quite aware of what the Germans were doing and allowed it to happen. They callously sacrificed the Czech people, in direct opposition to France's stated values.
Bullshit. That is not the equation, no matter how much you like it to be. You may ignore all the historical facts you like, but that doesn't make them go away.
Yes, The Zimmerman [...] those incidents.
Yeah, yeah. Whatever it takes to make the inconsistencies in your story fit, right?
And this hurts your feelings right.
No. It is a matter of fact. There can be no feelings about it. What irritates me is the way you were trying to deny those facts up until now.
Telling that you equate European imperialist colonialism as having resolve.
It has the benefit of being obviously true. That you don't happen to like the outcome (or any other value-judgement) makes no difference to the fact that it happened.
Sure, they followed the French pre-WW2 policy.
No, quite the opposite -- European post-WW2 policy. The policy that says that you don't go to war without a reason or just because you feel like it.
America is used to bailing out the French so Vietnam was not unexpected.
Vietnam had nothing to do with bailing out the French. Vietnam was a mistake on part of the United States, based on its insane belief in the domino theory (talke about religious zealotry). If the United States had been consistent in Asia in the latter 1940's and told France to clear out of Indochina (like the US pushed us out of the Dutch West-Indies), Vietnam would not have happened.
That's odd. I seem to recall a certain Parisian demanding acquiescence from the pre-EU members.
That's his stupidity. However, that is not the EU talking.
Yes, the revisionist, non-apologist history books are certainly thought provoking.
You should know; they're all printed and sold in the US.
Truman dropped nuclear bombs on the Japanese. Does that factor into your moral equation?
Yes, somewhat. One nuke to end the war, one most likely unnecessary. Difficult to say whether he was right or wrong. Too much hindsight to filter through.
If so, surely you can appreciate Bush's firmness and willingness to take decisive action. Most Americans do.
No. Whatever else you can say about it, Truman dropped those bombs to end a war. That is something completely different from Bush, who started an unnecessary war and destabilized the entire world over nothing. This comes under the heading of "there's decisiveness and there's stupidity."
Hahaha, You think? I wonder if that's why we didn't offer to rebuild Russia and China?
Probably another bad decision.
Thankfully France had no role in their rebuilding.
You're kidding, right? France had the world to do with Germany after WWII.
Kind of like how America regards France today, right?
And how most of Europe sees the US. It works both ways.
Germany certainly did renounce the disarmament clauses of the treaty.
But very carefully not before it was too late for anybody to do anything about it. And never formally either -- Germany just presented the world with a fait accompli.
Quietly? It told everyone what it was doing and informed the world as far back as 1935.
No, it didn't. Germany infomed the world that it was rebuilding the army and the Luftwaffe, within the bounds of the Treaty (no large weapons), as a means of providing jobs towards economic recovery. Which was not only an excuse but happened to be perfectly true as well -- you will note that the United States did the same thing (or at least, had the same benefit from rearmament). The rearming was kept a secret for a long time (which is also why a lot of the construction was done abroad). You will note that the planes Germany bought at first were designed for passenger and freight transport; they were converted for wartime use later.
Right, because Germany's rearmament came as a complete shock to France and Britain. I mean, it's not like they were in close proximity to them to know what they were doing and it's not like they read the German papers.
Because Germany did hide it effectively from most of the French and British authorities, because it was not in the German papers and because France and Britain had problems of their own. You might be surprised to hear this, but what Germany was doing was not foremost on everybodies (or anybodies) mind anywhere at the time -- not here, in the US or anywhere. I realize this is hard to imagine in retrospect, but people were living lives and having problems with the economy and all that just like now. It's easy to sit back now, knowing what happened, and thinking that people must have been rabid about Germany because of it but most people weren't any more rabid about Germany than most people were about Afghanistan in 2000.
In other words, France and Britain refused to take a moral stand against Germany swallowing up the Czeck people, right?
Oh give me a break, "moral stand". This was 1938, long before anybody cared about such esoteric things as moral stands. It was very simple arithmetic: most French and British didn't want another war and neither France nor Britain was ready for war militarily. War was not an option for them in September of 1938. End of story.
That moral indifference is shameful, particularly in light of the devestation WW2 brought to the world.
Everybody has 20-20 hindsight. France had to deal with the reality of the moment; you don't.
Had France taken the moral stand and repudiated Germany back then, WW2 would never have happened.
Yes, it would. Not a shadow of a doubt about it. It may have happened sooner, or a little later, but it would have happened. Nothing short of intervention by god in person could have stopped it.
The German generals were aghast at what Hitler wanted to do. They were ready to put a coup in place to take him but they were surprised that France and Britain did nothing.
Bullshit. Now you're just making things up as you go along. There wasn't any rebellion among the German military commanders until 1943, when it became obvious that Germany was going to lose.
France knew what was happening and let it proceed. They are indeed responsible for WW2, then. That much is clearly obvious.
No. And it doesn't help you to omit half of my post from your quote and pretend it wasn't there -- it's not as if I'm going to forget what I said. France wasn't ready to go to war, there was nothing it could have done. Not outside the fantasy world of those that want everything to be France's fault, at least.
Nonsense. In 1938, Germany could not have defeated France and Britain (well, not Britain). France's derilection in upgrading its armed forces in light of the open militarization of Germany is very regrettable.
So what if Germany could not have defeated them together? Britain wasn't going
Oh, now you're blaming the Netherlands (a declaredly neutral country) for World War II? Nice... Anybody else you want to include? Anybody else who should have gone to war with Germany? Liechtenstein perhaps? Monaco? Nepal?
If Canada or Mexico had threatened the U.S. or world peace in '38, The U.S. would have acted.
Oh really? Mexico did threaten the US, you see. They were (as the OSS knew perfectly well) talking to Hitler about an alliance against the US. Must have missed the invasion by American troops into Mexico somewhere along the line. As for world peace, you would have done what you did with Germany -- sat on your ass until it concerned you directly. The US didn't care about the world back then and that was official policy.
Britain and France lacked the resolve. A perpetual problem in Europe's history.
Which explains why they colonized most of the world, brought about what later became the United States and fought not one but two wars against Germany instead of simply surrendering on day one. And of course why several nations and the vast majority of the European population stood up and said "no" when the United States wanted to invade Iraq, instead of backing down before the largest military power in the world.
To defend yourself by helping others who have common enemies.
It's not insance. Just don't pretend you were being good Samaritans by participating in WWII.
Right, I'm sure that the communists would have agreed not to try and spread communism if the U.S. had sent them a gift basket, because as we all know, spreading their ideology has never been a concern for the Russian communists.
It certainly wasn't to the extent that the United States insisted it was in the 1950's and 60's. That little bit of overreacting is what got you stuck in that mess in Vietnam (not to mention several other places).
Poland gets or will get a lot of money from the EU. Didn't prevent them from buying Boeing jets.
Nor should it -- the EU isn't asking for anything in return. Old Georgie was.
Most Eastern European countries will be following Poland precisely because France thought they could be bought.
Until they figure out that, as a rule, the interests of the large nations are not the same as the interests of the smaller nations. Then that will stop, insofar as it has even started. Don't make the mistake of imagining that you have a whole slew of groupies in Europe now -- Europe doesn't work that way, especially since young people tend to think for themselves more and more.
If the U.S. wanted to rule the world, it would have done so right after WW2. No other nation had the bomb. Our infrastructure was undamaged. Our war machine was robust.
And your leaders (unlike the ones you have today) were responsible adults. People with mental ages written with more than one digit, with hopes and ideals, morals and character. It happens from time to time that you see news reels from back then with Roosevelt and Truman. If you compare them to Bush, the decline is shocking.
Instead, we implemented the Marshall Plan.
With one eye firmly on solidifying an alliance against the Soviets.
Instead, we rebuilt Germany and Japan into the modern, thriving democracies they are today.
The modern, thriving democracies they were in 1950, 1955. They did the rest themselves.
And we continued to fight against the Communist aggression around the worl.
As a general rule, whilst instilling the people you were defending from communism with deep feelings of "with friends like that, who needs enemies".
Yeah, I'll keep that history.
I'm sure you will. You might, however, also try peering past the end of your nose some time and seeing a little more than feel-good Americana.
More revisionist European history on your part, I see.
There's nothing revisionist about it -- unless of course you want to force a conclusion that casts France in a bad light. Which you do.
Germany annouced in '35 that it was dropping the Versailles Treaty.
No, it didn't. Germany never formally broke the Versailles Treaty; it paid off its reparations and very quietly re-armed. By the time that the breach became overt it was done and neither France nor Britain were in a position to do anything about it.
What Germany did do was seek to reverse the ceding of land as agreed to in the Treaty. Not, however, by breaking the Treaty and claiming it back but by annexation. The rearmament is indeed a real breach of the Treaty -- the rest is not.
The actual declaration of war in '39 may have been the official start of WW2, but everyone knows that the appeasement of Germany started many years before that and was allowed by Britain and France.
Allowed? It was done by Britain and France. However, that still doesn't give you the right to make historical events up (even if maligning France is currently popular in the United States) -- Czechoslovakia was a state that was brought about by the Versailles Treaty, but it was not guaranteed by the allies (like Belgium was). The only defense pact that was made in those days was in relation to Poland and that was indeed the direct cause for war.
France did not wake up in '38 and realize that Germany was a threat. After they sacrificied the Czechs, they thought there would "Peace in Our Time".
No, they didn't. Chamberlain was the "peace in our time" guy, Lebrun knew better.
Nonsense. France's army and airforce were of a comparable size to Germany's in 1939. It's navy was vastly superior. France was doomed not because of its military size, but rather its military strategy. It was stuck in WW1 strategy whereas the Germans exploited the changes in equipment and technology.
You're thinking along the lines of WWI military numerology again ("they had more men so they would have won"). By that logic, the United States should have lost the recent war in Iraq -- they were outnumbered. France's army was of comparable size and it's airforce somewhat similar, but German forces were vastly superior in training and technology. The German Luftwaffe was the most advanced in the world (every single plane was brand new, designed by Messerschmidt or Dornier) and the German soldier was a modern soldier with modern weaponry and battle uniform to match. By comparison, the French air force was between 10 and 20 years older, the soldier's weapon was harder to load and far less accurate and the cavalry still used armor (armor, for crying out loud). For that matter, France still had a real, horseback cavalry as aserious fighting force.
As for calling France's navy superior, that is just a bad joke. It was larger, I'll grant you that. But it was also vastly outdated by German shipbuilding, especially in the submarine department (not to mention that the Germans developed submarine tactics that blasted everybody else out of the water -- the wolf pack, for instance). Even Britain and the United States suffered in that respect. But more to the point, so what? Germany and France share borders, you know. You can't defend France against Germany with ships.
As for the difference in strategies an technology, you are obviously right (although, fair is fair, Germany had that advantage over just about everybody -- they taught the world how to fight that year). But you can't have it both ways. You cannot and claim that France was lagging behind Germany in these respects and claim that they could have defeated Germany in 1938 when their situation was even worse.
Britain and France together with its allies were more than enough to stop Germany.
They very obviously weren't. It took until the end of 1942 for that to be the case.
Again, check the non-European, non-revisionist, non-apologist history books.
Again, I have no interest in reading the Great Republican Hymnal of Why We are God's Children.
That is clearly obvious and they can't be blamed, not after the devestation of WW1 and the lack of courage the British and French displayed which allowed WW2 to start.
Aside from the interesting fact that you are figuring British and French responses into the formation of American desires when the American public to a great extent didn't know about any of that, I find it somewhat interesting that you excuse America's lack of interest in war due to the devastation of World War I, but then blame Britain and France for their lack of interest in another war while those two countries were far, far more devastated by World War I than the United States ever was. Especially France (and then we haven't even started talking about Russia).
Americans were not looking forward to have their sons die to protect people who wouldn't lift a finger to confront Hitler early on.
Americans weren't interested in war period and knew only in the vaguest of terms who Hitler even was. Beyond that, if you can imagine the statement above, you might be able to imagine how unwilling English, French, Belgians, etc. were to have their sons die in another war. Especially since they were so ill-equipped to fight it. After all that, the Americans ended up fighting Hitler, not to defend us -- but to defend themselves through offense rather than defense. After all, the United States learned in January of 1942 what Churchill already knew two years earlier: that Hitler would set his sights on the US eventually as well.
If the Americans displayed a similar lack of resolve with respect to the Soviet Union, the EU that is in place today would be nothing but a dream.
Although I suspect that if the US hadn't invaded the Soviet Union in 1919, relations between the two might not have been so strained for so long.....
This is why nations like Poland and other smaller Eastern European countries refuse to allow Chirac to use them against the United States.
Of course, the fact that Uncle George spread around the semolians didn't have anything to do with it.
After WW2 started, American politicians passed the Lend-Lease act which provided arms and equipments and loans worth approx $30 billion ($300 billion in todays dollars) to Britain. Was this in America's interests?
Yes. Not a shadow of a doubt.
But again, if Europe had acted early on, WW2 would never have happened.
Bullcrap.
This is Europe's history. Come to terms with it.
Correction: this is Europe's history according to the school of "Why the United States was Divinely Destined to Rule The World and Why All Other Nations Should Shut Up and Let Us". It is a history which you can keep. Not to mention, shove.
Actually, I was talking about Europe's sacrifice of Austria and particularly Czechoslovakia to Germany prior to WW2.
Austria wasn't a sacrifice; the vast majority of Austrians wanted the Anschluss. As for Czechoslovakia, that's what I was talking about as well -- the Munich Pact.
France and Britain had a pact to protect Czechoslovakis but allowed Germany to snap it up because they believed that appeasing Hitler would prevent further agression.
No, they didn't. The Munich Pact was the agreement whereby France, Britain and Czechoslovakia turned over Sudetenland to Germany in return for Germany agreeing not to annex any more Czech territory. France (or at least its president and prime minister) already knew at the time that it was just a delay. They also knew they weren't in any shape to go to war with Germany in 1938, so they started preparing for war. The defense pact between Britain and France was with Poland, not Czechoslovakia, and came in March of 1939 when Hitler annexed the rest of Czechoslovakia. And they stood by that agreement -- Hitler's invasion of Poland started World War II.
It only emboldened Hitler, who actually expected France to go to war over the Sudetenland.
No, he didn't. Hitler didn't know what Britain and France were willing to do (although he had a reasonable idea of what they were able to do). He started the play for Sudetenland to test the waters and the limits; note that he didn't seize Sudetenland until after the Munich Pact.
That history of Europe, particularly France, putting its own self interests ahead of its obligations to its allies has been going on for hundreds of years. It is nothing new.
That history of Europe doesn't exist. There is no obligation to any allies that France broke (much the opposite and much to France's detriment). And you'd be hard-pressed to find an example of it before 1938 either.
That aside, the idea that France or Britian should have gone to war before 1939 would have been deemed ludicrous back then and is simply insane with hindsight. France was in no shape whatsoever to take on Germany in 1938. In 1939/40, Germany crushed France in a matter of weeks; had war come about 18 months earlier, France would have been pulverized.
France's army was much larger than Germany's prior to 1939. France lacked the will and courage to fight.
That's the stupid type of wartime accounting that got millions of soldiers killed needlessly in WWI. The kind of thinking that says "they have twenty-five siege mortars and seventy machine guns, but we have five hundred rifles so we outgun them" and then sends half a regiment of men to be blown to bits on that basis. So what if France had more men? Germany was better armed, its men better trained and equipped, the German army had more and better tanks, the Kriegsmarine had U-boats that swept the seas and the Luftwaffe was damned near invincible in 1938 -- and it was only four years from having fighter jets. There is no way in which France could have realistically defeated Germany in 1938 or even brought it to a standstill. If the German surface navy had been worth anything, not even Britain would have survived the 1940 onslaught. Hell, the United States would be part of the German Reich right now. And you think France should have gone up against that when they were even weaker than they were in 1939?
The Unites States interests prior to WW2 and ever since has always been to promote democractic, capitalist countries.
The United States' interests prior to WWII were very simply to avoid at all costs getting involved with overseas affairs (as dictated by the Monroe Doctrine). "Give us your poor and hungry -- but have them leave their past at the door" was the motto back then. That's why the US wasn't a part of the League of Nations, why Wilson carefully didn't tell the public that the attack on Lusitania was neither unprovoked nor unjustified (the US might yet have refused to go to war) and why Roosevelt didn't take a chance either and presented Congress with a fait accompli in 1941.
As for after, I'll grant you the US showed great interest in bottling up the Soviets (I'll not call them communists to avoid the philosophical battle of whether or not they really were). To accomplish that, between 1945 and 1991 the United States directly supported almost every undemocratic, ruthless, dictatorial government in the world (we're talking everything here from Mobutu in Africa to Saddam Hussein and the Shah of Persia), replaced quite a few democratically elected governments with dictatorships (Persia, Argentina, Chile and as I recall also Indonesia) and on occassion literally overran countries, or allowed them to be overrun with American aid (creation of former South Vietnam, Cambodia, East Timor). So you might want to tone down the flag-waving a bit; there's a rather definite flipside to America's time as the hero of the free world.
It was not in the United States interest to allow either fascist or communist governments to swallow up its Allies.
At the time you are talking about, America neither had nor wanted allies. That came later.
The American people were very indifferent to the events in Europe because of the devestation of WW1 and a feeling that Europe was a place that could never right is ship.
They were indifferent because separation from Europe and European affairs was so much a part of American society and its foundations that it had become ingrained. Experiences from WWI just added to that; the feeling did not start there.
Of course Europe likes to portray these actions as the United States profiteering off its allies.
No, we don't. The other side of that coin is that we don't want to portray it as anything more than it was either. Those people in the United States with enough sense to look around and see what was happening in Europe knew that if Germany won WWII, it would endanger the US as well as Europe (Germany had by far the strongest military in the world in 1940). We recognize that America sent military aid before joining the war itself -- we also recognize that it had a healthy self-interest in doing so.
This is a typical liberal, revisionist European reaction that tries to paint Americans negatively.
I could say something similar about the way the United States has been acting towards France recently.
France was largely responsible for WW2,
Bull. Germany was largely responsible for WWII; what blame the allies bear for dictating stupid and fomenting terms after WWI, they share in equal measure together.
from its vindictive treatment of the Germans after WW1
Which was supported and encouraged by all the allied nations.... Especially with respect to Belgium....
to the callous indifference it showed to its so-called allies.
What indifference? France saw war coming before any other nation. It was France (and the Soviet Union) that knew Munich wouldn't work and that it was only a delaying tactic. It was the UK that was lagging behind everybody else.
French military blunders only highlighted French buffonery and was not unexpected at that point.
Balloney. Utter nonsense. France did exactly what one might have expected of a larger nation in those days and prepared for the kind of war that people knew. They got the Maginot line ready and prepared for siege and trenches, just like in WWI. You cannot blame France for not being able to resist the new kind of warfare that Germany invented (especially a so effective type of warfare that it is still used today).
If Europe had respected its obligations to its allies (a perpetual failing of Europe)
Bullshit. The Crusades, WWI, the naval wars between England and France, England and the Netherlands, about your very existence as a country, these are all wars that started because European countries respected their obligations to allies and overseas colonies. As for Iraq (which is undoubtedly what you are blithering about above), the European nations in NATO have a mutual defense pact with the US -- it doesn't obligate us to support the US in a totally unnecessary war that the US is (was) itself starting.
By the way, you do realize that Germany is in Europe, right? This wasn't a matter of a united Europe standing up against an outside foe -- there was no such thing as a united Europe or even the idea of it.
and confronted a militaristic Germany early on, WW2 would never have happened.
Confronted it with what? With militaries that had been downsized after several years of the Great Disarmament Drive (look it up)? With populations unwilling to fight another bloody war after World War I and desiring a diplomatic settlement at all cost? Not to mention that in the end, they did confront Germany. That's why there was war. As there would have been no matter what -- the foundations for WWII were laid on November 11th 1918 at 11:11 and not a moment later.
Crack open a non-European history book one of these days.
So I can get the US-government mandated dose of "we are great and they are wimps"-Americana nonsense? No thanks.
Yeah, I'm sure it was in the U.S. interests to allow the rest of the world to get swallowed up by the Nazis and the Communists.
I think that, if you had any idea of what you were talking about rather than just talking out of your backside, you would realize that at the time the United States had no foreign interests whatsoever except in a very few members of government.
The only thing the U.S. did wrong in WW2 was put faith in countries like France.
What, if anything, are you talking about? The United States didn't put any faith in anything in anybody and didn't care about the outcome either. As for France, France saw war in Europe coming before anybody else did. Especially the English. France just chose the wrong strategy, banking on a repeat of WWI and its tactics rather than a new little gimmick the Germans invented for the occassion (the Blitzkrieg).
WW2 should never have gotten started and were it not for the weakness of Chamberlain and all of France, it wouldn't be in our history books.
Did you by any chance find your history-text in a crackerjack box? Many things, including WWII, should never have gotten started. However, the terms of the Treaty of Versailles made it as inevitable as rain falling in Seattle. I'll grant you that Chamberlain made choices that were stupid in retrospect, but certainly understandable in their times. As for your comments on France, they are almost as insulting as your total lack of knowledge of the subject. I suggest you turn to a more sophisticated level of comic book for your information on European history in the future.
And what, do tell, do you think "Europe" (whatever that would have meant back then) could have done to prevent World War II? Aside from being a lot smarter after WWI, that is?
POLAND! Get real, Poland! They provided 200 soldiers; that's what you consider "big guns"? Hell, the Netherlands could have fielded more than that if the US hadn't made it so painfully obvious they were bullshitting everybody.
Slight correction: they were supported by those governments (often in return for a very tidy sum of money) over the objections of most of the populations.
In other words, European nations supported the United States over Iraq in pretty much the same sense that Bush was elected president by "America" (all five people of it).
As for the Netherlands, the U.S. claimed our support rather incorrectly.
So why is it that fundamentalist Christians so often end up toting guns, backing presidents who want to wage war on other countries, blowing up abortion centers, doing everything they can to make life hell for gays and on occassion burning crosses (preferably with a black man nailed to it)?
No, wait, I know -- it's because fundamentalist muslims are good at what they do while fundamentalist Christians are on the whole abject failures.
During WWII, the french gladly turned over jews to be gassed.
Whereas other French hid Jews, gypsies and other persecuted peoples and kept them alive -- or died trying. Just like in other countries.
For comparison, under the motto of "let he who is without sin...", you might want to consider that between 1934 an 1941 the United States made regular sport of taking boatloads full of Jewish refugees from Europe (even directly from Germany) and sending them back -- to their deaths, regularly enough.
So today's lesson is: get your nose out of the Great Republican Hymnal of Anti-Frenchism, look around and smell the roses. There's more to all of it than the black-and-white picture your president prefers (since that's all he can handle). Here's a hint for you: that book was written by men who have problems with their heads, namely having them stuck up their asses.
You don't think anything has change in a generation do you?
A generation? You're kidding, right? The young people here (up to 15, 20, thereabouts) are regularly the grandchildren of the people born DIRECTLY AFTER WWII.
But, you know what? They still commited a crime. Regardless of whether you agree with a law or not, you don't break it, you change it.
Aside from getting into such philosophical questions as whether or not the above statement implies that people who hid Jews from the Nazi's were wrong (or the people running the Underground Railway), the United States has worked itself into a situation where changing such laws is damn near impossible in any other way than for large sections of the population to break it and break it hard. Sad fact is, your government doesn't seem to understand anything else anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes and no. There's lots of cooperation already to be sure (especially on the scientific part, where competition doesn't buy you anything but duplicate work). But I have a sense that in other areas there most certainly is a lot of competition -- I'm thinking of commercial satellite launches and manned spaceflight here. The first is of course obvious and as for the second, well, let's say that the number of seats for non-Americans on the shuttle missions so far has been somewhat disappointing.
Most european countries just purchase American or Russian military vehicles and weapons anyway.Depends on the country and the vehicle. With the smaller NATO members and aircraft you are right (the US insisted some years back on a standard aircraft for all NATO members -- and guess which one they pushed through?). But a lot of larger European nations also build their own aircraft and for instance the Netherlands builds its own tanks and of course ships (come on, the Netherlands, you don't think we would buy naval vehicles from anybody else do you?).
Not you -- the compiler would need to know. Like with all parametric polymorphism of this kind, it is all about moving type correctness checks from runtime to compile time.
What confuses me is that they are adding variable arguement lists. Why?As far as I can tell, they aren't -- methinks /. made a booboo.
Why do we need generics?So that we may employ static type checking instead of dynamic. I.e. compile-time type checking instead of dynamic checking at runtime. That way the compiler can catch error in the way a(n instance of a ) class is used instead of your program having to deal with errors all over the place or even coming to a crashing halt. Not needing the dynamic type check (I do believe the idea is that the compiler will leave it out in these cases) is a bonus in the running time area (I am loathe to call that an "efficiency" concern), but it is not the primary point.
Casting doesn't involve much of a penalty, but if you want to enforce a particular type of object, why not just implement a collection wrapper to force it?First of all, it's not that simple -- what you are proposing is not overriding a method but overloading it. That means the original method which takes an Object remains accessible and callable through instances of your new class. So you have to remember to overload that method more or less like so:
public void add(Object o) {because that would have been sent to the wrapper method */
throw new <pick an exception>;
}
Which is a pain. Small one, but still. Not to mention, you'd have to do this every time you want to use a Collection type safely, for every type you want to put in your collection. And you still have to deal with runtime errors afterwards.
If you makeThat's true, but it makes using Collections just that little more inconvenient. Generics provides more or less all the benefits you want, without all the extra hassle.
There is absolutely no arguement for generics. I don't consider having to cast from Object being a pain, an arguement.How do you feel about static type safety?
Then you have nothing to ignore.
The Zimmerman Notes are history.The Zimmerman Notes are history. So is the fact that the United States did not react. Your guidelines for what sets the US off are somewhat unreliable, it seems.
Then surely you must equate American "resolve" against Iraq as honorable as well.That is incorrect; I must merely acknowledge that it happened (which I do). What value-judgements I append to that fact are a different consideration.
Is that the policy that says you don't go to war when you have several billion in investments in the target country?No, it is -- as stated -- the one that says that you don't start wars for no reason. If money entered into it, there are all sorts of things that we would have done differently.
Is that the policy that says international institutions and agreements are to be upheld, except when it differs with national interest (See French nuclear bombing in Pacific Islands)You might want to reconsider playing that card -- the United States would not fare well in a comparison on that count (consider such aspects as the ICC, the treaty on banning landmines, small-arms reduction treaties with respect to Africa, child-labor treaties, etc.).
That aside, you are also making things up again. While not exactly the best thing they could have done to make France popular, at the time of the nuclear test series on Mururoa in 1995/96 France was not bound by any treaties banning nuclear tests.
Vietnam had everything to do with the failures of the French. They tried to rape Vietname for everything they could get but when the communist challenge represented itself, they were out of there before you could say 'cowards'.Again, bullshit. The French fought for control of Indochina and lost -- that's something completely different than clearing out. Not to mention that that doesn't change the basic fact that if the United States had been consistent in its Asian foreign policy and had supported Ho Chi Minh as he had requested instead of backing French claims, Vietnam could have been completely avoided.
Of course not. The EU nations rejected that nonsense. They will never bow to a Frenchman. The thought of that is ludicrous.The EU didn't reject it at all; there was nothing to reject. We all said that Chirac had a point somewhere in the distance but that he put it in the stupidest way possible and that was the end of it. There was no suggestion of bowing to anybody, nor will there ever be -- that is not how the EU works.
I wasn't awaRe that we sold European history books.You don't -- it's just your own that derive from healthy doses of alcohol-drenched imagination.
Bush started a war to prevent destablization of the worldHe failed. And that by necessity, since it was the wrong move.
The world doesn't want to see a destablized America.No, an insane America, that's much better.
With the French, America already had enough dubious allies to support. Why add another ?Could have ended the cold war before it even started.
They were only allowed a presence by the Americans as sort of a pity gesture. France had been embarassed by WW2 cowardice and America threw them a bone to help them regain their lost prestige. They failed at this as well.You're not kidding. You're an idiot. Or you're on crack. Or both. France had everything to do with Germany after WWII -- Franco-German diplomatic and economic cooperation is what modern-day Europe is built on, for Pete's sake.
And we see how effective European thinking is on American action.Oh, we all know that -- more's the pity, because the godawful aftereffects of American action are now also apparent.
After this I am going to stop replying in this thread, since it is clear that your only interest is in smearing and slandering countries which don't kowtow to Washington and rewqriting history to lend some sort of historical credence to America's newfound attitude of pushing everybody around -- in other words, this thread is rapidly becoming a waste of my time. You ay delude yourself all you like and reinvent the history of the world to you heart's desire without me as of now.
You have to remember where the "faster than" comes from (and understand why it's sometimes): it's based on runtime optimisations to the program that a VM (any VM, not just Java) can do and a pur sang compiled system cannot (i.e. using the advantage of being able to rewrite code on the fly to optimise for the specific situation).
How often this occurs is anybodies guess. Whether it would be of any use in the JVM itself, I don't know. That trying to write a JVM in Java is inviting the chicken and the egg problem however, is obvious.
Ehrm. I have to tell you, I for one am not very happy with that paper. It is a comparison in certain aspects (by some metrics which you may or may not believe are the right ones) of several languages which are not all really geared to the same purposes. As a clear example of this, you might consider the start of the book "Learning Python" from the O'Reilly series where Python's place in the spectrum is indicated. This includes the question "how does it compare to Java" and the answer is flatly "It doesn't; Java and Python are meant for different things and complement eachother rather than compete". You can also see this in the abbreviated "problem statement" in that paper:
That's on page 8 -- and indicates that the "ease of use" metric will always be skewed since the problem is geared towards scripting languages more than system-level languages.
All that aside, it seems to me you are on very thin ice at best by referring to this paper for leads on what is "better" or "faster". The paper is some 3.5 years old -- that is a very long time with a lot of changes in between.
and you're more than a little threatened by PythonDon't see why he would be. They aren't aimed at the same problems. Hell, they are in such a level of non-competition that there is even a Python for the JVM (JPython) with integration into Java.
Python is faster for most thingsFor whatever that means. When it comes to perceptual speed, it happens often enough that I cannot tell the difference anymore. Like I said, times change.
and is much easier to maintainNow that I will outrightly contest.
I think he either means avoiding variable argument arity in favor of increasing the number of overloads of a method name, or thinks that varargs means having something like a union-type argument where the same argument can either be of type A or of type B and wants to replace the whole mess with a common supertype C.
Of course, you don't need variable arity methods in Java (and they haven't been proposed, don't know where that came from); once you have a (raw) collection type, you have an infinite (well....) number of arguments right there.
Bullshit. That is not the equation, no matter how much you like it to be. You may ignore all the historical facts you like, but that doesn't make them go away.
Yes, The Zimmerman [...] those incidents.Yeah, yeah. Whatever it takes to make the inconsistencies in your story fit, right?
And this hurts your feelings right.No. It is a matter of fact. There can be no feelings about it. What irritates me is the way you were trying to deny those facts up until now.
Telling that you equate European imperialist colonialism as having resolve.It has the benefit of being obviously true. That you don't happen to like the outcome (or any other value-judgement) makes no difference to the fact that it happened.
Sure, they followed the French pre-WW2 policy.No, quite the opposite -- European post-WW2 policy. The policy that says that you don't go to war without a reason or just because you feel like it.
America is used to bailing out the French so Vietnam was not unexpected.Vietnam had nothing to do with bailing out the French. Vietnam was a mistake on part of the United States, based on its insane belief in the domino theory (talke about religious zealotry). If the United States had been consistent in Asia in the latter 1940's and told France to clear out of Indochina (like the US pushed us out of the Dutch West-Indies), Vietnam would not have happened.
That's odd. I seem to recall a certain Parisian demanding acquiescence from the pre-EU members.That's his stupidity. However, that is not the EU talking.
Yes, the revisionist, non-apologist history books are certainly thought provoking.You should know; they're all printed and sold in the US.
Truman dropped nuclear bombs on the Japanese. Does that factor into your moral equation?Yes, somewhat. One nuke to end the war, one most likely unnecessary. Difficult to say whether he was right or wrong. Too much hindsight to filter through.
If so, surely you can appreciate Bush's firmness and willingness to take decisive action. Most Americans do.No. Whatever else you can say about it, Truman dropped those bombs to end a war. That is something completely different from Bush, who started an unnecessary war and destabilized the entire world over nothing. This comes under the heading of "there's decisiveness and there's stupidity."
Hahaha, You think? I wonder if that's why we didn't offer to rebuild Russia and China?Probably another bad decision.
Thankfully France had no role in their rebuilding.You're kidding, right? France had the world to do with Germany after WWII.
Kind of like how America regards France today, right?And how most of Europe sees the US. It works both ways.
But very carefully not before it was too late for anybody to do anything about it. And never formally either -- Germany just presented the world with a fait accompli.
Quietly? It told everyone what it was doing and informed the world as far back as 1935.
No, it didn't. Germany infomed the world that it was rebuilding the army and the Luftwaffe, within the bounds of the Treaty (no large weapons), as a means of providing jobs towards economic recovery. Which was not only an excuse but happened to be perfectly true as well -- you will note that the United States did the same thing (or at least, had the same benefit from rearmament). The rearming was kept a secret for a long time (which is also why a lot of the construction was done abroad). You will note that the planes Germany bought at first were designed for passenger and freight transport; they were converted for wartime use later.
Right, because Germany's rearmament came as a complete shock to France and Britain. I mean, it's not like they were in close proximity to them to know what they were doing and it's not like they read the German papers.
Because Germany did hide it effectively from most of the French and British authorities, because it was not in the German papers and because France and Britain had problems of their own. You might be surprised to hear this, but what Germany was doing was not foremost on everybodies (or anybodies) mind anywhere at the time -- not here, in the US or anywhere. I realize this is hard to imagine in retrospect, but people were living lives and having problems with the economy and all that just like now. It's easy to sit back now, knowing what happened, and thinking that people must have been rabid about Germany because of it but most people weren't any more rabid about Germany than most people were about Afghanistan in 2000.
In other words, France and Britain refused to take a moral stand against Germany swallowing up the Czeck people, right?
Oh give me a break, "moral stand". This was 1938, long before anybody cared about such esoteric things as moral stands. It was very simple arithmetic: most French and British didn't want another war and neither France nor Britain was ready for war militarily. War was not an option for them in September of 1938. End of story.
That moral indifference is shameful, particularly in light of the devestation WW2 brought to the world.
Everybody has 20-20 hindsight. France had to deal with the reality of the moment; you don't.
Had France taken the moral stand and repudiated Germany back then, WW2 would never have happened.
Yes, it would. Not a shadow of a doubt about it. It may have happened sooner, or a little later, but it would have happened. Nothing short of intervention by god in person could have stopped it.
The German generals were aghast at what Hitler wanted to do. They were ready to put a coup in place to take him but they were surprised that France and Britain did nothing.
Bullshit. Now you're just making things up as you go along. There wasn't any rebellion among the German military commanders until 1943, when it became obvious that Germany was going to lose.
France knew what was happening and let it proceed. They are indeed responsible for WW2, then. That much is clearly obvious.
No. And it doesn't help you to omit half of my post from your quote and pretend it wasn't there -- it's not as if I'm going to forget what I said. France wasn't ready to go to war, there was nothing it could have done. Not outside the fantasy world of those that want everything to be France's fault, at least.
Nonsense. In 1938, Germany could not have defeated France and Britain (well, not Britain). France's derilection in upgrading its armed forces in light of the open militarization of Germany is very regrettable.
So what if Germany could not have defeated them together? Britain wasn't going
Oh, now you're blaming the Netherlands (a declaredly neutral country) for World War II? Nice... Anybody else you want to include? Anybody else who should have gone to war with Germany? Liechtenstein perhaps? Monaco? Nepal?
If Canada or Mexico had threatened the U.S. or world peace in '38, The U.S. would have acted.Oh really? Mexico did threaten the US, you see. They were (as the OSS knew perfectly well) talking to Hitler about an alliance against the US. Must have missed the invasion by American troops into Mexico somewhere along the line. As for world peace, you would have done what you did with Germany -- sat on your ass until it concerned you directly. The US didn't care about the world back then and that was official policy.
Britain and France lacked the resolve. A perpetual problem in Europe's history.Which explains why they colonized most of the world, brought about what later became the United States and fought not one but two wars against Germany instead of simply surrendering on day one. And of course why several nations and the vast majority of the European population stood up and said "no" when the United States wanted to invade Iraq, instead of backing down before the largest military power in the world.
To defend yourself by helping others who have common enemies.It's not insance. Just don't pretend you were being good Samaritans by participating in WWII.
Right, I'm sure that the communists would have agreed not to try and spread communism if the U.S. had sent them a gift basket, because as we all know, spreading their ideology has never been a concern for the Russian communists.It certainly wasn't to the extent that the United States insisted it was in the 1950's and 60's. That little bit of overreacting is what got you stuck in that mess in Vietnam (not to mention several other places).
Poland gets or will get a lot of money from the EU. Didn't prevent them from buying Boeing jets.Nor should it -- the EU isn't asking for anything in return. Old Georgie was.
Most Eastern European countries will be following Poland precisely because France thought they could be bought.Until they figure out that, as a rule, the interests of the large nations are not the same as the interests of the smaller nations. Then that will stop, insofar as it has even started. Don't make the mistake of imagining that you have a whole slew of groupies in Europe now -- Europe doesn't work that way, especially since young people tend to think for themselves more and more.
If the U.S. wanted to rule the world, it would have done so right after WW2. No other nation had the bomb. Our infrastructure was undamaged. Our war machine was robust.And your leaders (unlike the ones you have today) were responsible adults. People with mental ages written with more than one digit, with hopes and ideals, morals and character. It happens from time to time that you see news reels from back then with Roosevelt and Truman. If you compare them to Bush, the decline is shocking.
Instead, we implemented the Marshall Plan.With one eye firmly on solidifying an alliance against the Soviets.
Instead, we rebuilt Germany and Japan into the modern, thriving democracies they are today.The modern, thriving democracies they were in 1950, 1955. They did the rest themselves.
And we continued to fight against the Communist aggression around the worl.As a general rule, whilst instilling the people you were defending from communism with deep feelings of "with friends like that, who needs enemies".
Yeah, I'll keep that history.I'm sure you will. You might, however, also try peering past the end of your nose some time and seeing a little more than feel-good Americana.
There's nothing revisionist about it -- unless of course you want to force a conclusion that casts France in a bad light. Which you do.
Germany annouced in '35 that it was dropping the Versailles Treaty.No, it didn't. Germany never formally broke the Versailles Treaty; it paid off its reparations and very quietly re-armed. By the time that the breach became overt it was done and neither France nor Britain were in a position to do anything about it.
What Germany did do was seek to reverse the ceding of land as agreed to in the Treaty. Not, however, by breaking the Treaty and claiming it back but by annexation. The rearmament is indeed a real breach of the Treaty -- the rest is not.
The actual declaration of war in '39 may have been the official start of WW2, but everyone knows that the appeasement of Germany started many years before that and was allowed by Britain and France.Allowed? It was done by Britain and France. However, that still doesn't give you the right to make historical events up (even if maligning France is currently popular in the United States) -- Czechoslovakia was a state that was brought about by the Versailles Treaty, but it was not guaranteed by the allies (like Belgium was). The only defense pact that was made in those days was in relation to Poland and that was indeed the direct cause for war.
France did not wake up in '38 and realize that Germany was a threat. After they sacrificied the Czechs, they thought there would "Peace in Our Time".No, they didn't. Chamberlain was the "peace in our time" guy, Lebrun knew better.
Nonsense. France's army and airforce were of a comparable size to Germany's in 1939. It's navy was vastly superior. France was doomed not because of its military size, but rather its military strategy. It was stuck in WW1 strategy whereas the Germans exploited the changes in equipment and technology.You're thinking along the lines of WWI military numerology again ("they had more men so they would have won"). By that logic, the United States should have lost the recent war in Iraq -- they were outnumbered. France's army was of comparable size and it's airforce somewhat similar, but German forces were vastly superior in training and technology. The German Luftwaffe was the most advanced in the world (every single plane was brand new, designed by Messerschmidt or Dornier) and the German soldier was a modern soldier with modern weaponry and battle uniform to match. By comparison, the French air force was between 10 and 20 years older, the soldier's weapon was harder to load and far less accurate and the cavalry still used armor (armor, for crying out loud). For that matter, France still had a real, horseback cavalry as aserious fighting force.
As for calling France's navy superior, that is just a bad joke. It was larger, I'll grant you that. But it was also vastly outdated by German shipbuilding, especially in the submarine department (not to mention that the Germans developed submarine tactics that blasted everybody else out of the water -- the wolf pack, for instance). Even Britain and the United States suffered in that respect. But more to the point, so what? Germany and France share borders, you know. You can't defend France against Germany with ships.
As for the difference in strategies an technology, you are obviously right (although, fair is fair, Germany had that advantage over just about everybody -- they taught the world how to fight that year). But you can't have it both ways. You cannot and claim that France was lagging behind Germany in these respects and claim that they could have defeated Germany in 1938 when their situation was even worse.
Britain and France together with its allies were more than enough to stop Germany.They very obviously weren't. It took until the end of 1942 for that to be the case.
Again, check the non-European, non-revisionist, non-apologist history books.Again, I have no interest in reading the Great Republican Hymnal of Why We are God's Children.
Aside from the interesting fact that you are figuring British and French responses into the formation of American desires when the American public to a great extent didn't know about any of that, I find it somewhat interesting that you excuse America's lack of interest in war due to the devastation of World War I, but then blame Britain and France for their lack of interest in another war while those two countries were far, far more devastated by World War I than the United States ever was. Especially France (and then we haven't even started talking about Russia).
Americans were not looking forward to have their sons die to protect people who wouldn't lift a finger to confront Hitler early on.Americans weren't interested in war period and knew only in the vaguest of terms who Hitler even was. Beyond that, if you can imagine the statement above, you might be able to imagine how unwilling English, French, Belgians, etc. were to have their sons die in another war. Especially since they were so ill-equipped to fight it. After all that, the Americans ended up fighting Hitler, not to defend us -- but to defend themselves through offense rather than defense. After all, the United States learned in January of 1942 what Churchill already knew two years earlier: that Hitler would set his sights on the US eventually as well.
If the Americans displayed a similar lack of resolve with respect to the Soviet Union, the EU that is in place today would be nothing but a dream.Although I suspect that if the US hadn't invaded the Soviet Union in 1919, relations between the two might not have been so strained for so long.....
This is why nations like Poland and other smaller Eastern European countries refuse to allow Chirac to use them against the United States.Of course, the fact that Uncle George spread around the semolians didn't have anything to do with it.
After WW2 started, American politicians passed the Lend-Lease act which provided arms and equipments and loans worth approx $30 billion ($300 billion in todays dollars) to Britain. Was this in America's interests?Yes. Not a shadow of a doubt.
But again, if Europe had acted early on, WW2 would never have happened.Bullcrap.
This is Europe's history. Come to terms with it.Correction: this is Europe's history according to the school of "Why the United States was Divinely Destined to Rule The World and Why All Other Nations Should Shut Up and Let Us". It is a history which you can keep. Not to mention, shove.
Austria wasn't a sacrifice; the vast majority of Austrians wanted the Anschluss. As for Czechoslovakia, that's what I was talking about as well -- the Munich Pact.
France and Britain had a pact to protect Czechoslovakis but allowed Germany to snap it up because they believed that appeasing Hitler would prevent further agression.No, they didn't. The Munich Pact was the agreement whereby France, Britain and Czechoslovakia turned over Sudetenland to Germany in return for Germany agreeing not to annex any more Czech territory. France (or at least its president and prime minister) already knew at the time that it was just a delay. They also knew they weren't in any shape to go to war with Germany in 1938, so they started preparing for war. The defense pact between Britain and France was with Poland, not Czechoslovakia, and came in March of 1939 when Hitler annexed the rest of Czechoslovakia. And they stood by that agreement -- Hitler's invasion of Poland started World War II.
It only emboldened Hitler, who actually expected France to go to war over the Sudetenland.No, he didn't. Hitler didn't know what Britain and France were willing to do (although he had a reasonable idea of what they were able to do). He started the play for Sudetenland to test the waters and the limits; note that he didn't seize Sudetenland until after the Munich Pact.
That history of Europe, particularly France, putting its own self interests ahead of its obligations to its allies has been going on for hundreds of years. It is nothing new.That history of Europe doesn't exist. There is no obligation to any allies that France broke (much the opposite and much to France's detriment). And you'd be hard-pressed to find an example of it before 1938 either.
That aside, the idea that France or Britian should have gone to war before 1939 would have been deemed ludicrous back then and is simply insane with hindsight. France was in no shape whatsoever to take on Germany in 1938. In 1939/40, Germany crushed France in a matter of weeks; had war come about 18 months earlier, France would have been pulverized.
France's army was much larger than Germany's prior to 1939. France lacked the will and courage to fight.That's the stupid type of wartime accounting that got millions of soldiers killed needlessly in WWI. The kind of thinking that says "they have twenty-five siege mortars and seventy machine guns, but we have five hundred rifles so we outgun them" and then sends half a regiment of men to be blown to bits on that basis. So what if France had more men? Germany was better armed, its men better trained and equipped, the German army had more and better tanks, the Kriegsmarine had U-boats that swept the seas and the Luftwaffe was damned near invincible in 1938 -- and it was only four years from having fighter jets. There is no way in which France could have realistically defeated Germany in 1938 or even brought it to a standstill. If the German surface navy had been worth anything, not even Britain would have survived the 1940 onslaught. Hell, the United States would be part of the German Reich right now. And you think France should have gone up against that when they were even weaker than they were in 1939?
Does this ring a bell ?Only the resonating of your cranium.
The United States' interests prior to WWII were very simply to avoid at all costs getting involved with overseas affairs (as dictated by the Monroe Doctrine). "Give us your poor and hungry -- but have them leave their past at the door" was the motto back then. That's why the US wasn't a part of the League of Nations, why Wilson carefully didn't tell the public that the attack on Lusitania was neither unprovoked nor unjustified (the US might yet have refused to go to war) and why Roosevelt didn't take a chance either and presented Congress with a fait accompli in 1941.
As for after, I'll grant you the US showed great interest in bottling up the Soviets (I'll not call them communists to avoid the philosophical battle of whether or not they really were). To accomplish that, between 1945 and 1991 the United States directly supported almost every undemocratic, ruthless, dictatorial government in the world (we're talking everything here from Mobutu in Africa to Saddam Hussein and the Shah of Persia), replaced quite a few democratically elected governments with dictatorships (Persia, Argentina, Chile and as I recall also Indonesia) and on occassion literally overran countries, or allowed them to be overrun with American aid (creation of former South Vietnam, Cambodia, East Timor). So you might want to tone down the flag-waving a bit; there's a rather definite flipside to America's time as the hero of the free world.
It was not in the United States interest to allow either fascist or communist governments to swallow up its Allies.At the time you are talking about, America neither had nor wanted allies. That came later.
The American people were very indifferent to the events in Europe because of the devestation of WW1 and a feeling that Europe was a place that could never right is ship.They were indifferent because separation from Europe and European affairs was so much a part of American society and its foundations that it had become ingrained. Experiences from WWI just added to that; the feeling did not start there.
Of course Europe likes to portray these actions as the United States profiteering off its allies.No, we don't. The other side of that coin is that we don't want to portray it as anything more than it was either. Those people in the United States with enough sense to look around and see what was happening in Europe knew that if Germany won WWII, it would endanger the US as well as Europe (Germany had by far the strongest military in the world in 1940). We recognize that America sent military aid before joining the war itself -- we also recognize that it had a healthy self-interest in doing so.
This is a typical liberal, revisionist European reaction that tries to paint Americans negatively.I could say something similar about the way the United States has been acting towards France recently.
France was largely responsible for WW2,Bull. Germany was largely responsible for WWII; what blame the allies bear for dictating stupid and fomenting terms after WWI, they share in equal measure together.
from its vindictive treatment of the Germans after WW1Which was supported and encouraged by all the allied nations.... Especially with respect to Belgium....
to the callous indifference it showed to its so-called allies.What indifference? France saw war coming before any other nation. It was France (and the Soviet Union) that knew Munich wouldn't work and that it was only a delaying tactic. It was the UK that was lagging behind everybody else.
French military blunders only highlighted French buffonery and was not unexpected at that point.Balloney. Utter nonsense. France did exactly what one might have expected of a larger nation in those days and prepared for the kind of war that people knew. They got the Maginot line ready and prepared for siege and trenches, just like in WWI. You cannot blame France for not being able to resist the new kind of warfare that Germany invented (especially a so effective type of warfare that it is still used today).
Bullshit. The Crusades, WWI, the naval wars between England and France, England and the Netherlands, about your very existence as a country, these are all wars that started because European countries respected their obligations to allies and overseas colonies. As for Iraq (which is undoubtedly what you are blithering about above), the European nations in NATO have a mutual defense pact with the US -- it doesn't obligate us to support the US in a totally unnecessary war that the US is (was) itself starting.
By the way, you do realize that Germany is in Europe, right? This wasn't a matter of a united Europe standing up against an outside foe -- there was no such thing as a united Europe or even the idea of it.
and confronted a militaristic Germany early on, WW2 would never have happened.Confronted it with what? With militaries that had been downsized after several years of the Great Disarmament Drive (look it up)? With populations unwilling to fight another bloody war after World War I and desiring a diplomatic settlement at all cost? Not to mention that in the end, they did confront Germany. That's why there was war. As there would have been no matter what -- the foundations for WWII were laid on November 11th 1918 at 11:11 and not a moment later.
Crack open a non-European history book one of these days.So I can get the US-government mandated dose of "we are great and they are wimps"-Americana nonsense? No thanks.
I think that, if you had any idea of what you were talking about rather than just talking out of your backside, you would realize that at the time the United States had no foreign interests whatsoever except in a very few members of government.
The only thing the U.S. did wrong in WW2 was put faith in countries like France.What, if anything, are you talking about? The United States didn't put any faith in anything in anybody and didn't care about the outcome either. As for France, France saw war in Europe coming before anybody else did. Especially the English. France just chose the wrong strategy, banking on a repeat of WWI and its tactics rather than a new little gimmick the Germans invented for the occassion (the Blitzkrieg).
WW2 should never have gotten started and were it not for the weakness of Chamberlain and all of France, it wouldn't be in our history books.Did you by any chance find your history-text in a crackerjack box? Many things, including WWII, should never have gotten started. However, the terms of the Treaty of Versailles made it as inevitable as rain falling in Seattle. I'll grant you that Chamberlain made choices that were stupid in retrospect, but certainly understandable in their times. As for your comments on France, they are almost as insulting as your total lack of knowledge of the subject. I suggest you turn to a more sophisticated level of comic book for your information on European history in the future.
And what, do tell, do you think "Europe" (whatever that would have meant back then) could have done to prevent World War II? Aside from being a lot smarter after WWI, that is?
POLAND! Get real, Poland! They provided 200 soldiers; that's what you consider "big guns"? Hell, the Netherlands could have fielded more than that if the US hadn't made it so painfully obvious they were bullshitting everybody.
Slight correction: they were supported by those governments (often in return for a very tidy sum of money) over the objections of most of the populations.
In other words, European nations supported the United States over Iraq in pretty much the same sense that Bush was elected president by "America" (all five people of it).
As for the Netherlands, the U.S. claimed our support rather incorrectly.
Ever heard of Turkey? Most of the Muslim communities living in Western nations? For that matter, most of northern China was Muslim for centuries.
What other relgion says "you must kill those who do not beleive as we do".At some point or other, pretty much all of them.
So why is it that fundamentalist Christians so often end up toting guns, backing presidents who want to wage war on other countries, blowing up abortion centers, doing everything they can to make life hell for gays and on occassion burning crosses (preferably with a black man nailed to it)?
No, wait, I know -- it's because fundamentalist muslims are good at what they do while fundamentalist Christians are on the whole abject failures.
Well, you have to admit your track record since 1945 hasn't exactly been stellar in this respect (i.e. intervening in foreign countries' affairs).
So, when do you turn 6?
Whereas other French hid Jews, gypsies and other persecuted peoples and kept them alive -- or died trying. Just like in other countries.
For comparison, under the motto of "let he who is without sin...", you might want to consider that between 1934 an 1941 the United States made regular sport of taking boatloads full of Jewish refugees from Europe (even directly from Germany) and sending them back -- to their deaths, regularly enough.
So today's lesson is: get your nose out of the Great Republican Hymnal of Anti-Frenchism, look around and smell the roses. There's more to all of it than the black-and-white picture your president prefers (since that's all he can handle). Here's a hint for you: that book was written by men who have problems with their heads, namely having them stuck up their asses.
You don't think anything has change in a generation do you?A generation? You're kidding, right? The young people here (up to 15, 20, thereabouts) are regularly the grandchildren of the people born DIRECTLY AFTER WWII.
Aside from getting into such philosophical questions as whether or not the above statement implies that people who hid Jews from the Nazi's were wrong (or the people running the Underground Railway), the United States has worked itself into a situation where changing such laws is damn near impossible in any other way than for large sections of the population to break it and break it hard. Sad fact is, your government doesn't seem to understand anything else anymore.