| Subject: Re: D-Day |
Author:
Dmitri
| [ Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
Date Posted: 09:50:46 06/12/14 Thu
In reply to:
Wes
's message, "D-Day" on 10:16:03 06/11/14 Wed
Wes,
Below you mention:
Could people, could countries put for the effort needed to wage a war of that size today? I have my doubts if the people and the political will could ever be mustered on that scale again. Fortunately, the odds seem in favor of it not being necessary.
I don't agree with "necessary" at all. I'm pretty sure it was Larry Niven (SF writer, maybe along with coauthor Jerry Pournelle) who in essence stated that "Humans are quick to be offended and fighting is what we're are good at -- and there's nothing you can do about it!" (That's a huge misquote that I didn't look up, but essentially what was meant). I think it's just a matter of when it happens rather then if it will. We've been stalling a big war off for years now, the extension of the cold war of the '50s, though there have been many smaller ones. The closest we've come that I know of is Bay of Pigs in I think '62, so that's about 50 years or so. Not bad, actually.
As to "if" we could muster the effort to wage a war of the size of WW2 today or not, I do not think that it is necessary at all. Nuclear war would be what would happen today instead, and that takes just a handful of people, not 10% of the population. If we "started" it (provoked or not) that would be it. If someone else did, it may not go that far.
Hey, I'm no military historian or strategist, but that's how I see things.
Dmitri
>Another column lifted from the paper.
>
>----------
>
>I know I’m a little late with this one — it should
>have been last week — but last Friday, June 6, was a
>landmark day in that it was the seventieth anniversary
>of D-Day, the invasion of Normandy that was the
>beginning of the end of World War II.
>
>Seventy years seems like a long time in the past, and
>it is. To the kids that recently graduated from high
>school, it must seem foreign to them indeed, something
>that isn’t quite real, and at that, something that
>isn’t really relevant to their lives.
>
>In some respects, it isn’t. Looking at it from a
>historical viewpoint, World War II — at least in
>Europe — was an extension of the many unsettled issues
>of World War I. World War II made a final settlement
>of many of them, and the half-century that followed
>put paid to most of the rest of them.
>
>There are not many people left who were present at
>D-Day, the invasion of Normandy. Just doing the math,
>the youngest of them would have to be in their late
>eighties, so it seems likely that the living memory of
>that pivotal day won’t be around for very much longer.
>
>Over the years I have put many hours into the study of
>World War II. The amount of effort put into the war
>was incredible, and the focus was extreme. Yes, we’ve
>had wars since, divisive wars, long wars, even arduous
>wars, but never, thank goodness, a war that demanded
>the commitment that World War II required of the
>peoples that fought it.
>
>It was a very hard war, especially for those in the
>front lines. The stress on those brave men of many
>countries carrying the rifles was extreme, and almost
>incomprehensible to those more accustomed to easier
>times. Yet, they managed to do it.
>
>Tom Brokaw has referred to the people who fought the
>war as "The Greatest Generation" and I wouldn't be
>surprised if he's right. Could people, could countries
>put for the effort needed to wage a war of that size
>today? I have my doubts if the people and the
>political will could ever be mustered on that scale
>again. Fortunately, the odds seem in favor of it not
>being necessary.
>
>To take the U.S. as an example, in 1940 the country
>had about 250,000 people in all branches of an
>underfunded, outdated military. In 1945, there were
>twelve million or so in what was probably the most
>modern military of all those fighting -- a tremendous
>accomplishment, one that is hardly possible to imagine
>repetition on that scale. The country had about 120
>million people in 1940, so roughly one in ten was in
>uniform at the end of the war. The population today is
>around 300 million, and it's just about
>incomprehensible to think that the military could be
>expanded to thirty million people by 2020, even if a
>desperate need was there. I don't think it could be
>done today -- but a similar effort was managed back
>there seventy years ago.
>
>Now, all the effort, the toil, the pain, the fear and
>the death is fading into history, alive in memory of
>only a fading few who were there and still live today.
>
>The world has moved past the challenges of seventy
>years ago. New challenges have come along to submerge
>the past, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't keep
>the past in mind, to learn from it, and to honor the
>toil and suffering that went on in the past. "Those
>who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat
>it." the philosopher George Santayana is famed for
>saying. I doubt if any of us would care to repeat
>World War II, so perhaps remembering it will stave off
>the chances of it being repeated.
>
>So, even though D-Day is now seventy years ago, and
>living memory of it fades daily. it's something that
>deserves to remain in the minds of those of us who
>follow on. I don't think it something any of us would
>care to repeat.
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
] |
|
Feedback: 