BS: Do we learn from history?

Subject: RE: BS: Do we learn from history?
From: Mr Red
Date: 28 Jan 18 - 04:01 AM

The most depressing thing is that sales of arms have become an essential part of major economies, And struggling ones like North Korea! Except replace essential with major.

Subject: RE: BS: Do we learn from history?
From: Iains
Date: 28 Jan 18 - 03:43 AM

"If goods don't cross borders, armies certainly will." - Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850)

Subject: RE: BS: Do we learn from history?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Jan 18 - 10:59 AM

He's having a nonsense day everywhere, Raggytash. I made a plain and completely truthful statement in the brexit thread and he called it a total distortion. He's back in full gratuitous insult mode.

Subject: RE: BS: Do we learn from history?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Jan 18 - 10:57 AM

The founding of what is now the EU, largely at the time driven by the recoil from two terrible wars, was a good example of learning from history. Countries which are democracies, which abide by human rights standards and which adhere to the rule of law seldom have appetites for warring among themselves. Unfortunately, it doesn't stop them from interfering in countries which don't necessarily share those standards and it doesn't stop them from indulging in the kinds of proxy wars we saw in Central America in Reagan's time or in the running sore of Middle East conflicts. Generally, you just have to look for who it is that the West is arming. The lesson of Vietnam wasn't well learned.

Subject: RE: BS: Do we learn from history?
From: Raggytash
Date: 27 Jan 18 - 10:05 AM

Au contaire Iains, anyone with half a brain would not have posted the nonsense you did.

Subject: RE: BS: Do we learn from history?
From: Iains
Date: 27 Jan 18 - 10:02 AM

Raggytash anyone with half a brain cell is all to well aware of the facts surrounding Hitler and the Jews. That is why I qualified the statement. If you want to pick holes try stuffing a finger up your nose, it maybe more beneficial.

The thesis I tried to develop above before I hit send by mistake and then had to go out was: In WW1 and WW2 the fight in europe was fought largely to a codified set of rules. The Boer War by contrast had Britain introduce concentration camps incarcerating Boers. The war in the Pacific was far more brutal with the Japanese ignoring most conventions. In more recent times wars have become asymmetric and civilian casualties conveniently discounted as collateral damage. The disparities of asymmetric warfare leads often to a situation where there are no rules - only survive.
The only thing we learn from history is that each time a war breaks out, we find more and more efficient ways of killing each other and the nature of warfare can change dramatically.Sometimes this is in ways that would make the medieval torture chambers seem quite tame.

Subject: RE: BS: Do we learn from history?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 27 Jan 18 - 09:48 AM

"Do we learn from history?"

A: Of course, but not as fast (or permanently) as many of us would prefer, and it's hard to see progress when we look at it within the frame of reference of our own life span.

Zoom out to a century-long measure, and the progressive trend is obvious.

It is grievous to be caught in the inevitable pendulum swings, as targets ourselves or as folks loving the targeted. Thus, sentence A.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Do we learn from history?
From: Raggytash
Date: 27 Jan 18 - 09:00 AM

"and mostly adhered to a set of rules concerning the treatment of civilians and prisoners"

Iains, just remember that today is National Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Your statement is crass ............ in the extreme.

Subject: RE: BS: Do we learn from history?
From: Donuel
Date: 27 Jan 18 - 08:52 AM

Gotterdammerung

Hitler's last chapter of defeat was to condemn the German people to be punished for not achieving total victory. Total death and defeat was their reward.

In Trump's first chapter would he too become irrationally vengeful should he lose his legitimate Presidency?

Would Donald call upon the good people of armed right wing militias to terrorize and punish America? Or will he go away peacefully accepting the rule of law?

Subject: RE: BS: Do we learn from history?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Jan 18 - 08:41 AM

" Wars are fought to achieve political objectives. "
Most wars have always been fought to achieve political objectives - once it was the Empire, now it's oil and national or religious superiority
It's a moot point whether Europe adhered to the rulebook (a rulebook on killing is an obscenity in itself anyway) - victors never commit war crimes because it's they who get to write the history books that count.
I agree entirely about Hiroshima and Nagasaki - you might add Dresden and The Blitz into that list
WW2 was an interlude between colonial wars, which carried on once 'peace!!' had been achieved, with is's own level of butchery and assassination.
Now we are involved in conflicts directly arising from the mess we left behind with the collapse of Empire - The Middle East being a prime example.
The most depressing thing is that sales of arms have become an essential part of major economies, in which case, "if war had never existed it would have been necessary to invent it" - to misquote
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Do we learn from history?
From: Mr Red
Date: 27 Jan 18 - 07:04 AM

society No

personally - well most;y.

But society is full of bright young things that didn't experience the pain last time. Explaining pain to those who haven't experienced it, is like describing Stilton cheese to those wot haven't stilted yet.

Subject: RE: BS: Do we learn from history?
From: Iains
Date: 27 Jan 18 - 06:54 AM

One thing that is abundantly clear is that while WW1 and 11 in Europe recognised and mostly adhered to a set of rules concerning the treatment of civilians and prisoners, modern wars have no such constraints. Wars are fought to achieve political objectives. Terrorism has the same driver and now the boundaries are blurred, as are the rules of engagement.
I wonder to what extent the obliteration of innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki contributed to tearing up the rule book and negating the Geneva conventions. The same could be asked of waterboarding.

Subject: RE: BS: Do we learn from history?
From: Kampervan
Date: 27 Jan 18 - 05:37 AM

I fear that what you say is very true Senoufou.

I was born in '49 and I grew up playing on bomb sites, learning about WWII and seeing pictures of the holocaust in the Sunday papers (I suppose it to illustrate the trials of people like Eichmann).

I naively thought that it was so terrible that it could never happen again, who in their right mind would ever do something like that?

How stupid I was. The pursuit of power and wealth seems to be a constant in a proportion of people and it is difficult to see that ever ending.

World peace? I think that I'll leave it there, I'm getting quite depressed!

Subject: RE: BS: Do we learn from history?
From: Senoufou
Date: 27 Jan 18 - 05:02 AM

I can see similar racist attitudes today as those that pertained in pre-War Germany. People can still be anti-immigrants, anti-travellers,anti-blacks and so on. The circumstances may differ, but the mindsets appear to be the same. Some folk would be thrilled if it were suggested we round up all immigrants and transport them off to 'camps'.
It makes me very sad that 'lessons have NOT been learned'. Since the Holocaust we've had Rwanda, Cambodia and no end of other genocides.

I knew a Deaconess in Scotland who had been in the Red Cross and among those who liberated Auschwitz. She never spoke much about what she saw, but said only that she had seen Hell with her own eyes. She noted that one could smell the camp about twenty miles away when approaching it.

Just after the War, cinemas didn't hesitate to show the mounds of corpses and skeletal 'survivors' on their Newsreels. I was very shocked as a child to see these things.
I always light a candle and put it in front of our door on Holocaust Remembrance Night. A tiny gesture in honour of all those millions and millions of sufferers and deaths.

Subject: RE: BS: Do we learn from history?
From: BobL
Date: 27 Jan 18 - 03:21 AM

The only thing history teaches us is that nobody ever learns anything from history.
History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an exam (sorry, can't attribute any of these).

The mistakes post-WW1 led up to WW2: we seem to have managed to avoid repeating them at least.

Subject: BS: Do we learn from history?
From: Kampervan
Date: 27 Jan 18 - 02:46 AM

Today is National Holocaust Remembrance Day.

We are exhorted to remember what happened so that it might never happen again and it is difficult to argue with that sentiment.

But, bearing in mind the words of Georges Santayana - ‘’ Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’’ - I wonder, do we (collectively) ever recognise, learn and don’t repeat, any of our mistakes?