Did the Archbishop of Canterbury just apologise for bombing the Nazis?

ancient_mariner said:
More likely liberals than left wing attacking Churchill these days, since socialism tends to take a fairly utilitarian view of things.
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liberals are left wing - alledgedly (though you wouldnt think so looking at the current crop of Lib politicos)
 
big soft moose said:
liberals are left wing - alledgedly (though you wouldnt think so looking at the current crop of Lib politicos)
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They can be, but left wing implies socialism more clearly (which is often happy to sacrifice the few for the many) than liberalism, which often has problems with anyone experiencing hardship.
 
ancient_mariner said:
They can be, but left wing implies socialism more clearly (which is often happy to sacrifice the few for the many) than liberalism, which often has problems with anyone experiencing hardship.
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fairy muff - but generally liberals arent right wing in outlook.

whatever Hitler would have put them in political detainment for not being good little Nazi's which was my core point - churchhill et al stopped that from happening and bombing variious german cities was an integral part of winning the war , so to accuse churchhil/bomber harris etc of war crimes for the way in which they preserved the liberas right to criticise is more than a little hypocritical
 
Wow, 7 pages arguing about an apology that wasn't made. Only on the internet. :D
 
big soft moose said:
Trouble is if you go too far down that road you can trace the net cause of all warfare to the moment that Ugg picked up a stone and hit ogg with it because he wanted his cave
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Ogg's ancestors are still waiting for an apology and reparations... why did you open that can of worms?
 
One must be careful not to confuse liberalism with libertarianism. The ideology of the latter leads into uber-right-wing territory (at least on economic and taxation issues) that is at complete odds with the more left-leaning centrist values of a typical liberal.
Of course, in America "liberal" is now seen as an equivalent of "communist" or even "amoral" and is viewed as an insult. But American politics is toxic.
 
It's important to understand why a liberal is viewed as amoral by the American right, and it is usually because they oppose faith and embrace an unrestricted approach to sexuality, often, though not always, having something of a concern for social wellbeing (something notably absent in the American right). The British version seems a bit confused, but more or less apperars to follow this pattern.

I'd suggest libertarianism would be directly opposed to socialism, since socialism distinctly takes away personal freedoms in order to benefit the greatest number (at least, in theory).
 
Llamaman said:
One must be careful not to confuse liberalism with libertarianism. The ideology of the latter leads into uber-right-wing territory (at least on economic and taxation issues) that is at complete odds with the more left-leaning centrist values of a typical liberal.
Of course, in America "liberal" is now seen as an equivalent of "communist" or even "amoral" and is viewed as an insult. But American politics is toxic.
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Liberal ideology hasn't changed just the party that used to espouse it
 
big soft moose said:
and this was different for the french, norwegians etc how exactly ?

yes sure some people chose not to put themselves in danger by resisting - some will always choose that route ... but if your govt is acting reprehensibly and you do nothing out of self preservation then you tacitly condone their actions and I have no sympathy if you get bombed as a result
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I agree with pretty much all you have said in this post but not here. Call me a coward but if I lived in nazi Germany self preservation is exactly what I would do and I think most others would. I would have no interest in risking my life or my kids lives to try to resist. To be fair I don't think many Germans knew the full extent of the stuff that was going on.
 
one must ask regarding the origins of Nazism and why it appealed to the German people. There was already strong anti Semitism in Europe, one of its leadinjg advocates was the composer Richard Wagner who had a visceral haterd of the Jews. Hitler idolised Wagner, kept hs opera house running during the war and demanded senior members of his party attend performances

the folowing has been copied from aish.com

The Wagner debate is not an easy one to resolve, least of all at a time of resurgent anti-Semitism in Europe. Already in his notorious early tract Jewry in Music (1850), Wagner had identified the Jews as “the plastic demon of the decline of mankind” – decadent symbols of the corrupt, money-making new world that the composer loathed.

In 1881, he wrote to his infatuated patron, Ludwig II of Bavaria: “I hold the Jewish race to be the born enemy of pure humanity and everything noble in it.” Wagner even suggested that he was “the last German who knows how to hold himself upright in the face of Jewry, which already rules everything.” No wonder that the young Adolf Hitler could see in Wagner a true soul-mate and remained to the end a fanatical worshipper of his boyhood idol.

What the two shared, however, was far more than simply visceral Jew-hatred. Hitler was enchanted by the ecstatic appeal of the great Wagnerian themes of heroic sacrifice and betrayal, redemption and death, the restored world of Germanic myths, of titanic passions and the twilight of the gods. Hitler, like so many Wagner addicts, felt transported by Wagner’s music into a mystical trance, plunged into a mesmeric spectacle of heroic beings like Rienzi, Tannhäuser or Siegfried who appeared to challenge the established bourgeois order; or ascetic saviors like Lohengrin and Parsifal come to redeem a corrupt and degenerate world. In Hitler’s twisted imagination, Parsifal was ultimately a drama about “blood purity” and racial regeneration: a distortion perhaps, but these ideas certainly preoccupied Wagner in his last years.

There is also a sense in which Hitler may indeed have seen himself as the political consummator of Wagner’s artistic genius and the Nazi Reich which he founded as a grandiose fulfillment of the Wagnerian Gesammtkunstwerk. Purging Germany (and Europe) of its Jews fit perfectly into this broader world-view oriented towards “racial cleansing.”
 
cambsno said:
I agree with pretty much all you have said in this post but not here. Call me a coward but if I lived in nazi Germany self preservation is exactly what I would do and I think most others would. I would have no interest in risking my life or my kids lives to try to resist. To be fair I don't think many Germans knew the full extent of the stuff that was going on.
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but would that be any different if you lived in say occupied france ? (or anywhere else under Nazi rule)

My point however was whether people didnt resist through fear, through patriotism, or through apathy, the net result was the same - that is tacit approval of the Nazi regimes actions, and therefore I have no sympathy when the RAF drop x tonnes of HE on their heads
 
big soft moose said:
but would that be any different if you lived in say occupied france ? (or anywhere else under Nazi rule)

My point however was whether people didnt resist through fear, through patriotism, or through apathy, the net result was the same - that is tacit approval of the Nazi regimes actions, and therefore I have no sympathy when the RAF drop x tonnes of HE on their heads
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So, your failure to take up arms to overthrow the government and prevent the second Gulf War makes you a legitimate target for Iraqi Insurgents?
 
Llamaman said:
So, your failure to take up arms to overthrow the government and prevent the second Gulf War makes you a legitimate target for Iraqi Insurgents?
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interesting logical leap, but technically yes in their eyes it probably does , except that the second gulf war (actually the third but lets not be too picky) was a) justified , and b) against the forces of Saddam Hussein , not the various nutjobs that have subsequently risen to prominence after it.

But in essence as the population of a country thats at war with them, i wouldn't be too suprised if they saw me/us as a legitimate target (and vice versa , I won't shed too many tears for those who suport ISIL when they get caught in an RAF/USAF airstrike)
 
The fragmentation of Iraq was a foregone conclusion once Saddam was removed. He was the only thing that held a fractious country,tribes and people together. The Allies showed a remarkable lack of forward planning. People who worked out there and knew the country were fully aware that the state we are in now was a certainty, maybe not to quite the extremes that IS have evolved it too, but it was never,ever going to be peace and tranquility.
 
fracster said:
The fragmentation of Iraq was a foregone conclusion once Saddam was removed. He was the only thing that held a fractious country,tribes and people together. The Allies showed a remarkable lack of forward planning. People who worked out there and knew the country were fully aware that the state we are in now was a certainty, maybe not to quite the extremes that IS have evolved it too, but it was never,ever going to be peace and tranquility.
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Yes your right,and their were told time & time again,but did they listen no,and out of the ashes groups like IS evolved,and were still and war with no idea how to finish it :(
 
fracster said:
The fragmentation of Iraq was a foregone conclusion once Saddam was removed. He was the only thing that held a fractious country,tribes and people together. The Allies showed a remarkable lack of forward planning. People who worked out there and knew the country were fully aware that the state we are in now was a certainty, maybe not to quite the extremes that IS have evolved it too, but it was never,ever going to be peace and tranquility.
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This is true, but leaving him in charge wasnt the answer either... imo what they should have done is let the country fragment whilst still under ocupation - the bottom bit which is mostly shia would have wound up being run by grand ayatollah sistani who while fairly fundamentalist isnt a complete fruitloop - the top would have been kurdish and the middle would have become an unimportant sunni state.

course what no one could have predicted was the wheels coming off in syria - thats what led to the mess we have now
 
big soft moose said:
This is true, but leaving him in charge wasnt the answer either... imo what they should have done is let the country fragment whilst still under ocupation - the bottom bit which is mostly shia would have wound up being run by grand ayatollah sistani who while fairly fundamentalist isnt a complete fruitloop - the top would have been kurdish and the middle would have become an unimportant sunni state.
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possibly, but atleast it was a stable(ish) regime when he was in charge. OK he spouted a lot of bluster, but he was fairly impotent really.To all but his own people anyway

The Turks would neve stand for a Kurdush state on their border. But thats just another example of why the whole region is so f***ed up, and pretty much impossible to solve the issues with now
 
boyfalldown said:
The Turks would never stand for a Kurdush state on their border. But thats just another example of why the whole region is so f***ed up, and pretty much impossible to solve the issues with now
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.. the whole region has always been and will always be a powder keg. I can see no end to the problems out there, unless the wealthy Arabic states get involved, but that is no certainty.
 
boyfalldown said:
, but he was fairly impotent really.
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apart from starting a 7 year long war with iran, and then trying to invade kuwait, - okay so we kicked his arse, but kuwait and saudi would have lost without western help
 
big soft moose said:
apart from starting a 7 year long war with iran, and then trying to invade kuwait, - okay so we kicked his arse, but kuwait and saudi would have lost without western help
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True, but Iran/Iraq was never going to end in anything but a nasty stalemate, and agreed about Kuwait. Maybe I should of qualified what I was saying, 'at the time Blair/bush launched gulf war 2 he was fairly impotent outside his country'
 
I suspect it was because of what he was doing inside his country - at least partially - which gave them personal justification for the war. Overlooking the question of finishing the earlier war, un-thinking revenge for the twin towers and a need to secure future supplies of oil.
 
ancient_mariner said:
I suspect it was because of what he was doing inside his country - at least partially - which gave them personal justification for the war. Overlooking the question of finishing the earlier war, un-thinking revenge for the twin towers and a need to secure future supplies of oil.
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I suspect it was your overlooked reasons more then any more noble motive about his treatment of his own own people
 
boyfalldown said:
I suspect it was your overlooked reasons more then any more noble motive about his treatment of his own own people
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I suspect you are right - not that thats necesarily a bad thing, - a conventional campaign in '91 would have been ignore kuwait entire, seize bagdad then wait for the Iraqi army in kuwai tto surrender... we could have saved everyone a lot of grief by doing that, we didnt because saudi were paranoid about iran taking the bottom bit of iraq and being on their border.

Where we really f***ed up in 2003 though was the way we disbanded the iraqi army - a classic case would have been to leave the army and police intact, and just decapitate it then put in your own people/puppets in the command positions (like we did with the wermach to bundeswhere transition) , completely disbanding the iraqi army on the other hand create a big bunch of p***ed off trained insurgents, with a ready supply of arms and no native organisation to oppose them
 
fracster said:
Worth a read, not saying he is right or wrong, just interesting.


https://uddebatt.wordpress.com/2012...ia-and-the-countries-that-make-it-possible-1/
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hes right - but the trouble is that only Assad forces have a realistic chance of beating ISIS (outside the kurdish areas) unless the west go in heavy - the democratic opposition groups are a bit of a joke (other than the pesh merga)

also point of interest - the reason Assad is such a brutal **** is because he's a fascist - of the baath party variety - exactly the same in fact as Saddam Hussein
 
Tito kept a grip on Yugoslavia, looked what happened when he was ousted. Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo - the whole Balkans War.

Now we have gone from War in Europe to the Middle East and back to Europe again all on one thread !
 
Blank_Canvas said:
Tito kept a grip on Yugoslavia, looked what happened when he was ousted. Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo - the whole Balkans War.

Now we have gone from War in Europe to the Middle East and back to Europe again all on one thread !
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Indeed, Tito did keep the region together, with a bit of help of course. It has been a reasonable discussion thus far though, which is unusual for TP OOF.......:)
 
Llamaman said:
The certainty is that they're already involved.
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Covertly more than overtly. I think the main issue is the general loathing of the US,especially, in the area. Perhaps a large force of Arabic peace keepers is the way forward.

Thinking on that, some Arabs would hate some of the Arabs making up the peace keeping force, it really is a fubar`d situation and there may,indeed, be no answer to it.
 
Blank_Canvas said:
Tito kept a grip on Yugoslavia, looked what happened when he was ousted. !
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I thought tito died in the early 80s - it was about 10-15 years after that that it all kicked off in the balkans
 
fracster said:
Perhaps a large force of Arabic peace keepers is the way forward.
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Send their own troops to fight the militants they encouraged, funded and trained? What kind of dumb country would do that? *tumbleweed*
 
Llamaman said:
Send their own troops to fight the militants they encouraged, funded and trained? What kind of dumb country would do that? *tumbleweed*
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to be fair its only saudi thats been funding them , and not the official govt at that - and een they might think its better to fight them in syria than fight them at home , as sooner or later IS are bound to want to extend the caliphate to include Mecca and medina
 
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