i am astonished and appalled at the loosey goosey "facts" being tossed around on this thread which can barely be considered as personal opinion; there seems to be lots of other people's opinions being stated as fact. people referencing wikipedia as some kind of historical reference point, people practicing revisionist history left and right, people stating fact when it is nothing more than a hand me down story is frankly scary and brings the whole concept of historical accuracy to its knees.
what is fact? with respect to the events, all we really have to go on are documented, irrefutable facts. what are those, specifically? well, we just better all move over to a new main topic on CP about historical events and our interpretations of what they meant and what really happened. it is difficult to find exact, irrefutable evidence about events in war throughout history. even "agreed" facts and events tend to be coloured by winners and losers.
to apply the logic, knowledge, and emotion of decades and centuries to these events is an interesting exercise, but certainly won't yield insight into what really happened.
good on the CP community for engaging in such a passionate debate on an emotionally charged matter.
the object of war is to subvert your opponent to your views and wishes. ultimately, the reason for wars is to protect what you believe to be rightfully and justifiably yours; an obvious disagreement occurs. for those of a machiavellian persuasion, the end justifies the means. i don't know what that means to this thread in particular, but i am sure that i can think of something.
paraphrasing here...but as a wise person once said, if you need any doubts about history just read the eye witness accounts of a traffic accident.
oh and one final thought...
when people toss around numbers like "million", it doesn't mean much. how about a thought for one single person, with hopes and dreams like every one of us before and after them. and multiply that by ten. and that by ten. and that by ten. and that by ten. and that by ten. and that by ten. and that by ten. and that by 5 to 7. yup. that is the number estimated to have died in WW2. and the estimate is 6:1 on allied to axis casualties, including civilians.
ordinarily, i try not to stay up late at night trying to fix "internet wrongs". in this case however, i implore people to study history, to learn the mistakes of those before us, and try to understand so that we don't make the same mistakes again.
i fear from this thread that we have a long way to go.
i'm not holier than thou though... come on over for some beers and let me tell you about what the english have done to the scots and scotland...and then we can get into some real revisionist history correction. i am just as bad as the next person...it all depends upon the topic i suppose.
pardon for the interruption. please continue with the revisionism! i have to head over to the darryl sutter threads to see what historical inaccuracies are being bandied about over there!
